Chromecast Bootloader Exploit

July 29, 2013 by Mike Szczys 29 Comments

chromecast-hack

Well that didn’t take long. The team over at GTVHacker have worked their magic on Chromecast. The HDMI dongle announced by Google last week was so popular they had to cancel their 3-free-months of Netflix perk. We think the thing is worth $35 without it, especially if we end up seeing some awesome hacks from the community.

So far this is just getting your foot in the door by rooting the device. In addition to walking through the exploit the wiki instructions give us a lot more pictures of the internals than we saw from the teardown in yesterday’s links post. There’s an unpopulated pad with seventeen connections on the PCB. You can patch into the serial connections this way, running at a 115200 8n1. But you won’t have terminal access out of the box. The exploit uses a vulnerability in the bootloader to flash a hacked system folder which provides root. After wiping the cache it reboots like normal but now you can access a root shell on port 23.

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Android Stick Mutates Into A Home Server

July 25, 2013 by Mike Szczys 27 Comments

small-form-factor-home-server

Kiss that energy hungry PC you’ve been using as a home server goodbye. [Vince Loschiavo] shows us how he squeezed a remarkable amount of functionality out of an inexpensive Android stick which manages his home’s digital empire.

He started off just wanting some network attached storage. For this he grabbed an MK802 Android Stick which you can get for a song if you find the right deal. To bend it to his will he said goodbye to the Android OS, installing Ubuntu for ARM instead. The stick (which is missing its case in the image above) connects to a USB hub in host mode, but does actually draw all of its power from the hub itself. This made it possible to attach a USB to Ethernet adapter to boost the speed which would have been limited by the WiFi connection. There’s a 320 gig USB hard drive for the storage. With that much space on hand it makes sense to add streaming media service as well which is simple since it’s running Linux. The last part of his work actually turns it into an Asterisk server by way of Google Voice and a SIP phone. An impressive outcome at a bargain price to be sure!

Galaxy Note 2 Gets Three And A Half Months Of Standby Time

July 12, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 47 Comments

bat

In the quest for the ultimate Android device, [白い熊] on the XDA developers forum created an awe-inspiring monstrosity that gives his Galaxy Note II 288 Gigs of storage and enough battery to theoretically last three and a half months.

First, the storage: the phone can now store movies, videos, apps, and music on an incredibly capacious 256 Gig SD card. Yes, this card currently sells for about $500, but having that much storage space effectively turns the Note into a portable hard drive running Android.

The battery comes direct from an eBay listing that advertises 8500 mAh inside a huge Li-ion battery. It’s extremely doubtful this battery will live up to the stated rating, but even if the new battery has twice the capacity as the stock battery [白い熊] is looking at about 10 weeks of standby time.

Yes, it’s just parts bought online and thrown together, but you really have to admire the sheer ostentatiousness of this phone.

Two-way Bluetooth Communication Made Easy

July 8, 2013 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

It’s hard to imagine an easier way to set up communications between an Android device and an Arduino using Bluetooth than by following this guide. In the center of the breadboard you can see the cheap and ubiquitous HC-05 Bluetooth module. Having picked up one of these ourselves we can attest that after opening the package and holding one in your hand you may be struck with a “where do I start?” conundrum. If you’ve got an Android handset and an Arduino you start right here, then methodically replace one side of the equation at a time until your own project has a Bluetooth component and you actually understand how it works.

Hardware for the project comes in a couple of parts. The Bluetooth module wants 3.3v logic levels so that is taken into account. The image above shows a buffer chip doing the conversion, but the Fritzing schematic on the post uses a voltage divider. The software end of things consists of an Arduino sketch and an Android app. Check out all the controls on that screen. With bi-directional communications and a slew of already-configured commands this should get you up and running quickly on pretty much any possible project.

One thing to note is that there are different firmwares for these HC-05 units. For more on that see this project.

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Turning A Phone Into A Geiger Counter

June 23, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 10 Comments

geiger

We’re no stranger to radiation detector builds, but [Dmytry]’s MicroGeiger prototype is one of the smallest and most useful we’ve seen.

The idea behind the MicroGeiger comes from the observation that just about every modern smartphone can provide a small bit of power through the microphone jack. Usually this is used for a microphone, but with the right circuit it can be stepped up enough to power a Geiger tube.

[Dmytry]’s circuit uses a hand-wound transformer but keeps the part count low; there’s only a few dozen caps, resistors, and diodes in this build, making the circuit much smaller than the Geiger tube itself.

Since [Dmytry] is powering a Geiger tube with a phone, it only makes sense that he should also record clicks from the tube with an Android app. Right now, the entire project is still in the prototype stage, but everything works and his app can detect radiation from one of [Dmytry]’s sources.

The code and schematics for the MicroGeiger are available on GitHub, with a video of the project in action below.

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Wireless Rover With Android Control

May 28, 2013 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

android-rover

[Radu] spend the first portion of this year building and improving upon this wireless rover project. It’s actually the second generation of an autonomous follower project he started a few years back. If you browse through his old postings you’ll find that this version is leaps and bounds ahead of the last.

He purchased the chassis which also came with the gear-head motors and tires. Why reinvent the wheel (har har) when you’ve got bigger things on your plate? To make enough room inside for his own goodies he started out by ditching the control board which came with the Lynxmotion chassis in favor of an AVR ATmega128 development board. He also chose to use his own motor controller board. Next he added a metal bracket system to hold the battery pack. Things start to get pretty crowded in there when he installed his own Bluetooth and GPS modules. Rounding out his hardware additions were a set of five ultrasonic sensors (the grey tubes on top), a character display, as well as head and tail lights. The demo video shows off the control app he uses. We like that tic-tac-toe design for motion control, and that he added in buttons to control the lights.

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Android Pen Plotter Snaps, Processes, And Prints Pictures

May 17, 2013 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

android-pen-plotter

Here’s an Android powered pen plotter that does it all. It was built by [Ytai Ben-Tsvi] to take with him to Maker Faire. He’s the creator of IOIO, a hardware interface module designed to communicate with an Android device via USB (host or OTG are both supported).

The physical hardware is simple enough. He draws on a pad of white paper using a felt-tipped marker. Located at the top of the easel are two wheels with stars etched on them. They are reels which spool and dole-out string to control the pen’s movements. The pen tip can be lifted by a ball bearing mounted just below it.

But the project really takes off when you watch [Ytai’s] demonstration. The Android tablet controlling the device captures a picture of an object — in this case it’s a toy truck. The app then processes it using edge detection to establish how to plot the image.

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