Sniping 2.4GHz

April 21, 2014 by 42 Comments

A long time ago when WiFi and Bluetooth were new and ‘wardriving’ was still a word, a few guys put a big antenna on a rifle and brought it to DefCon. Times have changed, technology has improved, and now [Hunter] has built his own improved version.

The original sniper Yagi was a simple device with a 2.4 GHz directional antenna taped onto the barrel, but without any real computational power. Now that displays, ARM boards, and the software to put this project all together are cheap and readily available, [Hunter] looked towards ubiquitous computing platforms to make his Sniper Yagi a little more useful.

This version uses a high gain (25dBi) antenna, a slick fold-out screen, and a Raspberry Pi loaded up with Raspberry Pwn, the pentesting Raspi distro, to run the gun. There’s a button connected to the trigger that will automatically search the WiFi spectrum for the best candidate for cracking and… get cracking.

[Hunter] says he hasn’t taken this highly modified airsoft rifle outside, nor has he pointed out a window. This leaves us with the question of how he’s actually testing it, but at least it looks really, really cool.

Developed On Hackaday: Vote For Your Favorite Card Art

April 21, 2014 by 33 Comments

A few weeks ago we asked our dear readers if they were interested in coming up with some card art for the Mooltipass project. We received more than a dozen of them and a few days ago the HaD project Mooltipass followers/Mooltipas Google group recipients voted for their favorite ones.

Today we’ll present you the three popular ones and ask you to pick your favorite, so please follow us after the break…

Continue reading “Developed On Hackaday: Vote For Your Favorite Card Art” →

Using Public Data To Make Laser Cut Maps

April 21, 2014 by 12 Comments

laser cut maps

If you have access to a laser cutter you’re going to want to take a look at this brilliant tutorial. [Steven Smethurst] has figured out how to extract public map data and turn it into a file ready to be laser cut onto your choice of material.

In his example he’s using Vancouver’s Open Data Catalog to build his map using the coastal and public street data. To do this he’s using a program called TileMill which you can get for free from MapBox — it’s a great piece of software for designing your own interactive maps — and the best part is, you can import data from a wide variety of sources, such as Vancouver’s Open Data!

You can import the shape (.SHP) files from the Open Data Catalog and add them as layers into TileMill. From there you can manipulate your map, adjust the detail, and then import as a .SVG or .DXF file ready for laser cutting.

In addition to the Instructable on how to do this, he’s also recorded an in-depth video tutorial which you can check out after the break.

Continue reading “Using Public Data To Make Laser Cut Maps” →

What’s Inside A USB Isolator?

April 21, 2014 by 14 Comments

Coil Die

 

In this acid powered teardown, [Lindsay] decapped a USB isolator to take a look at how the isolation worked. The decapped part is an Analog Devices ADUM4160. Analog Devices explains that the device uses their iCoupler technology, which consists of on chip transformers.

[Lindsay] followed [Ben Krasnow]’s video tutorial on how to decap chips, but replaced the nitric acid with concentrated sulphuric acid, which is a bit easier to obtain. The process involves heating the chip while applying an acid. Over time, the packaging material is dissolved leaving just the silicon. Sure enough, one of the three dies consisted of five coils that make up the isolation transformers. Each transformer has 15 windings, and the traces are only 4μm thick.

After the break, you can watch a time lapse video of the chip being eaten by hot acid. For further reading, Analog Devices has a paper on how iCoupler works [PDF warning].

[Thanks to Chris for the tip!]

Continue reading “What’s Inside A USB Isolator?” →

VoLumen — The Most Advanced Persistence Of Vision Display Yet

April 21, 2014 by 47 Comments

Whoa. We’re just blown away by this new project by [Maximilian Mali] and [Sebastian Haushofer]. It’s a stacked Persistance of Vision display, with 9 layers — effectively creating a Volumetric 3D POV Display.

We recently shared one of [Maximilian’s] other projects, The Ripper CNC Machine. As it turns out, the reason he built The Ripper was to aid in the manufacture of his VoLumen project. He’s been designing these Volumetric 3D displays for about 3 years now, with the first iteration called the viSio, capable of 40 fps 3D video without the need for any 3D glasses.

The new and improved VoLumen features 34 micro-controllers, each with 512MB flash memory for storing animation data. In total there are 1024 high power RGB LEDs, which draw a whopping 200W at full load, making it bright, crisp and visible even in direct sunlight. It’s an incredible project that [Maximilian] started when he was only 16 years old.

You have to see the video of this thing in action.

Continue reading “VoLumen — The Most Advanced Persistence Of Vision Display Yet” →

Sublime Text As An Arduino IDE

April 20, 2014 by 40 Comments

If you’ve played with an Arduino, you’ve probably been frustrated by the IDE. It works, but it’s not the best editor. It’s especially painful for bigger files and larger projects. The Stino plugin for Sublime Text aims to solve this issue by bringing the full functionality of the Arduino IDE to the Sublime Text editor.

Sublime Text is a powerful text editor with support for most programming languages. What it’s missing is support for compiling and uploading code to an Arduino. Stino bridges that gap. Sublime is a commercial product, and retails for $70 USD. However Sublime does have an indefinite trial period, so Stino can be evaluated for free. Stino itself is an open source plugin written in Python, and you can contribute to the project on Github.

After installing Sublime and Stino, you point the plugin at an Arduino install folder. It then allows you to build and flash directly from the editor. For anyone who’s been frustrated with the Arduino IDE, this looks like a slick solution.

[Thanks to Matt for the tip!]

The Raspberry Eye Sees All

April 20, 2014 by 28 Comments

[Roman Rolinsky] wanted to try to do something interesting with his Raspberry Pi and a 2.4″ LCD he had laying about… So he made a rather bulky version of Google Glass.

We’ve seen a few examples of home brew Google Glass before, or even real-life subtitle glasses used for translation on the fly, but what we really like about [Roman’s] project (besides the fact he hosted it on our very own awesome project hosting site) is that he’s put together the projection system himself out of basic components.

To create the HUD, he’s using a semi-transparent mirror which he took out of a game of Khet 2.0 called the Eye of Horus Beamsplitter — which is a really cool real-life puzzle board game like those games where you have to reflect the laser to solve a puzzle. He’s then using a 3x Fresnel magnification lens which is placed over top of his 2.4″ LCD in a 3D printed enclosure. This magnifies and reflects the image onto the mirror which is placed directly over his eye, allowing for a see through display.

Stick around after the break to see a video of the Raspberry Eye in action!

Continue reading “The Raspberry Eye Sees All” →