Keith Thorne, Engineer At LIGO, To Deliver Remoticon Keynote

October 11, 2021 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

It is my pleasure to announce that Keith Thorne has graciously agreed to deliver a keynote take at Hackaday Remoticon 2. Get your ticket now!

Keith is an astrophysicist and has worked on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) since 2008, literally looking for ripples in space-time that you know as gravitational waves. The effects of the phenomena are so subtle that detecting an event requires planet-scale sensors in the form of 4 km long interferometers placed in different parts of the United States whose readings can be compared against one another. A laser beam inside these interferometers bounces back and forth 300 times for a total travel distance of 1,200 km in which any interaction with gravitational waves will ever-so-slightly alter how the photons from the beam register.

The challenges of building, operating, and interpreting such a device are manifold. These interferometers are the highest precision devices ever devised, able to detect motion 1/10,000 of the diameter of a proton! To get there, the mirrors need to be cooled to 77 nano-Kelvins. Getting the most out of it is what Keith and the rest of the team specialize in. This has included things like hacking the Linux kernel to achieve a sufficient level of real-time digital control, and using “squeezed light” to improve detection sensitivity in frequencies where quantum mechanics is getting in the way. While the detectors were first run in 2015 & 2016, successfully observing three events, the work to better understand this phenomenon is ongoing and may include a third site in India, and a space-based detector in the future.

In getting to know Keith he mentioned that he is excited to speak to a conference packed with people who want to hear the gory technical details of this fantastic piece of hardware. I’m sure we’re all giddy to learn what he has to say. But if you’re someone who wants to work on a project like this, he tipped us off that there’s an active EE job posting for LIGO right now. Maybe you’ll end up doing the keynote at a future Hackaday conference.

Call for Proposals is Still Open!

We’re still on the hunt for great talks about hardware creation. True creativity is fed by a steady stream of inspiration. Be that inspiration by giving a talk about the kinds of things you’ve been working on!

Vintage Computer Festival East Reboots This Weekend

October 6, 2021 by Tom Nardi 13 Comments

We don’t have to tell the average Hackaday reader that the last two years have represented a serious dry spell for the type of in-person events that our community has always taken for granted. Sure virtual hacker cons have their advantages, but there’s nothing quite like meeting up face to face to talk shop with like-minded folks and checking out everyone’s latest passion project.

Luckily for classic computer aficionados, especially those on the East Coast of the United States, the long wait is about to end. After being forced to go virtual last year, Vintage Computer Festival East will once again be opening their doors to the public from October 8th to the 10th at the InfoAge Science & History Center in Wall, New Jersey. Attendees will need to wear a mask to gain access to the former Camp Evans Signal Corps R&D laboratory, but that’s a small price to pay considering the impressive list of exhibits, presentations, and classes being offered.

In fact, it’s shaping up to be the biggest and best VCF East yet. The Friday classes cover a wide range of topics from CRT repair to implementing a basic video controller with a FPGA, and the list of speakers include early computer luminaries such as Michael Tomczyk, the Product Manager for the VIC-20, and Adventure International founder Scott Adams. A little birdie even tells us that if you bring your copy of Back into the Storm, our very own Bil Herd will be sign it for you after his talk on the history of the Commodore wraps up Saturday evening.

If you’d rather get hands-on you can always take a walk over to the Computer Deconstruction Laboratory, InfoAge’s on-site hackerspace. Glitch Works will be on hand with several popular kits such as the XT-IDE, an 8-bit ISA adapter that lets you connect (relatively) modern drives to classic machines, and the R6501Q/R6511Q Single Board Computer. A bit rusty with the iron and would rather start on something a little easier? Not to worry. Neil Cherry, a staple of the Hackaday comment section since before we switched to color pictures, will be instructing hackers young and old in the ways of the flux during his all-day soldering classes.

Of course, no VCF trip is truly complete until you’ve searched for treasure in the consignment room. The space has been expanded for 2021, and considering how long folks have had to clean out their attics and garages thanks to the pandemic, we’re expecting a bumper crop of interesting hardware to wade through. If the turnout for the VCF Swap Meet in April was any indication, we’d suggest bringing some extra cash with you.

As a proud sponsor of the 2021 Vintage Computer Festival East, Hackaday will naturally be bringing you a first-hand account of the overall event as well as a deeper look into some of the incredible exhibits on display in the very near future. But words and pictures on a page can only go so far. If you’ve grown tired of virtual events and are looking to peek your head out, we can guarantee a trip to InfoAge this weekend will be well worth the gas money for anyone within driving distance.

Hackaday Remoticon: Tickets And T-Shirts!

October 4, 2021 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

Tickets for the Hackaday Remoticon are now available and there’s one big addition this year: Shirts!

As you have doubtless heard, the Supercon is on hold for one more year, so we’re doing Remoticon round two. And aside from missing the direct human contact, our conference t-shirt drawer is getting a little empty. While we can’t fix the global pandemic, we can fix the latter problem with this eye-catching design, the latest in a long line of art created by Aleksandar Bradic for Hackaday Conferences.

Remoticon will kick off on Friday, November 19th with some new social shenanigans. All day Saturday we’ll present talks, capped off by the Hackaday Prize Ceremony and a party that evening. Keep your eyes peeled for more info, but grab your ticket today and block off your calendar.

Attendance is free, and your registering early helps us plan our infrastructure to handle the crowd. If you want a t-shirt, you can order one at the same time for $25. Shipping for people in the US is included, but because of the realities of postal costs, shipping will be $10 for those everywhere else in the world.

We’re also still looking for more great talks! The Call for Proposals is open until October 14th. Don’t sit on the sidelines, do your Hackaday duty and give a talk about something that interests you. There’s a critical mass of other geeks into the same stuff that will delight in hearing from you! Come join us.

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2021 Chaos Communication Congress Cancelled

October 2, 2021 by Jenny List 24 Comments

With mass vaccination programmes and careful application of public health measures it almost feels for some of us as though the pandemic is under control. Any thoughts of it being over are illusory though, and if further reminders were needed we have the news that once more this year’s Chaos Communication Congress has been cancelled due to the safety of its attendees and the extra precautions that its organizers would have to undertake.

This event in Leipzig between Christmas and New Year is probably the largest of the European gatherings in our community, and its loss will be a great disappointment. Last year’s cancelled event was replaced by a remote one, we’ll see whether they repeat that feat in 2021. If so, we’ll be there, virtually.

We can only sympathise with our German friends, as while it must be extremely annoying it’s to their credit that they are taking the pandemic seriously. We’re sure that they will be back with the same event in 2022 as the world slowly inches towards normality, and Hackaday will be there to bring you the best of the event.

Somehow we didn’t do a big overview post of the 36C3 in 2019, so if you want to bask in the glory of a Congress, you have to travel back in time all the way to 35C3 in 2018, long before the arrival of COVID-19.

Header image: Yves Sorge, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Overengineering A Smart Doorbell

September 12, 2021 by Jenny List 19 Comments

Fresh from the mediaeval splendour of the Belgian city of Gent, we bring you more from the Newline hacker conference organised by Hackerspace Gent. [Victor Sonck] works at the top of his house, and thus needed a doorbell notifier. His solution was unexpected, and as he admits over engineered, using machine learning on an audio stream from a microphone to detect the doorbell’s sound.

Having established that selling his soul to Amazon with a Ring doorbell wasn’t an appropriate solution, he next looked at his existing doorbell. Some of us might connect directly to its power to sense when the button was pressed, but we’re kinda glad he went for the overengineered route because it means we are treated to a run-down how machine learning works and how it can be applied to audio. The end result can sometimes be triggered by a spoon hitting a cereal plate, but since he was able to demonstrate it working we think it can be called a success. Should you wish to dive in further you can find more in his GitHub repository.

How would you overengineer a doorbell? Use GNU radio and filters? Or maybe a Rube Goldberg machine involving string and pulleys? As always, the comments are open.

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Hey, MiSTer Emulator, Gimme Almost Any Classic Platform!

September 12, 2021 by Jenny List 20 Comments

I’m back with another of the talks from Hackerspace Gent’s NewLine conference, fresh from my weekend of indulgence quaffing fine Belgian food and beers while mixing with that country’s hacker community. This time it’s an overview from [Michael Smith] of the MiSTer project, a multi-emulator using an FPGA to swap out implementations of everything from an early PDP minicomputer to an 80486SX PC.

At its heart is a dev board containing an Intel Cyclone SoC/FPGA, to which a USB hub must be added, and then a memory upgrade to run all but the simplest of cores. Once the hardware has been taken care of it almost seems as though there are no classic platforms for which there isn’t a core, as a quick browse of the MiSTer forum attests. We are treated to seamless switching between SNES and NED platforms, and even switching different SID chip versions during a running Commodore 64 demo.

There are many different routes to a decent emulator set-up be they using hardware, software, or a combination of both. It’s unlikely that there are any as versatile as this one though, and we’re guessing that as it further evolves it will become a fixture below the monitor or TV of any gamer. It’s a step up from single-platform FPGA emulators, that’s for certain!

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EM-Glitching For Nintendo DSi Boot ROMs

September 11, 2021 by Jenny List 2 Comments

Some hacker events are muddy and dusty affairs in distant fields, others take place in darkened halls, but I went to one that can be experienced as a luxury break in a European city steeped in culture and history. Newline takes place at Hackerspace Gent, in the Belgian city of that name, and I was there last weekend to catch the atmosphere as well as the programme of talks and workshops. And of those a good start was made by [PoroCYon], whose fascinating introduction to the glitching techniques involved in recovering the boot ROMs from a Nintendo DSi taught us plenty of things we hadn’t seen before.

The talk which you’ll find below the break starts by describing the process of glitching — using power supply interference to interrupt the operation of a microprocessor and avoid certain instructions — to bypass security code. It then moves on to some of the protection mechanisms used in the various generations of Nintendo consoles and handhelds, before moving on to the work on the DSi at which point the talk moved onto a field which may be old hat in glitching circles but was new to me; that of EM glitching.

EM glitching involves using a small coil to generate precisely timed electromagnetic pulses which induce the glitch voltages in the chip. The fascinating part is that the EM probe can be made small enough to target individual areas of the chip, so using it involves a brute-force technique trying all combinations of timing and position with the probe held in a computer-controlled X-Y mount.

The DSi has two processors on board, this achieves success with the ARM7 but leaves its companion ARM9 as yet untapped. There are a promising set of attack vectors left to try, of which the ARM7 placing the ARM9 into a state from which it can be glitched seems to be the most promising. It’s fairly obvious that there’s plenty more to come from this quarter.

More details of the talk can be found in this repository, and for those interested in EM glitching you can find out more in this video and in this project using it to attack a Gecko microcontroller.

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