Reverse Engineering USB Drivers

August 20, 2009 by Matt Schulz 17 Comments

luxeed_keyboard

When [Jespersaur] purchased a Luxeed LED keyboard, he was disappointed to find that the drivers were not open source and didn’t support all the features he wanted. His solution? Hack the drivers that come with it, and implement his own. In his article, he gives a basic rundown of beginning reverse engineering by multiple methods and a brief introduction to libusb. For the Linux drivers, check out [Kurt Stephens]’s site, where he supplies a link to the source code, instructions on building it, and a tutorial on sending commands to the keyboard.

E-bike Across Canada For $10

August 19, 2009 by Mikey Sklar 29 Comments

Justin Lemire-Elmore E-bike

[Justin Lemire-Elmore] spent one month riding his electric bike across Canada last summer. He made the journey from Vancouver to Halifax in 30 days using a mere $10 worth of electricity to recharge his bike. He put together a rather bizarre looking semi-recumbent bicycle to hold all of his gear. The motor controller, charge controller, battery packs, and lighting system were all his own design. He has a captivating 2 hour presentation embedded below in which he describes all the problems he had with his equipment during the trip as well as all the great experiences the journey offered. Continue reading “E-bike Across Canada For $10” →

Ninja Networks Party Badge

August 10, 2009 by Eliot 24 Comments

UPDATE: The director’s cut of the story

While coverage of the official Defcon badge has been pretty heavy, there was a badge that was far more exclusive and talked about way more. For the last ten years at Defcon a group of hackers known as Ninja Networks hosted an invitation-only party for selected attendees. For the 2009 event, [cstone] and [w0z] created an electronic badge which acted as the ticket to the party. The badge is based around an 8-bit Freescale microcontroller (MC9S08QE8) which drives 10 individual 16-segment HIOX-format LED displays. Continue reading “Ninja Networks Party Badge” →

Ceiling Fan POV

July 22, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 30 Comments

FDG3AFAFXETSIYM.MEDIUM (Custom)

We know some of you are getting sick of POV projects, but this one was just so cool, we couldn’t resist. [UncleBone] thought POVs were pretty cool, and wondered if he could use one on his ceiling fan. It would have been a breeze just to toss something like the RGBike POV on there and call it finished, but he designed his own. Opting to blow away the norm of using a single row of LEDs, he chose to do 5 different rows of LEDs, one for each blade. The whole thing is controlled by an Arduino, with a spreadsheet for image manipulating. Unfortunately, we don’t see any source files for the project available. Maybe he’ll put them on there if we ask really nicely. If he could get it playing animations, we would just chill and watch it for hours.

Volver

July 20, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 17 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmkW5PpjfNg]

Volver is a 3.75 inch square LED matrix that will display over 1600 unique patterns. Designed by members of Image Node and Disorient, it is a fundraiser for burning man 2009. While it is certainly less colorful than its older sibling the Nodeblinky, it features 8 more LEDs and a bit smoother and faster graphics. Volver can be picked up as a kit, or fully assembled from their site. Just like last time, you don’t have to buy from them. They freely offer the source code and schematics.

4 LED RGB Controller

July 13, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 2 Comments

4rgbled-angle-rainbow_thumb (Custom)

[Steven] was inspired by the BlinkM and Shiftbrite modules, but really wanted something that could be controlled via RS232. He decided to build his own RGB LED module capable of PWM that fit his needs. He’s using a PIC16F628 microcontroller as the base. Each module has 4 individually addressable LEDs with multiple intensities for each color. The units can be daisy chained as well. The schematics and PCB files are available on his site for download.

[via Hacked Gadgets]

Photo Interrupters Explained

July 12, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 20 Comments

img_0147 (Custom)

[Eric] sent in this very informative writup on how to use Photo interrupters. These things can be used for many things, he lists pellet dispensing and limit switches. He found one in his junk box and realized he knew very little about it. After some exploring and research, he’s here to educate the rest of us. There’s a good breakdown of the circuit itself which is pretty simple as well as a test circuit and some sample code.