Chromecast Bootloader Exploit

July 29, 2013 by 29 Comments

chromecast-hack

Well that didn’t take long. The team over at GTVHacker have worked their magic on Chromecast. The HDMI dongle announced by Google last week was so popular they had to cancel their 3-free-months of Netflix perk. We think the thing is worth $35 without it, especially if we end up seeing some awesome hacks from the community.

So far this is just getting your foot in the door by rooting the device. In addition to walking through the exploit the wiki instructions give us a lot more pictures of the internals than we saw from the teardown in yesterday’s links post. There’s an unpopulated pad with seventeen connections on the PCB. You can patch into the serial connections this way, running at a 115200 8n1. But you won’t have terminal access out of the box. The exploit uses a vulnerability in the bootloader to flash a hacked system folder which provides root. After wiping the cache it reboots like normal but now you can access a root shell on port 23.

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Update: Home Security Monitoring Prototype

July 29, 2013 by 8 Comments

home-security-monitoring-prototype-update-1

This project is about home security monitoring, but the update is crack for electronics designers. [Simon Ludborzs] continues to work on his prototype and he’s fantastic about sharing his success and failure in a conversational manner.

In April we saw his initial design which combined a SIM900 GSM modem with his own board to let him monitor his home security system without hiring a monthly service. Above you can see a snap of his latest prototype. It’s not fully populated as he’s testing the power supply… which in this state puts out 0V. Obviously that’s not up to his design specification so he started hunting around for the issue. He tells a tale of woe which is near to our hearts. He removed Q6, which is BC807 transistor, in order to test the FET used on the board. This brought it to life and had him looking into the datasheet of the part and its footprint in Altium. The footprint is right, the schematic symbol is wrong. There’s a lucky fix though. Above you can see the original design. The fix was just to rotate the part. This is illustrated as a change in the layout, but it worked with the original pad location. They’re not square to the transistor’s legs but they do still fit the outline.

He goes on to stress test the PSU output and then discuss whether it’s enough for the rest of the project. All in all a fascinating read!

PCBs With Powder Coat

July 29, 2013 by 48 Comments

pcb

The toner transfer method of PCB production should be a staple in every maker’s bag of tricks. That being said, it’s a far from ideal solution with a lot of things that can go wrong, ruining hours of work. [Ryan] thinks he has a better solution up his sleeve, still using heat activated toner, but replacing the laser printer with a powder coating gun and a laser engraver.

[Ryan] is using a powder coating gun he picked up from Amazon for about $100. The theory behind it is simple: particles of toner coming out of the gun are statically charged, and bonded to the grounded copper clad board. In real powder coat shops, this coating is baked, resulting in a perfectly hard, mirror-like finish. [Ryan] skipped the baking step and instead through the powder coated board into a laser engraver where the PCB design is melted onto the copper. After that, wash the board off, etch it, and Bob’s your uncle.

What’s really interesting about this method of PCB production is that it doesn’t require a very high power laser. [Ryan] was actually having a problem with the toner burning with his laser engraver, so it might be possible to fab PCBs with a high power handheld laser, or even a Blu Ray laser diode.

Finally, A Firewall For All The Porn On The Internet

July 29, 2013 by 34 Comments

porn

The current UK government is proposing an Internet porn firewall. Unlike other countries with Internet firewalls, such as North Korea, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, the citizens of the UK are so especially helpful some of them decided to help code the new porn filter. The idea behind the Great Firewall of Porn is simple: if a user wants to visit a NSFW website, let them. If, the user wants to visit the other 19% of the Internet, block it, and forward them to a page with hand drawn cockswains a baubles as the background.

The way the firewall works is actually pretty clever – it checks each request against the OpenDNS FamilyShield filter. If the request is denied, load the page, and if the OpenDNS request is allowed, block the page.

The genius behind this filter, [sicksad], provided all the tools required to get your own porn filter up and running over on his git. There’s also a great setup tutorial video available below, with a little social commentary thrown in for free.

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Hackaday Links: Sunday, July 28th, 2013

July 28, 2013 by 9 Comments

hackaday-links-chain

[Chris Gammell] tipped us off that he’s building an online training program for learning electronics. The ten session course will cost money to take but you can get the goods for free if you’re one of the beta testers. We love to listen to The Amp Hour podcast which is just one of [Chris’] many endeavors.

Did you buy a Chromecast this week? We did, but we don’t have it in hand yet (ordered through Amazon). You can still get a look inside from the iFixit teardown.

Practice your Processing skills by using it to code a game of Pong.

A bit of lighter fluid and a hacked insert will get you a flaming wallet. We guess this is a different type of an anti-pickpocket device. [Thanks Stephen]

[Brain] used a $1.50 magnifying lens to help his Raspberry Pi camera module read QR codes better.

We really like [Aaron Christophel’s] LED matrix clock (translated). He started from a marquee that must be at least a decade old. He stripped it down and figured out how to drive it using a Sanguino as a controller.

GRBL Compatible Arduino CNC Shield

July 28, 2013 by 33 Comments

By the time you get to the point in a home CNC build where you’re adding control electronics you may be ready for the simplest means to an end possible. In that case, grab your Arduino and heat up that etching solution to make your own GRBL compatible shield.

This familiar footprint manages to contain everything you need for a three-axis machine. The purple boards slotted into the pairs of SIL headers are Pololu Stepper motor drivers. Going this route makes replacing a burnt out chip as easy as plugging in a new module. The terminal block in the center feeds the higher voltage rail necessary for driving the motors. The DIL header on the right breaks out all of the connections to the limiting switches (two for each axis), spindle and coolant control, as well as three buttons for pause, resume, and abort. There’s even a header for SPI making it easier to add  custom hardware if necessary.

This is a dual-layer board which may not be ideal for your own fabrication process. [Bert Kruger] posted his Gerber files for download if you want to put in a small run with OSH Park or a similar service.