Underwater CVS Camcorder

February 24, 2006 by 21 Comments

cvs underwater

[Everett] got such a great response to yesterday’s nightvision hack he decided to write up this underwater CVS mod. The outside is a Pelican #1010 case. The camera fits almost perfectly inside. A small foam shim is used to position the camera lens between the two thick plastic ridges. Everett relocated the power button to the front of the camera and placed a guard around the shutter button on the back. The shutter is now wired to a reed switch at the back of the case. To start the camera recording he’s attached a magnet to a spring on the outside of the case that you slide over the reed switch to trigger it. If you missed it yesterday, he added an example shot from the nightvision cam. It isn’t swimming season so the only underwater pics he has are from the bathtub, which he luckily hasn’t posted. If you want to start hacking on a CVS cam, [morcheeba] warns that they still haven’t completely broken firmware 3.62 and above. Here is the FAQ.

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CVS Nightvision Camcorder

February 23, 2006 by 32 Comments

cvs nightvision

Our loyal reader [Everett] has hacked up a CVS single-use camcorder to use as a nightvision scope. This is his second prototype. The first one only had 4 cruddy IR LEDs from Radiohut and a front mounted battery pack. For the second one, he separated the batteries from the camera. He removed the IR filter from the CCD and added 8 higher quality IR LEDs. On the backside of the camera is the eyepiece from a Handycam. It keeps the the LCD screen from leaking light and has a lense to help the eye to focus on the screen. The LCD is to bright to use without adding a dimmer pot. The camera is mounted to a headlamp rig with the batteries on the backside of the head. It may not have the best image quality, but at $35 you can’t go wrong when it comes to nightvision fun.

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DVD Thermometer

February 22, 2006 by 6 Comments

dvd thermometer

Reader [alberto ricci bitti]’s DVD thermometer is a temperature sensing infrared remote that controls a DVD showing the temperature. Since the box doesn’t get any feedback from the DVD player, it stops and starts the disc to make sure it is at a known state. The brain of the device is a Motorola MC68HC908QT4, an 8-pin microcontroller. Communication with the Maxim DS1621 temperature sensor I2C bus is done in software. Even if you don’t want to build a gaudy thermometer the article features a lot of interesting information. It covers reverse engineering the remote, emulating an I2C bus, and creating a programmable pulse generator instead of bitbanging.

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Hack Media: Security Podcasts

February 22, 2006 by 7 Comments

Do you want to listen to four and a half hours of security podcasts? Well, you don’t have to because I did. Here are the highlights from podcasts released this last week:

Security Now! #27 How Local Area Networks Work, Part 1 37:09 If you don’t know the difference between DHCP and static IP, then this is the podcast for you! Next week promises to be a little more interesting when they get into the problems with ARP.

CyberSpeak Feb 18 76:36 has some pretty good news coverage, but the real highlight is the interview with Bruce Potter from The Shmoo Group that starts after 20:00. If you don’t know about the group and the work they’ve done, this is a good intro.

LiveAmmo: Digital Forensics and Hacking Investigations, Part 2 46:54 Woof. If you are persuing digital forensics as a career then this would be a great start. Otherwise, avoid, unless you want to know what particular subsection of a law you are violating.

SploitCast #006 36:26 probably has the best atmosphere of these podcasts (and it’s the shortest). The team covers the recent news of a phishing site using a valid SSL cert. You could probably wait till next week when they talk to Lance James to get all of the details. I will say that the Web 2.0 discussion is about as inane as arguing which year the millennium starts. They do earn some extra points since my mom doesn’t read Schneier.

Blue Box #16 69:00 is all about VoIP and naturally the best produced. I don’t follow VoIP very closely, so the news roundup for the first 20 minutes was really interesting. If you aren’t doing enterprise VoIP then this podcast isn’t for you.

Each of these had some high points (even LiveAmmo). They could all do better if they were shorter. I would say that CyberSpeak was my favorite this week, but I don’t want to encourage another 76 minute podcast. What podcasts do you recommend?

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Low-cost Sensing And Communication With An LED

February 21, 2006 by 75 Comments

ledtouch_photo

LEDs are extremely common in electronic devices. They are used as light emitters, but can also be used as light detectors since they are photodiodes. By quickly switching between light emitting and detecting, you can use the LEDs to determine the ambient lighting and even do bidirectional communication. MERL has a good paper covering the basics of how this system works and how they used it as a “last-centimeter” communication device. The system can be implemented using one LED, a resistor, and two I/O pins. So, it could be used cheaply in almost any device. The microprocessor quickly switches the LED between emitting light, detecting light (LED acts as a charging capacitor), and measuring the discharge rate of the LED to determine light level. Jeff Han has a neat video demo of how this system can be used as a proximity sensor.

UPDATE: [hawkeyeaz1] pointed to a blog covering one person’s investigations into LED sensors.

[thanks branen]

Hacking The Commodore 64 DTV Version 2

February 20, 2006 by 15 Comments

c64

The original C64 DTV was a joystick containing 30 games sold in 2004. It attracted hackers because it could be modified into a fully functioning console. The latest version of the chip is being sold inside a Radio Shack Hummer game. This version fixes bugs in the original and adds several features to improve memory access and CPU speed. Before you get started there are several modifications that need to be done to improve the video and audio quality of the system. Once these mods are complete you can start playing with the machine just like an original C64. Oh, the Hummer game will look a lot better too.

[thanks av1d]

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