Android And Arduino RF Outlet Selector

December 6, 2013 by Marsh 14 Comments

ardAndRFoutlets

Cyber Monday may be behind us, but there are always some hackable, inexpensive electronics to be had. [Stephen’s] wireless Android/Arduino outlet hack may be the perfect holiday project on the cheap, especially considering you can once again snag the right remote controlled outlets from Home Depot. This project is similar to other remote control outlet builds we’ve seen here, but for around $6 per outlet: a tough price to beat.

[Stephen] Frankenstein’d an inexpensive RF device from Amazon into his build, hooking the Arduino up to the 4 pins on the transmitter. The first step was to reverse engineer the communication for the outlet, which was accomplished through some down and dirty Arduino logic analyzing. The final circuit included a standard Arduino Ethernet shield, which [Stephen] hooked up to his router and configured to run as a web server. Most of the code was borrowed from the RC-Switch outlet project, but the protocols from that build are based on US standards and did not quite fit [Stephen’s] needs, so he turned to a similar Instructables project to work out the finer details.

Stick around after the break for a quick video demonstration, then check out another wireless outlet hack for inspiration.

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Tiny 3x3x3 SMD LED Cube

December 4, 2013 by James Hobson 12 Comments

led cube

LED cubes are cool, but they’re usually pretty big and clunky. [One49th] set out to make one of the smallest LED cubes we’ve seen yet, and he’s shared how he did it in his Instructable!

His first LED cube was the traditional kind, and it turned out pretty nice. But he wanted to go smaller — what about using SMD’s? What he did next was no simple feat — in fact, we’d be willing to call him an artist with a soldering iron. The array is just over one centimeter across.

Using a combination of vices and pliers he soldering each SMD onto his structure one by one. Each LED anode is tied together on each horizontal layer. Each cathode is tied together on each vertical column. This allows the TinyDuino to control any one LED by knowing which of the 9 columns and 3 layers the LED is on. Send a high signal to chosen layer, and a low signal to the column to light the LED. Doing this quickly allows you to create the illusion of different LEDs being on at the same time. Take a look through his image gallery to see just how tight the soldering quarters were, it’s definitely not something we’re planning on doing anytime soon!

Looking for a bigger cube? Check out this gorgeous 7x7x7 one that is capable of 142 frames per second!

WiFi & Bluetooth Bot Control

November 29, 2013 by James Hobson 6 Comments

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Looking for an easy way to control that Arduino powered robot you built? We just caught wind of a pair of apps for Android that look pretty handy! WiFi Bot Control and Bluetooth Bot Control.

So, what are they? They’re configurable apps that are capable of taking in an IPCam video signal, and sending various commands via a URL string (or a bluetooth signal) for an Arduino to interpret. It comes standard with a joystick control protocol and 8 customizable command buttons. On the robot end of things you’re looking at a fairly basic setup consisting of an Arduino, a WiFi module, a motor shield and motors, and an IP Camera. The rest is up to you!

It looks pretty easy to set up, and the lite version is free! That’s good enough reason for us to try it out. The full version is $1.99 which isn’t a bad price to pay for a nice GUI for your project. See it in action after the break with a robot called Eddie.

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Running A Laundromat With An Arduino

November 25, 2013 by Marsh 16 Comments

Wasch_140

[Hubert] sent us a tip about a friend’s project to rescue a laundromat from its failing electronics. We’re not entirely sure what went wrong with the old control center, but considering a replacement would have cost nearly 25,000 EUR, we think [Stefan] found the perfect solution: he gave it an Arduino and Android overhaul (translated).

Although [Stefan] explains that the boards were defective, perhaps one of our German readers can help us out with a more specific translation. More clear, however, are the steps taken to upgrade the system. The situation at the laundromat was a bit of an emergency: there was no way for customers to pay for use of the machines. As a result, [Stefan] had free reign to overhaul things as he saw fit. He decided to remove the complex button setup in favor of a touchscreen Android tablet, which provided users with a simple interface to make selections. The tablet serves only as an input device. The heavy lifting is handled by an Arduino Mega 2560, which hooks up to what remains of the original system and controls the 27 machines in the laundromat.

[Stefan] admits that he isn’t a particular fan of the Arduino, but that for the price, it’s a tough solution to beat. He’s not the only one overhauling with Arduinos. Check out some other examples of upgraded machines, like the Arduino-enhanced PopCARD vending machine.

UPDATE: [Andreas] sent in a better translation of the project page which we’ve included below. He worries his written English isn’t the best, but we think it is a lot easier to understand than the machine translation. Thank you for you work [Andreas!]

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EmuDroid 4: An Android Gaming Controller

November 25, 2013 by James Hobson 10 Comments

snesdroid

[Carnivore] over at Droid Build is working on a very awesome Android Gaming Controller called the EmuDroid 4.

It’s a work in progress at the moment, but so far it looks utterly fantastic. He is combining an android tablet with a USB SNES controller, an OTG adapter, and an inductive charging unit. He’s cramming them all into a custom designed, 3D printed controller body, which is semi-reminiscent of an Xbox 360 controller — minus the joysticks.

The forum posts go over his current progress and outline the ups and downs of 3D printing a project as precise as this. There is everything from designing it in segments to suit the small build volume of his UP 3D printer, to dealing with issues like delamination from the print bed, and seamlessly bonding the parts together. It’s a great learning experience, and we love to see projects in progress like this. Best of all, he’s planning on giving it away for FREE when it’s complete!

We’ve seen lots of modified controllers used with Android before, but we think this integrated solution really takes the cake, at least for now anyway!

[Thanks Tony!]

How To Fix Low Speaker Volume On The Nexus 5

November 18, 2013 by James Hobson 13 Comments

The much-anticipated Nexus 5 starting shipping out a few weeks ago, and like many new products, some people have received phones with manufacturer defects. This is always unfortunate, but [Adam Outler] over at the XDA Developer forums thinks he’s found a solution to one of the ailments — a low speaker volume fix!

[Adam] noticed that his phone wasn’t quite as loud as he was used to, so he decided to take it apart and see if there was something causing the muffled sound quality. He assumes glue seeped into part of the speaker where it’s not suppose to during assembly, and what he discovered was, you can increase the audio output by opening up the speaker chamber. He found you can easily port the speaker chamber by popping a few holes in it using a hot needle, which helps increase the volume of the phone. It’s not exactly a confirmed hack, but he will be featuring it on XDA-TV in a few weeks, and hopefully a few more cases pop up in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the hack — it might even help users whose phone isn’t unusually quiet!

Now, most people will just return the phone under warranty, which makes sense. But this is Hackaday and XDA we’re talking about. It’s probably less effort to just suck it up, and fix it ourselves. Who cares about warranties?

[via XDA Developers]

Getting A Shell On Any Android Device

November 17, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 29 Comments

If you’re an Evil Customs Agent or other nefarious Three Letter Agency Person, you’re probably very interesting in getting data off people’s phones. Even if the screen is locked, there’s a way around this problem: just use the Android Debug Bridge (ADB), a handy way to get a shell on any Android device with just a USB cable. The ADB can be turned off, though, so what is the Stasi to do if they can’t access your phone over ADB? [Michael Ossmann] and [Kyle Osborn] have the answer that involves a little-known property of USB devices.

USB mini and micro plugs have five pins – power, ground, D+, D-, and an oft-overlooked ID pin. With a particular resistance between this ID pin and ground, the USB multiplexor inside your phone can allow anyone with the proper hardware to access the state of the charger, get an audio signal, mess around with the MP3s on your device, or even get a shell.

To test their theory, [Michael] and [Kyle] rigged up a simple USB plug to UART adapter (seen above) that included a specific value of resistor to enable a shell on their test phone. Amazingly, it worked and the thought of having a secure phone was never had again.

The guys went farther with some proprietary Samsung hardware that could, if they had the service manual, unlock any samsung phone made in the last 15 years. They’re working on building a device that will automagically get a shell on any phone and have built some rather interesting hardware. If you’re interested in helping them out with their project, they have a project site up with all the information to get up to speed on this very ingenious hack.

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