Inject Keystrokes Any Way You Like With This Bluetooth Keystroke Injector

December 3, 2019 by Gerrit Coetzee 10 Comments

[Amirreza Nasiri] sends in this cool USB keystroke injector.

The device consists of an Arduino, a Bluetooth module, and an SD card. When it’s plugged into the target computer the device loads the selected payload from the SD card, compromising the system. Then it does its unique trick which is to switch the injector over to Bluetooth mode. Now the attacker has much more control, albeit local, over the system.

While we would never even be tempted to plug this device into a real computer, we like some of the additional features, like how an added dip switch can be used to select from up to eight different payloads depending on the required attack. The addition of a photo diode is also interesting, and makes us dream of all sorts of impractical movie hacker scenarios. [Amirreza] says it’s to trigger when the person leaves the room and turns the lights off.

[Amirreza] has all the code and design files on the GitHub. There are also a few payload examples, which should be fun to hack on. After all, one of life’s pleasures is to find new ways to mess with your friends.

Winter Is Coming, This Clock Will Let You Know When

December 2, 2019 by Tom Nardi 1 Comment

For Game of Thrones fans, it’s an awkward time. The show has ended its run on HBO (not without a certain level of controversy), the planned prequel is still years away, and who knows when George R. R. Martin will actually get around to writing the final books in the series. Fans have no choice but to entertain themselves while waiting for further tales of adventure from Westeros, which is how we get things like this motorized clock from [Techarge].

Inspired by the now iconic opening sequence from the HBO series, elements of the 3D printed model spin around while the theme song is played courtesy of a DFPlayer Mini MP3 player module and small 2 watt speaker. The audio hardware, motor, and four digit LED display module in the front are all connected to an Arduino with a custom PCB shield, giving the inside of the clock a very clean and professional appearance.

Around the back side [Techarge] has two small push buttons to set the hour and minutes, and a large toggle to control the music and movement. As of right now it needs to be switched on and off manually, but a future enhancement could see it kick on hourly. We’d also like to see an RTC module added to the PCB, or better yet, switch over to the ESP8266 and just pull the time down from NTP.

Who knows? By the time you’ve built one of these clocks for yourself, and the hand-made Iron Throne phone charger stand to go with it, maybe ol’ George will have slipped out a new book. But don’t count on it.

A STM32F4 Based Arduino In The Feather Form Factor

December 1, 2019 by Gerrit Coetzee 18 Comments

[minh7a6] loves the Adafruit Feather, but sees some room for improvement.

First is the matter of 5V tolerance. While just about everything is available in a 3.3v range these days, sometimes it’s just nice not to have to care. The main controller on the Feather is plenty powerful, but its intolerant pins just wouldn’t do so it was swapped for a chip from the ever popular STM32F4 line.

Then he wanted better energy efficiency when running from battery. In order to achieve this he switched from a linear regulator to a buck-boost converter. He also felt that the need for a separate SWD adapter for debugging seemed unnecessary, so he built a Black Magic Probe right in.

He’s just now finishing up the Arduino IDE support for the board, which is pretty cool. There’s no intention to produce this souped up Feather, but all the files are available for anyone interested.

In Case You Cannot Make It To An Escape Room

November 27, 2019 by Brian McEvoy 17 Comments

Escape rooms are awesome for people who like to solve puzzles, see how things work, or enjoy a mystery. Everyone reading this falls into at least one of those categories. We enjoy puzzles and mysteries, but we have a fondness for seeing how things work. To this end, we direct your attention to [doktorinjh]’s “Bomb Disarming Puzzle in a Suitcase” Game, which is a mysterious puzzle box he built himself. I guess the mystery is mostly in the gameplay, which you can watch below because he shows us his build photos and describes the hardware inside.

At its heart is an Arduino Mega, a wise choice since our back-of-the-napkin estimation puts his I/O count over forty-five and the Mega can handle them all with a few pins to spare. Working inside the confines of a briefcase came with its own challenges, but we adore the way he used the hexagon theme in the top panel to allow for knob clearance. It was so subtle that we almost missed it.

The escape room theme is delightful, and we appreciate the mix of games, aesthetics, and techno-trickery in many forms.

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Keeping Time With Blinkenlights

November 24, 2019 by Tom Nardi 10 Comments

If we’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that hackers like weird clocks, and they love packing as many multicolored LEDs into a device as is humanly possible. Combine both of those concepts into one project, and you’ve got a perfect storm. So as far as unnecessarily complex timepieces go, we’d say the “Crazy Clock 4” built by [Fearless Night] ranks up there among the all-time greats.

This Arduino Pro Mini powered clock syncs the current time via GPS, with a temperature compensated DS3231 RTC to keep it on the straight and narrow between satellite downlinks. Once the clock has the correct time, how do you read it? Well, at the top you’ve got a basic numerical readout for the normies, and next to that there’s a circular LED display that looks like it could double as a sci-fi movie prop. On the lower level there’s a binary clock for the real show-offs, and as if that wasn’t enough, there’s even dual color-coded analog meters to show the hours and minutes.

[Fearless Night] has provided everything you need to follow along at home, from the Arduino source code to the 3D models of the case and Gerber files for the custom PCB. Personally we think just the top half of the clock would be more than sufficient for our timekeeping needs. If nothing else it should help save some energy, as the clock currently pulls an incredible 20 watts with all those LEDs firing off.

Should you decide to take a walk down memory lane and check out some of the other interesting LED clocks we’ve featured in the past, you’d be busy for quite awhile. But for our money, it’s still hard to beat the impossibly obtuse single-LED clock.

Bamboo Skewers Launch Airship

November 19, 2019 by Al Williams 1 Comment

We have to admit, we like airships. There’s something about the image of a stately zeppelin floating over Manhattan that just makes us imagine the future. There are not many airships anymore, but you can always build your own. [Crafty Robot] shows how to use one of their boards to make a simple and easy controlled balloon. Honestly, they don’t give you many details, but we know how to turn motors and servos. We loved their construction with hot glue and bamboo. Effective, and fun to say.

The bamboo skewers are easy to find and make a lightweight frame. Some drone motors provide thrust and some simple RC servos control the angle of the props. Nice and simple.

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SiCK Mechanical Keyboard Is 3D Printed

November 18, 2019 by Al Williams 25 Comments

We’ve noticed a rash of builds of [ FedorSosnin’s] do-it-yourself 3D-printed mechanical keyboard, SiCK-68 lately. The cost is pretty low — SiCK stands for Super, Inexpensive, Cheap, Keyboard. According to the bill of materials, the original cost about $50. Of course, that doesn’t include the cost of the 3D printer and soldering gear, but who doesn’t have all that already?

The brains behind this is a Teensy that scans the hand-wired key matrix. So the only electronics here are the switches, each with a companion diode, and the Teensy. The EasyAVR software does all the logical work both as firmware and a configuration GUI.

If you look at the many different builds, each has its own character. Yet they look overwhelmingly professional — like something you might buy at a store. This is the kind of project that would have been extremely difficult to pull off a decade ago. You could build the keyboard, of course, but making it look like a finished product was beyond most of us unless we were willing to make enough copies to justify having special tooling made to mold the cases.

PCBs are cheap now and we might be tempted to use one here. There are quite a few methods for using a 3D printer to create a board, so that would be another option. The hand wiring seems like it would be a drag, although manageable. If you need wiring inspiration, we can help.

For ultimate geek cred, combine this with Ploopy.