He’s pimping his book a bit, but Tod sent in his hack for controlling his bluetooth roomba with a bluetooth phone. He released the bluetooth interface hack Now he”s whipped up a phone application that lets him fully control the roomba via bluetooth.
Unlimited Cellphone Calling For Cheap
Every couple months I get a tip about how to get unlimited calling for minimal money. They usually involve some less than elegant forwarding, but I figured I’d post one and hopefully be done with this topic. Here is [van12]’s version posted on Howard forums. First you need a cellphone plan that has free inbound/outbound calling to your home number. You use a home number from a VOIP provider that lets you forward inbound calls to your cellphone. By calling home you can use the VOIP providers cheap unlimited plan to make calls.
[UPDATE: HoFo seems to be blocking us with a registration page now]
Forward RSS Feeds To Your Cellphone
[th0mas] has put together a concise how-to on forwarding Atom or RSS to you cellphone. In his example he grabs an Atom feed from his Gmail account then parses it to find the new messages. The new message list is compared to a file so that duplicate messages aren’t sent. All new messages are then sent to the phone’s email address. th0mas has provided enough information so that this script could be easily expanded. It looks like a decent introduction to PERL as well, so even if you aren’t looking to send stuff to your cellphone it might still be worth a look.
DIY Surround Headphones
I was stumbling through HeadWize‘s project archive the other day when I came across Steve Connor’s Poor Man’s Surround Headphones. He used a pair of Sony MDR-CD60 for the base and added three pairs of ear buds. One pair is used for the front channel and two for the rears. The rears have their own amp with the bass turned up to increase the separation. He used a Sound Blaster Live! card for the source. If you are interested in amplifiers and other sound projects, you should definitely have a look at HeadWize.
Flat Response Microphone And Amplifier
Pete (AC7ZL) wrote in to tell us about his latest project: building a flat response microphone and channel amplifier. You may remember his previous project: building a crystal radio from modern junk. Sounds are “colored” by their surroundings; things like furniture, wall coverings, drapes and building materials all affect the way something sounds. To measure the effect that a space has on sound you need a microphone with a flat frequency response. The core element of Pete’s mic is a modified Panasonic WM61A condenser capsule. He rewired it so that it had a broader dynamic range and could handle a higher SPL at the cost of reduced gain. To boost the signal to a usable level he built a preamp with three stages of amplification. He’s got schematics and a more detailed description on the site.
Shmoocon 2006: VoIP WiFi Phone Security Analysis
Shawn Merdinger gave a presentation on his personal research project covering the security of VoIP WiFi phones. For his initial investigation he is employing a “level one” methodology. These would be attacks from a low to medium skilled hacker, a hacker’s “first look” at the device: looking for open ports, finding developer left-overs, and misusing features. One thing that was common across all phones is how easily they succumb to DOS attacks. He talked about the issues with several specific phones. Many left open port 17185, which is the VxWorks database debug port. The favorite was the Clipcomm CPW-100E which provides unauthenticated access to debugging accounts letting you read call logs and even place calls, turning it into a remote listening device. You can hear Shawn talk about his project on Blue Box Podcast #13. Blue Box also has a copy of Shawn’s detailed slides. Here’s a list of the new phone security threats released a Shmoocon.
Continue reading “Shmoocon 2006: VoIP WiFi Phone Security Analysis”
Cellphone Controlled Door Opener
Looking for a way to demonstrate his AutoIt script that allows Windows control using a cellphone, zerocool60544 put together this automatic door opener/closer. It uses two water bottles as counterweights and two LEGO motors to drive the door. The motor control is a parallel port connected relay board. It’s a pretty simple demo, but I’ll definitely be looking into AutoIt in the future.
[thanks emdy]
