Choosing Cell Modems: The Drama Queen Of Hardware Design

November 15, 2018 by Kerry Scharfglass 20 Comments

So you went to a tradeshow and heard about this cool new idea called the Internet Of Things; now it’s time to build an IoT product of your own. You know that to be IoT, your Widget D’lux® has to have a network connection but which to choose?

You could use WiFi or Bluetooth but that would be gauche. Maybe LoRaWAN? All the cool kids are using LoRa for medium or long range wireless these days, but that still requires a base station and Widget D’lux® will be a worldwide phenomenon. Or at least a phenomenon past your bedroom walls. And you know how much user’s hate setting things up. So a cell modem it is! But what do you have to do to legally include one in your product? Well that’s a little complicated.

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Hack My House: Opening Raspberry Pi To The Internet, But Not The Whole World

November 14, 2018 by Jonathan Bennett 29 Comments

If you’ve followed along with our series so far, you know we’ve set up a network of Raspberry Pis that PXE boot off a central server, and then used Zoneminder to run a network of IP cameras. Now that some useful services are running in our smart house, how do we access those services when away from home, and how do we keep the rest of the world from spying on our cameras?

Before we get to VPNs and port forwarding, there is a more fundamental issue: Do you trust your devices? What exactly is the firmware on those cheap cameras really doing? You could use Wireshark and a smart switch with port mirroring to audit the camera’s traffic. How much traffic would you need to inspect to feel confident the camera never sends your data off somewhere else?

Thankfully, there’s a better way. One of the major features of surveillance software like Zoneminder is that it aggregates the feeds from the cameras. This process also has the effect of proxying the video feeds: We don’t connect directly to the cameras in order to view them, we connect to the surveillance software. If you don’t completely trust those cameras, then don’t give them internet access. You can make the cameras a physically separate network, only connected to the surveillance machine, or just set their IP addresses manually, and don’t fill in the default route or DNS. Whichever way you set it up, the goal is the same: let your surveillance software talk to the cameras, but don’t let the cameras talk to the outside world.

Edit: As has been pointed out in the comments, leaving off a default route is significantly less effective than separate networks. A truly malicious peice of hardware could easily probe for the gateway.

This idea applies to more than cameras. Any device that doesn’t need internet access to function, can be isolated in this way. While this could be considered paranoia, I consider it simple good practice. Join me after the break to discuss port forwarding vs. VPNs.

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Mechanisms: Lead Screws And Ball Screws

November 13, 2018 by Dan Maloney 52 Comments

Translating rotary motion to linear motion is a basic part of mechatronic design. Take a look at the nearest 3D-printer or CNC router — at least the Cartesian variety — and you’ll see some mechanism that converts the rotation of the the motor shafts into the smooth linear motion needed for each axis.

Hobby-grade machines are as likely as not to use pulleys and timing belts to achieve this translation, and that generally meets the needs of the machine. But in some machines, the stretchiness of a belt won’t cut it, and the designer may turn to some variety of screw drive to do the job.

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Alice Evans: Brucellosis, Or Why We Pasteurize Milk

November 13, 2018 by Brian Boucheron 51 Comments

It’s easy to forget how much illness and death was caused by our food and drink just one hundred years ago. Our modern food systems, backed by sound research and decent regulation, have elevated food safety to the point where outbreaks of illness are big news. If you get sick from a burger, or a nice tall glass of milk, it’s no longer a mystery what happened. Instead we ask why, and “who screwed up?”

In the early 20th century though, many food-borne illnesses were still a mystery, and microbiology was a scientific endeavor that was just getting started. Alice Catherine Evans was an unlikely figure to make a dent in this world at the time, but through her research at the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA), and later at the Hygienic Laboratory (now the National Institute of Health) she had a huge impact on the field of bacteriology, the dairy industry, and consumer safety. Continue reading “Alice Evans: Brucellosis, Or Why We Pasteurize Milk” →

Hello, And Please Don’t Hang Up: The Scourge Of Robocalls

November 12, 2018 by Jonathan Bennett 113 Comments

Over the last few months, I’ve noticed extra calls coming in from local numbers, and if you live in the US, I suspect maybe you have too. These calls are either just dead air, or recordings that start with “Please don’t hang up.” Out of curiosity, I’ve called back on the number the call claims to be from. Each time, the message is that this number has been disconnected and is no longer in service. This sounds like the plot of a budget horror movie, how am I being called from a disconnected number? Rather than a phantom in the wires, this is robocalling, combined with caller ID spoofing.

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Soyuz Failure Leaves Questions Unanswered

November 9, 2018 by Tom Nardi 85 Comments

The Russian space program experienced its first serious incident on a manned mission in 35 years when Soyuz MS-10 failed during ascent on October 11th, 2018. The abort system worked as designed, and crew members Aleksey Ovchinin and Nick Hague landed safely approximately 430 km from the launch site in Baikonur. Beyond being put through unusually high G forces, the two men suffered no injuries and will have their mission recycled for a future flight.

From an abort standpoint, the event went as well as could possibly be expected. The fact that the crew walked away unharmed is a testament to the emergency systems on the rocket and spacecraft, and serve as a reminder of why these functions are designed into manned rockets even if they are rarely (if ever) used. The success is especially impressive considering the Soyuz’s launch abort tower, the solid fuel rocket designed to pull the spacecraft away from the failing booster rocket, had already been jettisoned before the event occurred. The spacecraft was instead pulled to safety by the secondary abort thrusters, which were added to the vehicle’s design in 1975 as a contingency and until now had never been used in a real-life scenario.

What Went Wrong?

But while the safe return of the crew was naturally the first priority for all agencies involved, the questions soon turned to the Soyuz itself. What caused the loss of the rocket? Is it a defect which could be present in the other Soyuz rockets currently under construction? Perhaps most importantly, when could the Soyuz fly again? As it’s currently the only way to put humans into space, the International Space Station is completely dependent on regular Soyuz flights, and a delay in the program could endanger the orbiting outpost.

Now, with the initial findings of the Russian incident investigation being made public, we’re starting to get answers on some of those questions. The official report so far agrees with the conclusions many “Armchair Astronauts” made watching the live stream of the launch, and the evidence suggests that the core issue is the same which doomed previous Russian vehicles.

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It Happened At Supercon: Six Days Of Fun In A Three Day Con

November 8, 2018 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

A weekend for people who love hardware, by people who love hardware. It’s a simple recipe and it makes a delicious event that we call the Hackaday Superconference. If you made it to Pasadena last weekend, I’m sure going back to work on Monday was difficult after three days of far too little sleep and way too much fun. (It was for me.) If you didn’t make it to the con, set a reminder for July 1st to start watching for next year’s early bird tickets. Don’t believe me? Okay, let’s step through the hype of a weekend we’ll all remember.

Check out the recap video above and then join me after the break for a photo-heavy expose of the weekend’s highlights.

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