Pokemon Go Cheat Fools GPS With Software Defined Radio

July 19, 2016 by Moritz Walter 59 Comments

Using Xcode to spoof GPS locations in Pokemon Go (like we saw this morning) isn’t that much of a hack, and frankly, it’s not even a legit GPS spoof. After all, it’s not like we’re using an SDR to spoof the physical GPS signal to cheat Pokemon Go.

To [Stefan Kiese], this isn’t much more than an exercise. He’s not even playing Pokemon Go. To squeeze a usable GPS signal out of his HackRF One, a $300 Software Defined Radio, [Stefan] uses an external precision clock. This makes up for the insufficient calibration of the HackRF’s internal clock, although he points out that this might also be fixed entirely in software.

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Pokemon Go GPS Cheat (If You Don’t Fear Getting Banned)

July 19, 2016 by Moritz Walter 75 Comments

Pokemon Go inherits a certain vulnerability to GPS location spoofing from it’s predecessor Ingress, but also the progress that has been made in spoof detection. Since taking advantage of a game’s underlying mechanisms is part of the winner’s game, why not hook up your smartphone to Xcode and see if you can beat Niantic this time? [Dave Conroy] shows you how to play back waypoints and activate your Pokemon Go warp drive.

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Pokemon Go Egg Incubator Takes Your Eggs For A Spin

July 18, 2016 by Moritz Walter 65 Comments

Pokemon Go has done a great service to the world health. Or would’ve done, if we wouldn’t hack it all the time. The game suggests, you breed Pokemon eggs by walking them around, but [DannyMcMurray] has a better idea: Strapping your smartphone to the propeller of a fan and taking them for spin that way.

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Case Modding The Old School Way

July 17, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 11 Comments

Since the release of the Raspberry Pi, the hallowed tradition of taking game consoles, ripping all the plastic off, and stuffing the components into nice, handheld form factors has fallen off the wayside. That doesn’t mean people have stopped doing it, as [Akira]’s masterful handiwork shows us.

This casemod began with a Nintendo GameCube ASCII keyboard controller, a slightly rare GameCube controller that features a full keyboard smack dab in the middle. While this keyboard controller was great for Phantasy Star Online and throwing at the TV after losing Smash, the uniqueness of this controller has outshadowed its usefulness. [Akira] began his build by ripping out the keyboard and installing a 7 inch LCD. It fits well, and makes for a very unique GameCube case mod.

The rest of the build is about what you would expect – the motherboard for a PAL GameCube is stuffed inside, a quartet of 18650 batteries provide the power, and the usual mods – a memory card is soldered to the motherboard and an SD Gecko allows homebrew games and emulators to be played.

The completed project is painted with the same theme as [Samus Arans]’ Varia suit, making this a one of a kind casemod that actually looks really, really good.

Tearing Apart The Nintendo PlayStation

July 16, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 30 Comments

The mid 90s were a weird time for video game hardware. There were devices that could play videos from compact disks. Those never caught on. Virtual reality was the next big thing. That never caught on. The Sony PlayStation was originally an add-on for the Super Nintendo. That never caught on, but a few prototype units were produced. One of these prototype ‘Nintendo Playstations’ was shipped to a company that went into bankruptcy. Eventually, the assets of this company were put up for auction, and this unbelievably rare game console was bought by [Terry Diebold] for $75.

[Terry] allowed [Ben Heck] tear into this piece of videogame history, and he has the video proof that this was a collaboration between Sony and Nintendo.

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Power Glove Takes Over Quadcopter Controls

June 6, 2016 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

Gerrit and I were scoping out the Intel booth at Bay Area Maker Faire and we ran into Nolan Moore who was showing of his work to mash together a Nintendo Power Glove with an AR Drone quadcopter. Not only did it work, but the booth had a netted cage which Nolan had all to himself to show off his work. Check the video clip below for that.

The control scheme is pretty sweet, hold your hand flat (palm toward the ground) to hover, make a fist and tilt it in any direction to affect pitch and roll, point a finger up or down to affect altitude, and point straight and twist your hand for yaw control. We were talking with Nolan about these controls it sounded sketchy, but the demo proves it’s quite responsive.

The guts of the Power Glove have been completely removed (that’s a fun project log to browse through too!) and two new boards designed and fabbed to replace them. He started off in Eagle but ended up switching to KiCAD before sending the designs out for fabrication. I really enjoy the footprints he made to use the stock buttons from the wrist portion of the glove.

A Teensy LC pulls everything together, reading from an IMU on the board installed over the back of the hand, as well as from the flex sensors to measure what your fingers are up to. It parses these gestures and passes appropriate commands to an ESP8266 module. The AR Drone 2.0 is WiFi controlled, letting the ESP8266 act as the controller.

Gameboy Case Lives On With A Pi Zero

April 10, 2016 by James Hobson 25 Comments

After scoring a non-functioning Gameboy in mint condition for $10, [Chad] decided it was time for a fun electronics project, so he ordered an LCD and bought a Pi Zero.

He started with a 3.5″ LCD off eBay for about $25, and got it running with the Pi Zero. It’s only 320×240 resolution, but hey, we’re recreating a Gameboy — not a smartphone. The next step was rather finicky: cutting up the case to fit the new components in.

Using a collection of files he whittled down the screen opening in the case to make room for the LCD, a few hours later and it looked surprisingly good.

From there he started laying out the components inside of the case, trying to figure out the best layout for everything to fit nicely. To power the unit he’s using a lithium ion battery from a Samsung Note which should give him some serious play-time. It fits right in where the game card is suppose to go.

To add some extra control functionality he’s added the game-pad buttons from a SNES onto the back where the battery door is, he’s also got a USB port on the side, a MicroSD card slot, and even a new audio pre-amp with potentiometer for controlling the speaker volume.

In case you can’t find a mint condition Gameboy case like [Chad] did, you could just print one from scratch

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