Supercon 2024: Joshua Wise Hacks The Bambu X1 Carbon

January 29, 2025 by Elliot Williams 36 Comments

Bambu Labs have been in the news lately. Not because of the machines themselves, but because they are proposing a firmware change that many in our community find restricts their freedom to use their own devices.

What can be done? [Joshua Wise] gave a standout talk on the Design Lab stage at the 2024 Hackaday Superconference where he told the tale of his custom firmware for the Bambu X1 Carbon. He wasn’t alone here; the X1 Plus tale involves a community of hackers working on opening up the printer, but it’s also a tale that hasn’t ended yet. Bambu is striking back. Continue reading “Supercon 2024: Joshua Wise Hacks The Bambu X1 Carbon” →

Shellcode Over MIDI? Bad Apple On A PSR-E433, Kinda

January 23, 2025 by Elliot Williams 6 Comments

If hacking on consumer hardware is about figuring out what it can do, and pushing it in directions that the manufacturer never dared to dream, then this is a very fine hack indeed. [Portasynthica3] takes on the Yamaha PSR-E433, a cheap beginner keyboard, discovers a shell baked into it, and takes it from there.

[Portasynthinca3] reverse engineered the firmware, wrote shellcode for the device, embedded the escape in a MIDI note stream, and even ended up writing some simple LCD driver software totally decent refresh rate on the dot-matrix display, all to support the lofty goal of displaying arbitrary graphics on the keyboard’s dot-matrix character display.

Now, we want you to be prepared for a low-res video extravaganza here. You might have to squint a bit to make out what’s going on in the video, but keep in mind that it’s being sent over a music data protocol from the 1980s, running at 31.25 kbps, displayed in the custom character RAM of an LCD.

As always, the hack starts with research. Identifying the microcontroller CPU lead to JTAG and OpenOCD. (We love the technique of looking at the draw on a bench power meter to determine if the chip is responding to pause commands.) Dumping the code and tossing it into Ghidra lead to the unexpected discovery that Yamaha had put a live shell in the device that communicates over MIDI, presumably for testing and development purposes. This shell had PEEK and POKE, which meant that OpenOCD could go sit back on the shelf. Poking “Hello World” into some free RAM space over MIDI sysex was the first proof-of-concept.

The final hack to get video up and running was to dig deep into the custom character-generation RAM, write some code to disable the normal character display, and then fool the CPU into calling this code instead of the shell, in order to increase the update rate. All of this for a thin slice of Bad Apple over MIDI, but more importantly, for the glory. And this hack is glorious! Go check it out in full.

MIDI is entirely hacker friendly, and it’s likely you can hack together a musical controller that would wow your audience just with stuff in your junk box. If you’re at all into music, and you’ve never built your own MIDI devices, you have your weekend project.

Continue reading “Shellcode Over MIDI? Bad Apple On A PSR-E433, Kinda” →

Going Minimal: 64×4, The Fun In Functional Computing

January 22, 2025 by Heidi Ulrich 38 Comments

If you’ve ever wondered what makes a computer tick, the Minimal 64×4 by [Slu4] is bound to grab your attention. It’s not a modern powerhouse, but a thoughtfully crafted throwback to the essence of computing. With just 61 logic ICs, VGA output, PS/2 input, and SSD storage, this DIY wonder packs four times the processing power of a Commodore 64.

What sets [Slu4]’s efforts apart is his refusal to follow the beaten track of CPU development. He imposes strict complexity limits on his designs, sticking to an ultra-minimalist Von Neumann architecture. His journey began with the ‘Minimal Ur-CPU’, a logic-chip-based computer that could crunch numbers but little else. Next came the ‘Minimal 64’, featuring VGA graphics and Space Invaders-level performance. The latest ‘Minimal 64×4’ takes it further, adding incredible speed while keeping the design so simple it’s almost ridiculous. It’s computing stripped to its rawest form—no fancy sound, no dazzling graphics, just raw resourcefulness.

For enthusiasts of retro-tech and DIY builds, this project is a treasure trove. From text editors to starfield simulations to Sokoban, [Slu4] proves you don’t need complexity to make magic. Continue reading “Going Minimal: 64×4, The Fun In Functional Computing” →

Making Wire Explode With 4,000 Joules Of Energy

January 21, 2025 by Maya Posch 80 Comments

The piece of copper wire moments before getting vaporized by 4,000 joules. (Credit: Hyperspace Pirate, Youtube)

In lieu of high-explosives, an exploding wire circuit can make for an interesting substitute. As [Hyperspace Pirate] demonstrates in a recent video, the act of pumping a lot of current very fast through a thin piece of metal can make for a rather violent detonation. The basic idea is that by having the metal wire (or equivalent) being subjected to a sufficiently large amount of power, it will not just burn through, but effectively vaporize, creating a very localized stream of plasma for the current to keep travelling through and create a major shockwave in the process.

This makes the exploding wire method (EWM) an ideal circuit for any application where you need to have a very fast, very precise generating of plasma and an easy to synchronize detonation. EWM was first demonstrated in the 18th century in the Netherlands by [Martin van Marum]. These days it finds use for creating metal nanoparticles, brief momentary light sources and detonators in explosives, including for nuclear (implosion type) weapons.

While it sounds easy enough to just strap a honkin’ big battery of capacitors to a switch and a piece of wire, [Hyperspace Pirate]’s video demonstrates that it’s a bit more involved than that. Switching so much current at high voltages ended up destroying a solid-state (SCR) switch, and factors like resistance and capacitance can turn an exploding wire into merely a heated one that breaks before any plasma or arcing can take place, or waste a lot of potential energy.

As for whether it’s ‘try at home’ safe, note that he had to move to an abandoned industrial site due to the noise levels, and the resulting machine he cobbled together involves a lot of high-voltage wiring. Hearing protection and extreme caution are more than warranted.

Continue reading “Making Wire Explode With 4,000 Joules Of Energy” →

A Quarter And A Dime Will Get You A Commodore 64 Softmodem

January 20, 2025 by Lewin Day 43 Comments

Back in the 1980s, a viable modem cost hundreds of dollars. Even in the 1990s, you were looking at spending a a Benjamin or two to get computer squawking down the phone lines. According to [Cameron Kaiser], though, it’s possible to whip up a softmodem using a Commodore 64 for much cheaper than that. How much? Just 35 cents, we’re told!

The inspiration was simple—Rockwell apparently used to build modems using the 6502. The Commodore 64 has a 6502 inside, pretty much, so surely it could be a softmodem, right? Indeed, one [John Iannetta] had done this in a one-way form in the 1980s, using the Commodore 64’s SID audio chip to output data in sound form. In 1998, he espoused the 35-cent modem—basically, the price of buying an RCA jack to hook up a phone line to your Commodore 64.

As [Cameron] found out, the concept still works today, as does [John’s] code, but it’s more like 68 cents in 2025 dollars. With the right bits and pieces, and a little code, you can have your C64 modulating data into sound at rates of 300 baud.

It’s hacky, slow, and there’s no real way to receive—the C64 just doesn’t have the chops to demodulate these kinds of signals on its own. You also shouldn’t use it on a real phone line if you don’t want to damage your C64. Still, it’s a wonderful bit of hackery, and it’s fun to see how well it works. We’ve seen some other great Commodore 64 modem projects before, like the ever-useful RetroModem. Meanwhile, if you’ve got your own communication hacks for the computers of yesteryear, don’t hesitate to let us know!

I3C Bit-banging Fun For The RP2040

January 18, 2025 by Inderpreet Singh 3 Comments

The RP2040 has quickly become a hot favorite with tinkerers and makers since its release in early 2021. This is largely attributed to the low cost, fast GPIOs, and plethora of bus peripherals. [xyphro] has written the I3C Blaster firmware that helps turn the Raspberry Pi Pico into a USB to I3C converter.

The firmware is essentially a bit-bang wrapper and exposes an interactive shell with a generous command set. But it is a lot more than that. [xyphro] has taken the time to dive into the I3C implementation standard and the code is a fairly complex state-machine that is a story on its own.

[xyphro] provides a Python script in case you feel like automating things or drawing up your GUI. And finally, if you are feeling adventurous, the I3C implementation is available for your project tinkering needs.

We loved the fact there is a branch project that lets you extend a Saleae Logic Analyzer to decode I3C and associated protocols by adding a Pico on the cheap. The last update to the project log shows the addition of a MIPI I3C High Data Rate Mode which operates at 25 Mbps which is right up the RP2040s.

[xyphro] gave us the Home Brew Version Of Smart Tweezers a decade ago and we expect there is more to come. If you are interested in reading more about the I3C bus, have a look at I3C — No Typo — Wants To Be Your Serial Bus.

Hackaday Podcast Episode 304: Glitching The RP2350, Sim Sim Sim, And A Scrunchie Clock

January 17, 2025 by Dan Maloney 1 Comment

It’s podcast time again, and this week Dan sat down with Elliot for a look back at all the cool hacks we’ve written about. We started off talking about Hackaday Europe, which is coming up in March — seems unlikely that it’s just around the corner, but there it is. There’s also good news: the Hack Chat is back, and we started things off with a bang as Eben Upton stopped by to talk all things Pi. Separately, we talked about fault injection attacks, including how to find the hidden cup of 0xC0FFEE in an RP2350.

We saw a very cool piece of LED jewelry that does a fluid simulation, a direct conversion radio that’s all laid out in front of you, and the scrunchiest mechanical digital clock you’ll ever see. We saw blinkenlights for blinkenlights’ sake, all the ways to put threads in your prints, and how to ditch to coax and wire up your antennas with Cat 6 cable. Plus, it’s an Al Williams twofer in the Can’t-Miss Articles, with a look back at life before GPS and how you can tune into digital ham radio, no radio required.