TinkerKit, Physical Computing Toolkit

February 5, 2009 by Eliot 5 Comments

tinkerkit

TinkerKit is a collection of 20 different sensors and 10 actuators. It’s meant to make prototyping of physical computing devices much quicker/easier. The devices plug into a Sensor Hub Arduino shield. There is also a similar hub board that can emulate a keyboard; it translates sensor input directly to key strokes. It looks like a very ambitious project and it’s still in development. We love the idea though and think the wide variety of components will foster better final designs. The TinkerKit site covers the current component lineup and there’s a demo video embedded below.

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Parking Violation Leads To Malware Download

February 5, 2009 by Eliot 26 Comments

parking

It seems some enterprising individual in Grand Forks, North Dakota has been placing fake parking violations on cars. If the recipient visited the URL on the flyer, they would be told to install a toolbar to view pictures of their vehicle. That piece of malicious software would then attempt to install several more. The actual vehicle pictures were from Grand Forks, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see a similar attack happen in a much larger city.

SparkFun Releases RGB Button Controller

February 5, 2009 by Eliot 5 Comments

rgb_button

SparkFun has been selling button pad parts for some time and we used them in our RGB door lock project. A excellent part, but you needed to implement your own interface to use the boards. SparkFun has just released two additional versions to make it easier on builders. The first is their Button Pad Controller USB. It has a 4×4 grid of buttons lit by RGB LEDs and a USB interface. This board can be expanded using the Button Pad Controller SPI. The SPI bus means it should be easy to add the button pad to embedded projects. This newest release puts you much closer to building your own RGB monome clone or other custom controller than ever before. The unit pictured above is their own project and they have no plans on selling anything like it.

ToorCamp 2009 To Be Held At Missile Silo

February 3, 2009 by Eliot 12 Comments

toorcamp

After running a successful hacker convention for ten solid years, the people who brought you ToorCon are planning a new event to shake up the US hacker scene. ToorCamp will be held July 2nd-5th, 2009 at a former missile silo in central Washington state. Hackers will camp on-site for two days of talks followed by two days of workshops. Art and music events are planned for every night. Camps like this are already help biannually in Europe: What the Hack in 2005, Chaos Communication Camp 2007, and Hacking at Random 2009, coming this fall. The complex is one of three Titan 1 missile complexes in the Moses Lake area. The sites were in operation less than three years between 1962 and 1965. The former missile command center has been converted to a secure data center run by Titan I, LLC. ToorCamp promises to be a very unique experience and we’re looking forward to attend this and future years.

Pandora Case Prototype

January 28, 2009 by Eliot 23 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T6zzV1vmOI]

The last time we checked in on Pandora it was just being shown in dev unit form. Embedded above is a video of the first case prototype. It doesn’t have any components yet, but it definitely looks like a good formfactor with a lot of potential. The Pandora is a Linux based portable game console with an 800×480 touchscreen.

[via Gizmodo]

Mario Etching

January 20, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 13 Comments

etched_eee

[revolvingdork] etched his Eeepc with the entire level map of Super Mario Land for Game boy. He set the laser to 70% speed and 40% power to get it to turn out this way. This is a far safer way of expressing your self and playing with laser etching than tattooing yourself with the laser.

Malware Posing As Change.gov

January 17, 2009 by Eliot 13 Comments

change

PandaLabs has identified a botnet running a malware campaign impersonating president-elect Obama’s website. The front page of the site features a sensational story titled “Barack Obama has refused to be a president”. Clicking the link will download the malware and make the target’s machine part of the botnet. They’re using fast-flux to assign the malicious domains to the massive number of compromised nodes that are hosting the actual site. The team has contacted the domain name registrar in China to get the domains removed. Using a sensational headline is not new to malware; it’s how the Storm Worm got its name.

[via lithium]