Adding WiFi To A Kid’s Tablet

June 17, 2013 by 6 Comments

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[Mick] has been playing around with the VTech Innotab – a $70 tablet computer aimed at kids – for a while now. He’s successfully turned this tablet soon to be found at yard sales the world over into a Linux tablet and can play everything from those magical LucasArts SCUMM adventure games to Angry Birds. What his tablet is missing, though, is any sort of Internet connection. He recently fixed this by soldering a USB WiFi adapter directly to the CPU of his InnoTab.

In all fairness, there’s not a terrible amount of software hackery going on here. VTech’s InnoTab 2s uses the same chipset as the cheaper InnoTab 2 but has an additional board soldered directly to the mainboard. This additional board provides a WiFi connection with an RT5370 chipset; soldering a WiFi dongle onto the InnoTab 2’s CPU D+ and D- USB lines effectively turns it into the WiFi enabled InnoTab 2s.

It’s an impressive piece of work for a low-power tablet that one can safely assume is both bullet and childproof. [Mick] was also able to mount a USB thumb drive on his upgraded kid’s tablet, so if you’re looking for a cheap tablet that doesn’t need much horsepower, you might want to check out your local Toys ‘R Us.

Robot Air Hockey Championship As A Final Project

May 18, 2013 by 17 Comments

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My final project is build a robot that plays air hockey? Where do I sign up? Apparently you get yourself a seat in ECE496 at Clemson University. They have been using the concept as a final project for at least a couple of years. [Abe Froman] was on the winning design team this year and he’s showing off his robot and some winning games it played.

His robot is in the foreground. It uses a right-angle PVC joint to hold the paddle. The fitting is attached to a rack and pinion that drives it forward and back. The entire assembly is mounted on a rotating rig. Take a look at some of its opponents that use more of a plotter-type arm. Those offerings have too much play in the joints which at times causes the thing to miss.

Chances are good that once you get a job you won’t be asked to do things for the company unless they are money makers. Sure, there are a few notable exceptions,  but since you’re playing to go to school we really appreciate the professors making the learning as enjoyable as possible before you have to get serious (and maybe even wear a tie!).

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A Tiny Custom Table Saw

March 25, 2013 by 33 Comments

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If you’re working with small parts, even the smallest table saw available at Home Depot or Lowes is generally overkill. For cutting up small pieces of wood, metal, and copper-clad board, a micro table saw is a great investment. They’re actually pretty inexpensive, but why just buy one when you can make one that is better than any model on the market?

The bed is constructed out of 1/4″ aluminum plate with a 1/15 horsepower motor bolted to the underside. The fence clamps on to the table with a pair of delrin brackets, while the angle guide is made of delrin and a brass bar that fits into a slot in the table.

The actual blades came from a Proxxon micro table saw (a very good brand from our experience), but comparing this homemade saw to the commercial one provides a few surprises: The Proxxon has a more powerful motor, but the homebrew version has four times the cutting capacity. You can check out this saw cutting a 1/4″ aluminum bar in the video after the break.

Thanks [Hubert] for sending this one in.

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Repairing Broken Injection Molded Parts With A 3D Printer

March 15, 2013 by 28 Comments

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The value of a 3D printer is obvious for people who hack hardware as a hobby. But this repair project should drive home their usefulness for the commoner. [James Bruton] used a 3D printer to recreate a hopelessly broken injection molded plastic part. This is a suction cup mounting bracket for a Tom Tom GPS module. The sphere which makes it adjustable had broken off of the column holding it. For 100% of non-hacking consumers that’s the end of this item. We can’t see a fix that would restore the strength of the original part.

The replacement starts by measuring the broken part with precision calipers. [James] then grabbed a copy of 123D, which is free software. He starts by modeling the sphere, then builds up the support column and the base with a cut-out. It’s obvious he’s already very familiar with the software, but even the uninitiated should be able to get this done pretty quickly. After slicing the design for the 3D printer he finds the part will be ready in about 11 minutes. The first prototype is a bit too small (the ball requires close tolerances to work well). He spins up a second version which is a bit large and uneven. A few minutes of filing leaves him with a smooth sphere which replaces the original part beautifully!

You can see the entire design, print, and assembly process in the clip after the break.

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PwnPad, The Pentesting Tablet

March 1, 2013 by 46 Comments

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Over the last few months, we’ve seen our fair share of pentesting appliances. Whether they’re in the form of a Raspberry Pi with a custom distro, or an innocuous looking Internet-connected wall wart, they’re all great tools for investigating potential security vulnerabilites at home, in the workplace, or in someone else’s workplace. Pwnie Express, manufacturers of pentesting equipment, are now releasing one of the best looking and potentially most useful piece of pentesting equipment we’ve ever seen. It’s called the PwnPad, and it allows you to get your pentesting on while still looking stylish.

Based on Google’s Nexus 7 tablet, the PwnPad combines all the goodies of a really great tablet – the ability to read NFC tags and multiband radios – with open source tools and a USB OTG cable with USB Ethernet, Bluetooth, and WiFi adapters. Everything in the PwnPad is designed for maximum utility for pentesting applications.

Of course, for those of us that already have a $200 Nexus 7, Pwnie Express says they’ll be giving away the source for their software, enabling anyone with knowledge of make to have the same functionality of the PwnPad. Of course you’ll need to get yourself a USB OTG cable and the WiFi, Bluetooth, and Ethernet adapters, but that should only add up to about $100; combined with a $200 Nexus 7, building your own is more than just a bit cheaper than Pwnie Express’ asking pre-order price of $795.

LEGO Stylus Solves Ruzzle Tablet Game

February 19, 2013 by 1 Comment

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This grid of letters is a puzzle game for tablet devices called Ruzzle. The contraption attached is an automated solver which uses LEGO Mindstorm parts to input the solutions on the screen. [Alberto Sarullo] is the mastermind behind the project. As you can seen in his demo video after the break he has a flair for the cinematic. But he makes you work a little bit to discover the details of his project.

His post gives a general overview of how this works. A Linux box takes a screenshot of the Ruzzle board. After processing the graphics with Imagemagick he uses Tesseract — an Optical Character Recognition program — to figure out which letter is on each square of the playing area. From there NodeJS is used to discover all possible words with the help of a dictionary file. The final solutions are pushed to the LEGO parts to be traced out on the touch screen with a stylus. The nice thing is that he published all of his code, so you can drill much deeper into the project by pawing through his repository.

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A Table Saw To Cut Solar Panels

February 13, 2013 by 18 Comments

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Steampunker extraordinaire [Jake von Slatt] loves the idea of solar-powered garden lights soaking up the sun’s rays during the day and powering a LED in the evening. Commercially available solar lanterns, as [Jake], you, me, and everyone else on the planet have discovered, are universally terrible and either don’t have solar panels large enough to charge a battery, or only last a year or so. [Jake]’s solution was to make his own solar lanterns and in the process he came up with a great way of cutting his own solar panels.

[Jake] turned to ebay to source 100 3″ x 6″ solar panels for about $30. These are broken panels, factory rejects, but still are able to produce the 0.5 Volts they should. Since these are rather large panels for a solar lantern, [Jake] needed a way to cut these panels into manageable sizes.

To cut the panels, [Jake] made a box to fit a Dremel with a right angle attachment and a port for a vacuum cleaner. There’s a sled for the panels with markings at 40, 80, 75, and 150 mm so the panels can be quickly cut to size with a diamond cutting wheel.

After the boards are cut, [Jake] checks them out with a multimeter to be sure they’re producing the half volt they should. After that, it’s a simple matter of soldering them together and adding them to his solar lanterns.