“Hacking The Xbox” Released For Free In Honor Of [Aaron Swartz]

March 12, 2013 by 23 Comments

Hacking the Xbox Cover

[Bunnie], the hardware hacker who first hacked into the original Xbox while at MIT, is releasing his book on the subject for free. The book was originally released in 2003, and delves into both the technical and legal aspects of hacking into the console.

The book is being released along with an open letter from [Bunnie]. He discusses the issues he faced with MIT legal and copyright law when working on the project, and explains that the book is being released to honor [Aaron Swartz]. [Swartz] committed suicide in January following aggressive prosecution by the US government.

The book is a great read on practical applications of hardware hacking. It starts off with simple hacks: installing a blue LED, building a USB adapter for the device’s controller ports, and replacing the power supply. The rest of the book goes over how the security on the device was compromised, and the legal implications of pulling off the hack.

[Bunnie]’s open letter is worth a read, it explains the legal bullying that hackers deal with from a first hand prospective. The book itself is a fantastic primer on hardware hacking, and with this release anyone who hasn’t read it should grab the free PDF.

Hackaday Links: March 12, 2013

March 12, 2013 by 28 Comments

Thankfully saved from steampunkers

meter

[Chris] found a really cool pocket watch-style multimeter in a box of junk that was passed down from father to son. There aren’t any markings on it, so he’s looking for any information he can get on it. It’s a cool piece of vintage tech in any occasion; check out the pics he sent in below:

Here’s a fix for your illegal stuff

pi

[Don] ‘acquired’ one of those China-only Raspberry Pis, but after plugging it in, only the power light would stay on. The fix, apparently, is putting these three files in the /boot folder of a Red Pi SD card.

Not a pocket watch

meter

[Tom] picked up an old DC volt meter in an antiques shop. He quickly gutted it to make an analog meter display for his Raspberry Pi. There’s  a few status lights to remind [Tom] of something he hasn’t figured out yet. Bonus points for a cheap buck boost converter, though.

Smashing monitors? Really?

NESIT Hackerspace

The Meriden, CT hackerspace, the New England Society of Information and Technology, was vandalized last week. They’re dealing with some real punks here; their computers weren’t stolen, they were just smashed. NESIT is looking for donations (both money and equipment), so if you have a few monitors or old boxxen and live around there, consider donating them.

Help a guy out here.

survey

[Jonathan] is a real cool dude that’s working on his master’s thesis on ways to build a sustainable company through the development of open source hardware. He wants you to take a survey. How do we know he’s cool? He had something posted on HaD back when we had the old black and white and scotch tape images.

Molding Rubber For A Pre-production Prototype Using A 3D Printed Model

March 12, 2013 by 16 Comments

molding-rubber-for-production-models

When you’re getting close to a production run the prototypes really need to hit the mark before pulling the trigger. [Bob’s] still hard at work getting his scoreboard off the ground and his most recent endeavor was to find a way to prototype the rubber gasket without blowing his shoestring budget. His solution was to harness the power of 3D printing to generate a model from which he could create the mold from which he cast the rubber part.

To make things a bit more difficult, the band isn’t just decorative, it doubles as the tactile part of the scoreboard buttons. You can see all six of them (before being painted to make them stand out) in the inset image above. Just above that image is a picture of the mold making process. The toothpicks are suspending the 3D printed model of the rubber band while the lower half of the silicone mold sets up. Once that had happened [Bob] sprayed release agent to ensure the top half of the mold wouldn’t stick while it cured.

The results turned out just great. Sure, this isn’t the way to go if you’re making a lot of these things. But we’re impressed at the quality he achieve for a one-off item.

If the finished product on the left looks familiar it’s because we looked in on the project last June. [Bob] continues with improvements and plans to launch a crowd funding campaign this week.

Camera Adapter For A Microscope

March 12, 2013 by 21 Comments

camera-adapter-for-stereo-microscope

[Steve] really has a nice microscope setup in his lab now that he built a video camera adapter for his stereo microscope. The image above shows the magnified view of the circuit board on the LCD screen behind it. This lets him work without needing to be in position to look through the eye pieces. The hack is a perfect complement to the custom stand he fabricated for the scope.

The camera attachment can be seen attached to the right lens of the scope. It’s an old security camera which he already had on hand. The stock lens wasn’t going to bring the picture into focus, but he had some different optics on hand and one of them fit the bill perfectly. The rest of the project involves fabricating the adapter ring on his lathe. It slips perfectly over the eyepiece and even allows him a bit of adjustment to get the focal length right. The best view of this is shown off in the video after the break.

Continue reading “Camera Adapter For A Microscope” →

Two-wire Serial Backpack For GLCD Screens

March 11, 2013 by 14 Comments

[Debraj] wrote in about his 2-wire serial backpack he developed for a Graphic LCD screen. It’s build on a hunk of protoboard and uses a pair of 595 shift registers to translate incoming serial data to the parallel interface which is used by the LCD screen. It takes more time to push commands this way, but the interface is still quite snappy as you can see in the clip after the jump.

The real trick here is how the hardware has been configured to get away without a third wire for latching the shift registers (if you need a primer on 595 chips check out this feature). The idea of using a latch is that all of the data can be shifted in over the serial pin before it appears on the output pins. Otherwise, the GLCD would see each bit as it shifts into the register, wreaking havoc on its communication protocol. [Debraj] gets around this by using a diode AND gate trick he learned from this other serial LCD project.

One good thing about this method is the 595 chips have a wide range of control voltage that will allow you to drive this with 3.3V or 5V microcontrollers. But you do need to implement the communication protocol and push those commands via serial. For nearly the same cost in chips something like an ATtiny2313 could be substituted to make an even simpler addressing scheme — or even switch to 1-wire protocol. But you’d then lose the wide input voltage tolerance.

Continue reading “Two-wire Serial Backpack For GLCD Screens” →

Non-resettable Thermal Fuse Teardown

March 11, 2013 by 32 Comments

non-resettable-thermal-fuse

This component is a one-shot thermal fuse. When the body rises above the specified temperature the two leads stop conducting. They’re useful in applications like motors, where you want to make sure power is cut to an overheating piece of hardware before permanent damage happens. They’re pretty simple, but we still enjoyed taking a look inside thanks to [Fatkuh’s] video.

The metal housing is lined with a ceramic insulator, which you can see sticking out one end in the shape of a cone. It surrounds a spring which connects to both leads and is under a bit of tension. The alloy making the connections has a low melting point — in this case it’s about 70 C — which will melt, allowing the spring to pull away and break the connection. In the clip after the break [Fatkuh] uses his soldering iron to heat the housing past the melting point, tripping the fuse. He then cracks the ceramic cone to show what’s inside.

The only problem with using a fuse like this one is you’ll need to solder in a new component if it’s ever tripped. For applications where you need a fuse that protects against over current (rather than heat) a resettable polyfuse is the way to go.

Continue reading “Non-resettable Thermal Fuse Teardown” →

PCB Stencils For $200

March 11, 2013 by 26 Comments

stencil

There’s some really cool stuff to find if you wander around a Michaels craft shop or Hobby Lobby long enough. Recently, [Ben] picked up a craft cutter – a small vinyl cutter-like device meant for scrapbooking and other crafty endevours. He’s using this machine to create solder paste stencils that are better than any laser cut stencil he’s used before.

Like a build we’ve seen before, [Ben] is using a desktop-sized vinyl cutter, the Sihouette Portrait,  with 4 mil Mylar. After converting the relevent layers of a Gerber file into .SVG files, [Ben] loaded up Robocut to cut very, very small holes in his solder stencil. The results are great; much better than a laser would cut Mylar, and good enough to apply paste to a few hundred boards at least.

While [Ben] is using his stencils to apply solder paste, we’re wondering if a similar process could be used to apply a UV-curing solder mask to home-fabbed boards. That would allow for some very professional-looking boards to be produced with a turnaround time of just a few hours.