Hackaday Podcast Episode 252: X1Plus Hacks Bambu, Scotto Builds A Katana Keyboard, And Bass Puts Out Fire

January 12, 2024 by 4 Comments

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos met up to discuss the best hacks of the previous week. It’s CES time once again in Las Vegas, and you know what that means — some wacky technologies like this AI pet door that rejects dead mice.

Then it’s on to What’s That Sound, which Kristina managed to nail for once. Can you get it? Can you figure it out? Can you guess what’s making that sound this week? If you can, and your number comes up, you get a special Hackaday Podcast t-shirt.

But then it’s on to the hacks, beginning with a new keyboard from [Joe Scotto] and an exploration of all you can do with an LED strip, like 1D fireworks and roller coasters without any moving parts. From there, we marvel at the ability of sound waves to extinguish flames, and the tech behind life as a quadriplegic. Finally, we examine not one, but two of Jenny List’s finely-crafted rants, one about web browsers, and the other about the responsible use of new technology.

Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Download and savor at your leisure.

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Make Your Own Play Station (The Space Is Important)

January 8, 2024 by 20 Comments

The early history of the Sony Playstation lies in a stillborn collaboration between Nintendo and Sony to produce an SNES with a CD-ROM drive. So the story goes, Nintendo’s Philips deal angered Sony, who decided to make their own console line, and the rest is history. A very small number of prototypes were made, badged as “Play Station,” and should you find one that escaped today, you’re sitting on a fortune. [James] doesn’t have one, but he did have half a Playstation and an SNES shell, so he could make an ungodly child of the two consoles that you can see in the video below the break.

Those Playstation CD-ROM drives were notorious for melting back in the day, so it’s no surprise they’re still for sale today. Thus, he was able to bring the Sony back to life. What follows is an episode of console cutting worthy of a slasher horror movie, as instead of a bit of fine Dremmeling, he brings out an angle grinder and slices away with abandon. We don’t like the Nintendo switch carrying mains voltage, but we’re fine with the PlayStation expansion connector going away. The Nintendo eject button needs a hack to operate the Playstation door open button when pressed. It’s cool to see the board has a mod chip. We used to fit those as a sideline in a previous life. Continue reading “Make Your Own Play Station (The Space Is Important)” →

Two pictures of the mobo side by side, both with kapton tape covering everything other than the flash chip. On the left, the flash chip is populated, whereas on the right it's not

Enabling Intel AMT For BIOS-over-WiFi

January 5, 2024 by 28 Comments

Intel ME, AMT, SMT, V-Pro… All of these acronyms are kind of intimidating, all we know about them is that they are tied to remote control technologies rooted deep in Intel CPUs, way deeper than even operating systems go. Sometimes though, you want remote control for your own purposes, and that’s what [ABy] achieved. He’s got a HP ProDesk 600 G3 Mini, decided to put it into a hard to reach spot in his flat, somewhere you couldn’t easily fetch a monitor and a keyboard for any debugging needs. So, he started looking into some sort of remote access option in case he’d need to access the BIOS remotely, and went as far as it took to make it work. (Google Translate)

The features he needed are covered by Intel AMT — specifically, BIOS access over a WiFi connection. However, his mini PC only had SMT enabled from the factory, the cut-down version of AMT without features like wireless support. He figured out that BIOS dumping was the way, promptly did just that, found a suitable set of tools for his ME region version, and enabled AMT using Intel’s FIT (Flash Image Tool) software.

Now, dumping the image could be done from a running system fully through software, but apparently, flashing back requires an external programmer. He went with the classic CH341, did the 3.3 V voltmod that’s required to make it safe for flash chip use, and proceeded to spend a good amount of time making it work. Something about the process was screwy, likely the proprietary CH341 software. Comments under the article highlight that you should use flashrom for these tasks, and indeed, you should.

This article goes into a ton of detail when it comes to working with Intel BIOS images — whichever kind of setting you want to change, be it AMT support or some entirely different but just as tasty setting, you will be well served by this write-up. Comments do point out that you might want to upgrade the Intel ME version while at it, and for what it’s worth, you can look into disabling it too; we’ve shown you a multitude of reasons why you should, and a good few ways you could.

This Week In Security: Triangulation, ProxyCommand, And Barracuda

December 29, 2023 by 6 Comments

It’s not every day we get to take a good look inside a high-level exploit chain developed by an unnamed APT from the western world. But thanks to some particularly dedicated researchers at Kaspersky, which just happens to be headquartered in Moscow, that’s exactly what we have today. The name Operation Triangulation was picked, based off part of the device fingerprinting code that rendered a yellow triangle on an HTML canvas.

The entire talk is available, given this week at the 37th Chaos Communication Congress, 37c3. The exploit starts with an iMessage attachment, delivered silently, that exploits an undocumented TrueType font instruction. Looking at the source code implies that it was a copy-paste error where a programmer didn’t quite get the logic right for a pointer calculation. That vulnerability gives a memory write primitive that pivots into code execution. What’s particularly interesting is that Apple silently fixed this bug January 2023, and didn’t make any public statements. Presumably there were an uptick of crash logs that pointed to this problem, but didn’t conclusively show attempted exploitation.

The exploits then moves to using NSExpression as a next stage. NSExpression is an ugly way to write code, but it does allow the exploit chain to get to the next stage, running JavaScript as an application, without Just In Time compilation. The JS payload is quite a beast, weighing in at 11,000 lines of obfuscated code. It manages to call native APIs directly from JS, which then sets up a kernel exploit. This is multiple integer overflow flaws that result in essentially arbitrary system memory reads and writes. Continue reading “This Week In Security: Triangulation, ProxyCommand, And Barracuda” →

An RC Tank Chassis That’s Not Messing About

December 26, 2023 by 3 Comments

It’s not uncommon to see a tracked robot build on these pages, but it’s fair to say that many of them are somewhat on the small side. That was where [iforce2d] started, but the idea of making a more capable version just wouldn’t go away. Thus, he’s come back and made what looks to be a very promising, fully capable outdoor RC tank chassis, one that, within reason, we think should eventually be able to go anywhere.

For plenty of power, he’s using a pair of hoverboard motors with a chain reduction drive and in turn, a couple of shafts to the tracks. The chassis is a TIG-welded aluminium affair, while the tracks are an early incarnation with machined MDF drive wheels and a homemade tread. The suspension is a work of machined-aluminium art, though, and while there are teething troubles as he takes it for a spin, we can see plenty of potential as its deficiencies are ironed out.  Take a look at it in the video below the break.

If large-size R/C tanks are your thing, we have another for you to look at.

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Absorbing Traffic Noise With Bricks Using Helmholtz Resonators

December 24, 2023 by 25 Comments

One inevitable aspect of cities and urban life in general is that it is noisy, with traffic being one of the main sources of noise pollution. Finding a way to attenuate especially the low-frequency noise of road traffic was the subject of [Joe Krcma]’s Masters Thesis, the results of which he gave a talk on at the Portland Maker Meetup Club after graduating from University College London. The chosen solution in his thesis are Helmholtz resonators, which are a kind of acoustic spring. Using a carefully selected opening into the cavity, frequencies can be filtered out, and extinguished inside the cavity.

Basic functionality and formula used to determine the dimensions of a Helmholtz Resonator.
Basic functionality and formula used to determine the dimensions of a Helmholtz Resonator.

As examples of existing uses of Helmholtz resonators in London, he points at the Queen Elizabeth Hall music venue, as well as the newly opened Queen Elizabeth Line and Paddington Station. For indoor applications there are a number of commercial offerings, but could this be applied to outdoor ceramics as well, to render urban environments into something approaching an oasis of peace and quiet?

For the research, [Joe]’s group developed a number of Helmholtz resonator designs and manufacturing methods, with [Joe] focusing on clay fired versions. For manufacturing, 3D printing of the clay was attempted, which didn’t work out too well. This was followed by slip casting, which allowed for the casting of regular rectangular bricks.

But after issues with making casting hollow bricks work, as well as the cracking of the bricks during firing in the kiln, the work of another student in the group inspired [Joe] to try a different approach. The result was a very uniquely shaped ‘brick’ that, when assembled into a wall, forms three Helmholtz resonators: inside it, as well as two within the space with other bricks. During trials, the bricks showed similar sound-deadening performance as  foam and wood. He also made the shape available on Thingiverse, if you want to try printing or casting it yourself.

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A Transistor, But For Heat Instead Of Electrons

December 20, 2023 by 31 Comments

Researchers at UCLA recently developed what they are calling a thermal transistor: a solid-state device able to control the flow of heat with an electric field. This opens the door to controlling the transfer of heat in some of the same ways we are used to controlling electronics.

Heat management can be a crucial task, especially where electronics are involved. The usual way to manage heat is to draw it out with things like heat sinks. If heat isn’t radiating away fast enough, a fan can be turned on (or sped up) to meet targets. Compared to the precision and control with which modern semiconductors shuttle electrons about, the ability to actively manage heat seems lacking.

This new device can rapidly adjust thermal conductivity of a channel based on an electrical field input, which is very similar to what a transistor does for electrical conductivity. Applying an electrical field modifies the strength of molecular bonds in a cage-like array of molecules, which in turn adjusts their thermal conductivity.

It’s still early, but this research may open the door to better control of heat within semiconductor systems. This is especially interesting considering that 3D chips have been picking up speed for years (stacking components is already a thing, it’s called Package-on-Package assembly) and the denser and deeper semiconductors get, the harder it is to passively pull heat out.

Thanks to [Jacob] for the tip!