Hackerspacing In Europe: Open Garage In Antwerp

Welcome to Europe’s smallest(?) hackerspace, whose owner, [Anthony Liekens] might just have the biggest heart! This is the Open Garage!

You might remember the recent post about the 3Doodler in the wild. That was done by [Anthony] and his close friend [Deepak]. After we shared his project he contacted us by email, opening an invitation to visit the Open Garage — as it turned out, we were going to be in close proximity to it in Antwerp, Belgium! After visiting Void Warranties, [Anthony] invited us over for a beer and tour of his unique hackerspace…

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HeartBeat Boombox Creates Bio Beats

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If you happened to be wandering the hall of science during MakerFaire NY, you may have noticed a woman walking around with a rather odd boombox strapped around her neck. That was [Sophi Kravitz] with her HeartBeat Boombox. Thankfully [Sophi] lives within driving distance of Makerfaire, and didn’t attempt to get through airport security with her hardware. She started with three medical grade pulse oximeters. These oximeters output a “beep” for every beat of your heart. [Sophi] rolled her own AVR board running Arduino firmware to capture pulses on their way to the oximeter audio transducer. The AVR uses a sound board to convert the pulses into various percussion sounds. The pulse indicators also activate one of three LED strips.

[Sophi’s] biggest frustrations with the hack were the JST connectors on the LIPO batteries powering the entire system. She found that they fell apart rather easily. We’ve used JST connectors in the past with no problem, so we’re guessing she ended up with one of the many knock off connectors out there. [Sophi] tied the entire system together with a custom milled acrylic plate mounted to the front of the boombox.

The final result was very slick. With three people connected to the finger inputs of the pulse oximeters, some complex beats could be formed. We thought we were listening to dubstep when she first walked by. One feature we would like to see implemented would be the ability to record and play back some of the beats created by the boombox.

CAN Hacking: The In-vehicle Network

Last time, we discussed how in-vehicle networks work over CAN. Now we’ll look into the protocol and how it’s used in the automotive industry.

The Bus

On the hardware side, there’s two types of CAN: differential (or high-speed) and single wire. Differential uses two wires and can operate up to 1 Mbps. Single wire runs on a single wire, and at lower speeds, but is cheaper to implement. Differential is used in more critical applications, such as engine control, and single wire is used for less important things, such as HVAC and window control.

Many controllers can connect to the same bus in a multi-master configuration. All messages are broadcast to every controller on the bus.

An oversimplified in-vehicle network
An oversimplified in-vehicle network

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Retrotechtacular: Steam Locomotive Construction In The 1930’s

Here’s a fascinating look at high-tech manufacturing in the 1930’s. This week’s Retrotechtacular features the building of a steam-powered locomotive. The quality of the black and white footage, and the audio accompanying it are almost as impressive as the subject material — which is nothing short of a machinist’s wet-dream but also includes much forging and smithing. Digging through the video for a suitable still image was a tough task, as every step in the process was interesting to us. But this image showing some of the 2700 feet of tubing used in the locomotive seems most appropriate.

The build covers all aspects of the build. Huge sheets of steel make up two side plates between which the cast engine block is mounted. The mold for casting was huge, required twelve hours dry time before the pour, and took a day or two to cool before breaking the mold. That yielded a rough block which then headed off for machining.

We were delighted by the crane used to transport steel sheets from the oven to a stamping machine. The counterweight is workers (and lots of them) on the other side of the fulcrum. After a glimpse of the ancillary part fabrication you begin to get a look at the complexity of the machine as it is assembled.

Does anyone feel a deep appreciation for the pedagogy that went into making something like this? What we mean is that the teams building No. 6207 don’t seem to be using skills learned in a book or from a class, but rather those passed down from the masters that have been on the job most of their lives. Watching them all work is nothing short of astounding!

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Easy-phi: An Open Source Platform For Experimenters

As a few of Hackaday readers may already know, my day job involves working with high speed electronics. For the last few months, my team at [Université de Genève] in Switzerland has been working on an open source platform (mostly) targeted for experimenters: the easy-phi project. The main idea is to build a simple, cheap but intelligent open hardware/software platform consisting of a 19″ frame (or smaller), which can house a big variety of electronic modules. Hobbyist would therefore only make/buy the modules that would suit their needs and control them through a web page / standalone application / Labview module.

I detailed in more depth on my website the technical aspects of the project. To give you a quick and simple overview, the rack is essentially a USB hub that connects all the modules to a Cubieboard. It also integrates a few synchronization signals, a clock and a monitoring system for voltages, temperatures, power consumption. The modules are made of template + module specific electronics. The template electronics are part of the ‘easy-phi standard’, they consist of the Arduino compatible SAM3X8E microcontroller and of a few other power related components. This ensures electrical and firmware compatibility between the rack and modules that you guys may develop. It is important to note that the modules are enumerated on the USB bus as composite CDC (communication device) and MSC (mass storage). The CDC is used to configure the module while the MSC allows you to grab its documentation, resources, and standalone application in case you use the module without the rack.

The chosen schematics / layout software is Kicad, and all current files can be found on our github. Others will be uploaded once we have tested the other modules currently in the pipe. As the ones we’re developing are physics oriented, we hope that enthusiasts will bring easy-phi to other domains. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any question or if you’d like to contribute.

Pseudo-Random Flickering Jack-O-Lantern LED Using ATtiny13

Pseudo_Random_Flicker_ATtiny13

It’s time to get those jack-o-lanterns twinkling for Halloween. If you don’t want to use candles or buy a jack-o-lantern light this Halloween you can do like [Johannes Bauer] and code your own pseudo-random flickering super bright LED. His wife wanted their pumpkin to be illuminated this year and he knew it would be easy to do with an Arduino, but that would be overkill for such a simple project. Plus, he doesn’t have an arduino. [Johannes] used very few components; 4 slightly depleted AA batteries, a super bright LED, 680 ohm resistor and a little custom code on an 8 pin ATtiny13. The circuit does work great for a pumpkin lantern but his video is more of a tutorial on coding linear congruential generator (LCG) for the 8 bit pseudo-random LED flickering.

The code is short and can be gleaned from the YouTube video. [Johannes] used avr-gcc to compile and has packaged his code and build scripts for download. The hex file can be flashed over to the chip using avrdude or AVR Studio. If you have any ATtiny13s lying around you should cobble this hack together just in time to emulate that real look of a pumpkin candle without the hassles and hazards of real flames.

If you want something with a lot more light that still has that candle like flicker then checkout “Flickering Pumpkin Lanterns” that used the signal from LED tea lights to power some 12 V lamps.

Follow along after the break to watch [Johannes Bauer’s] video.

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Cracking GSM With RTL-SDR For Thirty Dollars

Theoretically, GSM has been broken since 2003, but the limitations of hardware at the time meant cell phone calls and texts were secure from the prying ears of digital eavesdroppers and all but the most secret government agencies. Since then, the costs of hardware have gone down, two terabytes of rainbow tables have been published, and all the techniques and knowledge required to listen in on cell phone calls have been available. The only thing missing was the hardware. Now, with a super low-cost USB TV tuner come software defined radio, [domi] has put together a tutorial for cracking GSM with thirty dollars in hardware.

Previous endeavours to listen in and decrypt GSM signals used fairly expensive software defined radios – USRP systems that cost a few thousand dollars a piece. Since the advent of RTL-SDR, the price of software defined radios has come down to about $30 on eBay, giving anyone with a Paypal account the ability to listen in on GSM calls and sniff text messages.

The process of cracking GSM first involves getting the TMSI – Temporary Mobile Subscriber Identifier – a unique ID for each phone in a certain cell. This is done by sending a silent SMS that will send back and acknowledgement an SMS has been received on the victim’s phone, but won’t give the victim any indication of   receiving a message.

From there, the attacker listens to the GSM signals in the cell, receiving bursts attached to a TMSI, and cracking the encrypted stream using 1.6 TB of rainbow tables.

[domi] put up a four-part tutorial series (part 1 above; part 2, part 3, and part 4) that goes over the theory and the actual procedure of cracking text messages and voice calls with a simple USB TV tuner. There are a few limitations; the attacker must be in the same cell as the victim, and it looks like real-time voice decoding isn’t yet possible. Cracking GSM for $30, though, that’s good enough for us.