The art of hacking requires you to straddle many different types of engineering. In this case, it looks like [Dan] could use a little bit of brain-storming on how to get this doubly-failed project back on track. Do go easy on him as he wasn’t the one that submitted the write-up for this week’s Fail.
A story surfaced a few days before Halloween on Russian news site Rosbalt (yep, that’s in Russian), claiming Russian authorities intercepted Chinese-made electric irons and kettles: each equipped with microphones and WiFi. You can read a summary in English on the BBC’s website. The “threat” imposed by these “spy appliances” is likely the result of gross exaggeration if not downright fear mongering against Chinese-made products. It’s not worth our (or your) effort to speculate on what’s really happening here, but the situation does present a fun exercise.
Say you wanted to spice up your pen testing by altering a small home appliance: how easily could you build it? Let us know in the comments which appliance would serve as the best “host” for the modifications and what features you would include. Could you manage all the components listed in the article–a microphone, WiFi (any chance of cracking unsecured networks?), plus some vague indication that it “spreads viruses?” There’s a video below with a few glimpses of the electronics in question, but unless you speak Russian it probably won’t offer much insight.
Continue reading “Ask Hackaday: Can You Hack An Appliance Into A Spy Device?”
Is your dog the strong silent type? Ever wish he or she could tell you when it is time to go do their business? This Reddit r/DIY user found a simple solution — a doggy doorbell!
The dog in question isn’t very vocal, so his owner sought a simple solution, similar to Pavlov’s bells — the only problem? He needed some range on it, as you can’t always hear a few bells throughout the entire house. The solution? A wireless doorbell that he repackaged into a dog friendly button!
Compared to our last post on an automatic pet watering system, this one is a very simple hack that requires absolutely no electrical experience. It could be improved upon quite easily though, by wiring a second switch in parallel so the dog can ring the doorbell from the outside of the house too!
According to the owner, it only took a few treats to get the pooch trained well enough to use it whenever he needs to go out!
[Via Reddit]
[Andrea] just sent us this great student hack he made for his room. He’s constructed an Arduino keypad door lock — without using any proper fastening hardware!
The entire build is made out of scrap parts he had lying around: some DVD’s, a bit of wood, an allen key, a motor and belt from a broken printer, an old hard drive enclosure, and a few power supplies. As you can see the entire setup is held up rather artistically using good old duct tape.
The system auto-locks after 5 seconds, and just in case, [Andrea] has hard-coded in a few safety codes into the firmware to allow him to forcefully open the door — you know, if it malfunctions or something. Not overly confident in his code, he also has it reset every 5 minutes of idling to safeguard against potential memory leaks — probably a good idea! All in all it’s a very cool build, and we have to give him props for not damaging the door to mount it! Down the road he’s also planning on adding a knock sensor using the small speaker that is already part of the circuit, because, why not?
Stick around after the break to see this magnificent contraption that would make Red Green proud.
One of [Bob’s] most treasured possessions is a Heathkit alarm clock he put together as a kid. Over the years he’s noticed a few problems with his clock. There isn’t a battery backup, so it resets when the power goes out. Setting the time and alarm is also a forward only affair – so stepping the clock back an hour for daylight savings time means holding down the buttons while the clock scrolls through 23 hours. [Bob] decided to modify his clock with a few modern parts. While the easiest method may have been to gut the clock, that wouldn’t preserve all those classic Heathkit parts. What [Bob] did in essence is to add a PIC32 co-processor to the system.
Like many clocks in the 70’s and 80’s, the Heathkit alarm clock was based upon the National Semiconductor MM5316 Digital Alarm Clock chip. The MM5316 operates at 8 – 22 volts, so it couldn’t directly interface with the 3.3V (5V tolerant) PIC32 I/O pins. On PIC’s the input side, [Bob] used a couple of analog multiplexer chips. The PIC can scan the individual elements of the clock’s display. On the PIC’s output side, he used a couple of analog switches to control the ‘Fast’, ‘Slow’, and ‘Display Alarm/Time’ buttons.
Continue reading “Heathkit Clock Updated With A PIC32 And GPS”
[Firewalker] has designed a great pellet burning boiler (translated). Wood and biomass pellets have gained popularity over the last few years. While freestanding stoves are the most popular method of burning the pellets, [Firewalker] went a different route. He’s converted a boiler from what we assume was oil to pellet power. An Arduino controls the show, but don’t hold it against him. [Firewalker] is just using the Arduino as an AVR carrier board.The software is all written in C using AVR studio. The controller’s user interface is pretty simple. A two-line character based LCD provides status information, while input is via buttons. Once the system is all set up, thermostats are the final human/machine interface.
Burning pellets requires a bit of prep. A cleanup of the burn chamber must be performed before each burn. The AVR is programmed to handle this. Once the chamber is clean, new pellets are fed in via an auger system. The burner is monitored with a standard flame sensor. When the fire is up the pellets feed in until the boiler gets up to temp. Then the system enters a standby mode where it feeds in just enough pellets to maintain the flame. When the thermostats stop calling for heat, the whole system shuts down, ready for the next burn.
$20, some spare parts and a bit of mischief was a small price for [Chris] to pay for a reprieve from light pollution with this remote control laser hack. The streetlight in front of his house has a sensor that faces westward, and flips the lamp on once the sun has disappeared over the horizon. As it turns out, [Chris’s] third floor window is due west of this particular lamp, meaning he takes the brunt of its illumination but also conveniently places him in a prime location for tricking the sensor.
According to [Chris], the lamp’s sensor requires two minutes of input before it will switch off and stay off for around 30 seconds before cycling on again. The lamp does not zap straight to full brightness, though; it takes at least a minute to ramp up. [Chris] recalled a hack from a few years ago that essentially used LED throwies tacked onto the sensors with putty to shut off lamps for a guerrilla drive-in movie, but the sensors on those lamps were at the base and easily accessed. [Chris] needed to reach a sensor across the block and nearly three stories tall, so he dug around his hackerspace, found a 5V 20mA laser diode, and got to work building a solution.
[Chris] 3D printed a holder for the laser and affixed it via a mounting bracket to the wall near his third floor window, pointing it directly at the street lamp’s sensor. He plugged the laser’s power supply into an inexpensive remote control outlet, which allowed him to darken the street lamp at a touch of a button. This is certainly a clever and impressive hack, but—as always—use at your own risk. Check out a quick demo video after the break.
