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A WiFi Controlled RC Car With An IP Camera

January 8, 2013 by 11 Comments

Controlling your car over WiFi is good, but mounting a webcam on it so you can actually see where you’re going is even better. [Michael] goes over how he made his wifi car with some great videos in the post about it.

The car used is a seemingly standard RC unit, which came with a speed controller that was recycled for network use. [Michael] removed the standard radio, but having this controller available kept him from having to engineer an H-bridge circuit. The radio was then replaced with a WiFi module from Sparkfun.

There were a few problems with the IP camera to begin with, as the lag was originally unbearable. After some tricks that would qualify as a good hack in itself, the camera was eventually able to perform on an acceptable level and output data to the FLTK app he used to control everything.  Check out one of his videos below of this car in action. Continue reading “A WiFi Controlled RC Car With An IP Camera” →

Turning A Tiny Router Into A Webradio

January 8, 2013 by 17 Comments

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While the hacking zeitgeist is focused nearly entirely on all those new ARM dev boards that include the Raspberry Pi, some people out there are still doing it old school by modifying existing electronics to suit their needs. [Peter] picked up one of those very inexpensive TP-Link 703n wireless routers we’ve seen before and modified it into a standalone web radio, complete with volume and tuner knobs.

The TP-Link 703n is a wireless router smaller than a credit card available from the usual Chinese resellers for about $20. Able to run OpenWRT, this very inexpensive piece of hardware can be transformed into a device comparable to the Raspberry Pi; a complete Linux system with a few GPIO pins.

[Peter] took his 703n router and added an ATtiny85 connected to two pots and the internal UART. This, along with a script to read the values from the pots, tells the router what station to tune into and what volume to play it. The audio is handled by a USB soundcard with an internal speaker, making [Peter]’s build one of the smallest purpose-built Internet radios we’ve seen.

You can see [Peter]’s radio in action after the break.

Continue reading “Turning A Tiny Router Into A Webradio” →

Giving The Hexbug Spider A Set Of Eyes

January 8, 2013 by 9 Comments

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The Hexbug Spider is a neat little robot toy available at just about any Target or Walmart for about $20. With a few extra parts, though, it can become a vastly more powerful robotics platform, as [eric] shows us with his experiments with a Hexbug and OpenCV.

Previously, we’ve seen [eric] turn a Hexbug spider into a line following robot with a pair of IR LEDs and a drop-in replacement motor driver. This time, instead of a few LEDs, [eric] turned to an Android smartphone running an OpenCV-based app.

The smartphone app detects a user-selectable hue – in this case a little Android toy robot – and sends commands to the MSP430-powered motor control board over the headphone jack to move the legs. It’s a neat build, and surprisingly nimble for a $20 plastic hexapod robot.

You can see the OpenCV-controlled Hexbug in action after the break, along with a video build log with [eric] showing everyone how to tear apart one of these robot toys.

Continue reading “Giving The Hexbug Spider A Set Of Eyes” →

Adding An LCD Screen Terminal For TP-Link Routers

January 7, 2013 by 20 Comments

Routers running embedded Linux offer quite a bit of power depending on what you need to do. To extend the usefulness of his TP-Link router [Roman] built a rig that adds an LCD screen to display the terminal. But it ended up being quite a bit more powerful than that.

The first portion of the project was to build a USB video card for the display. [Roman] went with an STM32 development board which resolves the USB device end with the QVGA screen driver (translated). This seems like it would be the lion’s share of the project, but he still needed a driver on the router to interface with the device. This thrust him into the world of USB-class drivers (translated). It even included building graphics support into the kernel of OpenWRT. The final piece of the puzzle was to write a frame buffer (translated) that would help regulate the output to the screen. The result works so well he is even able to play games using ScummVM. See for yourself in the clip after the break.

Continue reading “Adding An LCD Screen Terminal For TP-Link Routers” →

Home Built Stun Baton Turns You Into A Cop From Demolition Man

January 7, 2013 by 50 Comments

It seems much like a cattle prod, but [Pode Coet] definitely had people in mind when he built this stun baton. It’s not for the faint of heart — especially since a wrong move could stop your ticker cold. But the design and fabrication are top-notch, and he didn’t hold back when it comes to build images and details.

The enclosure is a hunk of PCV pipe with a cap on each end. The business end includes two electrodes separated by a 10mm air gap. The spark has no trouble jumping across that gap, and if you get it close enough to the victim it’ll use their body as a path of least resistance. The butt end of the baton features the charging port which takes 5VDC power and a pair of LEDs for feedback. This power port feeds a charger stored within to top off the Lithium cell which itself only puts out about 3.8V. This potential is fed into a boost circuit to ramp up to 16V before feeding a Royer circuit which jumps it up to 900V. That is connected to the final stage which gets it to the target of 10kV!

You can see and hear a demonstration of the baton in the clip after the break. To bad [Caleb] wasn’t around to take the thing for a proper test drive.

Continue reading “Home Built Stun Baton Turns You Into A Cop From Demolition Man” →

Reverse Engineering ST-Link/V2 Firmware

January 7, 2013 by 39 Comments

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The chip seen just above the center of this image is an ARM Cortex-M3. It provides the ability to interface and program the main chip on the STM32F3 Discovery board. The protocol used is the ST-Link/V2 which has become the standard for ST Microelectronics development boards. The thing is, that big ARM chip near the bottom of the image has multiple UARTs and bridging a couple of solder points will connect it to the ST-Link hardware. [Taylor Killian] wanted to figure out if there is built-in firmware support to make this a USB-to-serial converter and his path to the solution involved reverse engineering the ST-Link/V2 firmware.

The first part of the challenge was to get his hands on a firmware image. When you download the firmware update package the image is not included as a discrete file. Instead he had to sniff the USB traffic during a firmware update. He managed to isolate the file and chase down the encryption technique which is being used. It’s a fun read to see how he did this, and we’re looking forward to learning what he can accomplish now that’s got the goods he was after.

Google Talk Used For Home Automation Communications Via Android

January 7, 2013 by 24 Comments

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To call [Carnivore’s] home automation project impressive would be an understatement. He’s pulled together a system that is fast, well presented, and easy to use. To interface with items in his home he’s using X10 modules, and this example simply switches some table lamps. But the underlying setup seems incredibly polished and should be a snap to extend for just about any purpose.

The guide linked above has all the gritty details, but the best overview is provided in the video after the break. [Carnivore] shows off the Windows 8 machine that acts as the server. It has am X10 transceiver connected to communicate with the appliances. He can control the system from the screen seen above, but everything can also be accessed from his Android phone. Communication between the two is handled by Google Talk, an instant messaging application — but the commands are home screen shortcuts and don’t need to be typed into the Google Talk app. He modified the source code of a program called TweetMyPC to use the Google Talk API which looks for keywords in received messages. The lag on an instant message is far lower compared to SMS or Email so commands are received very close to real-time. Feedback is sent from the server to the phone using a text message.

Continue reading “Google Talk Used For Home Automation Communications Via Android” →