Robust Wireless DSLR Control Over Bluetooth

September 1, 2011 by Mike Nathan 4 Comments

yanis_android_bluetooth_camera_controller

[Manishi] wrote in to share his latest project, a Bluetooth DSLR controller that works with Android. More than a mere Bluetooth shutter trigger, his device lets you control a wide array of other settings such as aperture, shutter speed, ISO, white balance, focus position and live view.

His “YaNis” control system was built using an Arduino Pro Mini, along with a USB host shield and a Bluetooth module he picked up from SparkFun. Obviously any other Arduino and SPP compatible Bluetooth board can be used, though component size is definitely a consideration for this project, and his selections are pretty well-suited to the job. The Arduino half of the software relies heavily on [Oleg Maruzov’s] PTP/USB libraries to get things done, but the free Android control app is all [Manishi’s] creation.

The Bluetooth dongle connects to the camera via USB, and once it’s paired with his Android phone, [Manishi] has total control at his fingertips. He has plenty of improvements planned for the near future including additional camera support, so we expect that we’ll see an even more robust control application before too long.

Continue reading to see a quick video demo of YaNis in action.

Continue reading “Robust Wireless DSLR Control Over Bluetooth” →

Google ADK On An EvalBot

August 31, 2011 by Mike Nathan 11 Comments

evalbot_google_adk

After learning that Google’s ADK relied on using an Arduino-compatible board, [Benjamin] was disappointed that other microcontroller platforms weren’t invited to the party. Rather than switch camps, he took it upon himself to get the ADK working with his EvalBot. In fact, his modifications should allow the ADK to work with nearly any Stellaris ARM kit.

The hack is composed of two parts. The first, and most important bit is the USB host driver he developed to work with the ADK. The code borrows some bits from Texas Instruments, and will be published on GitHub once he gets a chance to clean up the source a bit. To get his phone working with the EvalBot, he also had tweak the external USB power supply in order to provide the current required to operate properly with other USB-connected hardware.

It’s always nice to have more options when working with Google’s ADK, and [Benjamin’s] work is likely a welcome addition to any Stellaris developers toolkit.

Continue reading to see a quick video of his EvalBot ADK demo.

Continue reading “Google ADK On An EvalBot” →

Bounty For An HP Touchpad Android Port

August 22, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 86 Comments

If you spent your weekend outside and away from the Internet, you might have missed the massive liquidation of HP TouchPads on Amazon, woot.com, WalMart, and the HP online store. Normally a $100 fully featured tablet is nothing to scoff at, but there is a catch: The HP TouchPad runs WebOS. WebOS is a fine operating system for a tablet, but it’s not Android. The folks at HacknMod.com posted a bounty for the first person to port Android to the HP TouchPad.

HacknMod is offering up $450 for a basic Android port and is looking for sponsors for the WiFi, Audio, Camera, and MultiTouch bounties. There’s a lot of discussion about the port on the XDA Developers and the RootsWiki forums if you’d like to get a bearing on how far along the project is. The TouchPad has already been rooted so there’s your starting point.

We’d like to throw our hat into the ring, but we missed out on the TouchPad fire sale. If anyone knows of an online shop where they’re still available, leave a message in the comments.

via HacknMod.com

Gyroscope-based Smartphone Keylogging Attack

August 18, 2011 by Mike Nathan 31 Comments

smartphone_keylogging_with_gyroscopes

A pair of security researchers have recently unveiled an interesting new keylogging method (PDF Research Paper) that makes use of a very unlikely smartphone component, your gyroscope.

Most smart phones now come equipped with gyroscopes, which can be accessed by any application at any time. [Hao Chen and Lian Cai] were able to use an Android phone’s orientation data to pin down what buttons were being pressed by the user. The attack is not perfect, as the researchers were only able to discern the correct keypress about 72% of the time, but it certainly is a good start.

This side channel attack works because it turns out that each button on a smart phone has a unique “signature”, in that the phone will consistently be tilted in a certain way with each keypress. The pair does admit that the software becomes far less accurate when working with a full qwerty keyboard due to button proximity, but a 10 digit pad and keypads found on tablets can be sniffed with relatively good results.

We don’t think this is anything you should really be worried about, but it’s an interesting attack nonetheless.

[Thanks, der_picknicker]

Very Clean Android Headphone Controller Project

August 17, 2011 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

Here’s an Android headphone add-on so clean that most people won’t know you built it yourself. [Will Robertson] was unsatisfied with the stock headphones that came with his HTC phone, but didn’t want to lose the control interface when upgrading. He built this add-on that lets him control the Android music player.

He was inspired to do this after reading about the control interface in one of our previous features. That hack detailed how to add control based on the 4-conductor headphone jack, but didn’t see us through to a clean finished product. [Will] picked up where it left off by designing a sleek surface mount board that hosts a headphone jack and three tactile switches. A patch cable is soldered opposite the jack, making this work as a pass-through device. The icing on the cake is the shrink tubing that masks the fact that this is a diy dongle.

If you want to follow his lead, [Will] posted his EagleCAD design files and footprints for the components he used in the post linked at the top.

Programming The Kinect To Work With Android

August 8, 2011 by Jeremy Cook 7 Comments

The Kinect has been hacked for many purposes, but this Android implementation tutorial is the first we’ve heard of it being used on a mobile phone platform. Although not a finished product at this point, [Raymond’s] tutorial is a good starting point for those wanting to experiment with fusing these two technologies.

The Kinect programming for this tutorial has been done with the Tegra Ventana development kit for Android 3.0. An Ubuntu-Linux installation is used, but this technique should be portable to any Linux system according to the author.

The procedure given is pretty straightforward, and the author even provides an example of the results in a video after the break. It’s interesting to note that, when connected, the Kinect is seen as two devices, “Xbox NUI Camera” and “Xbox NUI audio”. We look forward to new hacks to come out for this device, possibly using this set of tools. Continue reading “Programming The Kinect To Work With Android” →

Google ADK Clones Pack A Few Extra Features, Hopefully Far Cheaper Than The Original

August 1, 2011 by Mike Nathan 9 Comments

adk_board_clone

[charliex] from Null Space Labs wrote in to share a project that he and the rest of the gang have been working on over the last few weeks. The team has been remixing and building clones of the Google ADK demo board we saw earlier this year, in hopes of getting a huge batch prepped before Defcon 19.

Their version makes subtle changes to the original, such as extra header rows for Mega AVRs, higher quality RGB LEDs, and a nifty pirate-Android logo. They also added the ability for the board to send and receive IR signals allowing it to be used as a TV-B-Gone, as well as in more fruitful pursuits. The Arduino board used with the ADK has only undergone minor revisions, most of which were layout related.

[charliex] hasn’t mentioned a price for their improved ADK boards, but we’re guessing they will be substantially cheaper than the official Google version. In the meantime, check out their site for a boatload of pictures and videos of these boards undergoing various stages of construction.