A Breakout Board For A Tiny WiFi Chip

January 27, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 74 Comments

A few weeks ago, we caught wind of a very tiny, very inexpensive WiFi chip TI is producing. Everything required of an Internet connection – TCP/IP stack, configuration utilities, and your WEP, WPA, and WPA2 security tools is included in a single tiny chip, making this a very cool device for an Internet-connected microcontroller project. There’s only one problem: TI put this chip in a really, really weird package, and there aren’t any breakout boards for it.

That is, until now. [Vince] was convinced to spend some time in Altium to design a breakout board for this tiny WiFi chip. Now, if you can get your hands on a sample of the CC3000 from TI, you can breadboard out a circuit with the help of [Vince]’s design.

Included in [Vince]’s git are the board files for this breakout board, schematics, and the necessary parts if anyone has the inclination to make an Eagle library. If anyone wants to spin a few of these boards and put them up on a Tindie Fundraiser, that’d be fine by us, and [Vince] would probably appreciate that as well.

Pinoccio – An Ecosystem For The Internet Of Things

January 26, 2013 by Jeremy Cook 40 Comments

[Pinoccio] is currently an Indeigogo crowd-sourced project that aims use the real-world programmability of the Arduino through the internet using a wifi connection. One could rightly point out that this can already be done through the use of a wifi shield. Before ruling this device out, just “shush your shussins” and consider that it’s designed specifically for interfacing with “things” over the internet. This can replace several components (see 1:10 in the video after the break) and should be less of a hassle.

Additionally, with a shield on one of these devices, several other [Pinoccio] boards can communicate with the Internet using this as a hub in a mesh network. This is similar to how the many “smart” electrical meters work, with a grid router being a central hub for communications. Additionally, this board has a built in temperature sensor and a RGB (instead of a single-color) LED, so you can do some interesting stuff with it right out of the box. Assuming this project gets funded, which seems likely at this point, we’re excited to see the projects that get built using it! Continue reading “Pinoccio – An Ecosystem For The Internet Of Things” →

Adding A Bluetooth Terminal To Your Router

January 22, 2013 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

bluetooth-router-terminal

This image shows an Android tablet monitoring the terminal of a router via Bluetooth. It makes it a snap to tweak your router from a multitude of devices as long as you’re within range (usually BT works up to about 30 feet or so). The only part that [Yohanes] needed to pull off the hack was a Bluetooth module which he picked up for a few dollars.

All routers will have serial connections somewhere on the board. His model (Asus RT-N16) even had the GND, RX, TX, and VCC pads labeled. He soldered a SIL pin socket to the port which accepts the pin header from the Bluetooth module. Before plugging that in he had to issue a few commands to the device to get it using the same baud rate and settings as the router’s serial port. With that taken care of he can now wirelessly monitor and control the device via the serial terminal.

The one issue which he did encounter is that the module is slower to boot than the router. This means that at power-up you will not see anything on the terminal until the router has already started to load the Linux kernel. If you don’t plan on doing any bootloader hacks this shouldn’t make any difference.

An Attempt To Replace Multiple RFID Cards With A Single Hacked-together Tag

January 21, 2013 by Mike Szczys 31 Comments

It’s kind of a convoluted title, but [Hudson’s] attempt to replace multiple HID Prox cards with one AVR chip didn’t fully pan out. The project started when he wanted to reduce the number of RFID access cards he carries for work down to just one. The cards use the HID Proximity protocol which is just a bit different from the protocols used in most of the hobby RFID projects we see. He ended up taking an AVR assembly file that worked with a different protocol and edited it for his needs.

The device above is the complete replacement tag [Hudson] used. It’s just an AVR ATtiny85 and a coil made of enameled wire. The coil pics up current from the card reader’s magnetic field, and powers the chip through the leakage on the input pins (we’ve seen this trick a few times before). The idea he had was to store multiple codes on the device and send them all in a row. He was able to get the tag to work for just one code, but the particulars of the HID Prox reader make it difficult if not impossible to send multiple codes. The card must send the same code twice in a row, then be removed from the magnetic field before the reader will poll for another combination.

RFID Emulator Card Includes A Learning Mode

January 18, 2013 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

rfid-emulator

This RFID card has a lot of nice features. But the one that stands out the most is the ability to learn the code from anther RFID tag or card.

You can see that the board includes an etched coil to interact with an RFID reader. This is the sole source of power for the device, letting it pick up enough induced current from the reader to power the PIC 12F683 seen on the upper left of the board. The underside of the PCB hosts just three components: an LED and two switches. One of the switches puts the device in learning mode. Just hold down that button as you move the board into the magnetic field of the reader. While in learning mode a second RFID tag is held up to the reader. It will identify itself and the emulator will capture the code sent during that interaction. This is all shown of in the video after the break. We wonder how hard it would be to make a version that can store several different codes selected by holding down a different button as the emulator is held up to the reader?

If you want to build your own card reader too here’s a project that does it from scratch.

Continue reading “RFID Emulator Card Includes A Learning Mode” →

TP-Link TL-WR703N Specialized Firmware Generator

January 18, 2013 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

Seen at the center of this image is a TP-Link TL-MR3020 which is basically a TL-WR703N wireless router with a few extra LEDs. We’ve seen a lot of projects using this hardware and that’s because it’s cheap and ripe for hacking. The devices can run OpenWRT, a Linux distro for routers that greatly extends the functionality when compared to the stock firmware. Now a couple of members of Shackspace — a hackerspace in Stuttgart, Germany — have written a script that automatically generates specialized firmware for the router. That link goes to their wiki page about the script, but you may find this overview post to be an easier read.

The concept is that gathering specialized hacks into easy to flash packages does away with a lot of configuration headaches. For example, if you just want to play around with an NFC reader for a day-long event you can connect hardware like what is seen above and use the NFC-gate option of the script to flash firmware meant to drive it. So far there’s also support for streaming a USB webcam, serving as a USB network bridge, and a few others. But the whole point of this is to make it simple to roll new firmware mods into the script that make it easy to preserve the work for use at a later time.

[Thanks Hadez]

Converting A Weather Station Kit For Wireless Data Harvesting

January 15, 2013 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

converting-weather-station-for-wireless-data-collection

Everyone loves getting something you can play with as a Christmas gift. [Thomas] was the lucky recipient of an Elektor USB weather station kit. But the fun didn’t end once he had assembled everything. He went on to hack the device for wireless data collection.

Shown above is the weather station board connected to the transmitter. The red board with a tiny antenna to the right is a Rovio RN-VX module. It is capable of transmitting serial data to its twin on the receiving end of the setup. The weather station is pretty easy to connect to the transmitter since it feeds serial data to an FTDI USB chip. [Thomas] simply connected power and ground, then added a jumper from the board’s TX pin to the Rovio’s RX pin. The receiving end uses a serial-to-USB converter — getting a signal for its RX pin from the TX pin on the Rovio receiver board.

We know from other projects that these radio modules can connect to a WiFi AP. Perhaps a future revision of [Thomas’] hack will allow the weather station to communicate with his server over the network, doing away with the need for a standalone receiver.