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.

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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.

A Pirate Box For Sharing Files

January 12, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 39 Comments

This is [illwill]’s Pirate Box, the newest addition to the network over at NESIT, the Meriden, CT hackerspace.

A pirate box is a completely anonymous wireless file server, kind of like a wireless version of a dead drop. It’s the perfect device for transferring files at a LAN party or hackerspace. The guts of [illwill]’s portable server comes from an old Fonera router NESIT had lying around. After installing OpenWRT, connecting a few batteries, and finding a wonderful lunch box / treasure chest enclosure on ebay, [illwill] had a portable file server perfect for sharing files.

The pirate box isn’t connected to the Internet. Instead, users can connect to each other and the 16GB USB drive by simply connecting to the router’s WiFi and opening up a browser. All web page requests are redirected to the Pirate Box page, where users can chat and share files. The folks at NESIT uploaded a few public domain files to their pirate box, but they’re anxiously waiting to see what files other users will upload.XVID.AC3.HQ.Hive-CM8.

Finally, TI Is Producing Simple, Cheap WiFi Modules

January 12, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 78 Comments

Ever responsive to the hobbyist market, Texas Instruments is releasing a very inexpensive, very simple WiFi module specifically designed for that Internet of Things.

The TI SimpleLink TI CC3000 WiFi module is a single-chip solution to putting 802.11b/g WiFi in just about every project you can dream up. Just about everything needed to put the Internet in a microcontroller is included in this chip – there’s a TCP/IP stack included on the chip, along with all the security stuff needed to actually connect to a network.

The inexpensive micocontroller WiFi solutions we’ve seen – including the very cool Electric Imp – had difficult, or at least odd, means of putting WiFi credentials such as the SSID and password onto the device. TI is simplifying this with SmartConfig, an app running on a phone, tablet, or PC that automagically takes care of setting up a link in a wireless network.

Best of all, the CC3000 only costs $10 in quantities of 1000. Compare that to other Internet of Things WiFi solutions, and it looks like we might be seeing and easy and cheap way to connect a project to the internet this year.

Bluetooth Hack For Serioux Panda Speakers

December 29, 2012 by Mike Szczys 3 Comments

bluetooth-powered-panda-speakers

[Bogdan] received this set of Serioux Panda speakers as a gift. I turns out that they sound very good and he decided to make them more useful to him by converting them to work as Bluetooth speakers.

To begin with he bought the cheapest A2DP device he could find. This is the protocol that identifies a Bluetooth audio device. The unit is designed to provide a Bluetooth connection for a set of headphones. He patched into the headphone port on that board, but also wanted to keep the option of using the Panda speakers’ line-in. To do this he added a 1k resistor to each of the audio channels. A connection was made from the 5V rail of the speakers to power the Bluetooth module rather than leaving it with its own battery.

Speaking of batteries, the Panda speakers can run from three AAA cells. This battery compartment was a perfect place to mount the add-on hardware. But the speaker can still be powered from a USB connector. Above [Bogdan] is using a portable USB power supply.

Watermelon Air Boat

December 17, 2012 by Mike Szczys 35 Comments

We think you’ll turn a few heads in Central Park if you’re driving a water melon around when everyone else is piloting sailboats. This watermelon is both sea worthy and radio controlled thanks to the work which [Starting Electronics] put into it.

We used this image because it shows you what’s inside of the hull, but you don’t want to miss the thing motoring around an above-ground swimming pool in the clip after the break. The hollowed out shell is quite buoyant and has no problem staying afloat and upright with the addition of a propeller. The parts from a remote control airplane kit have been mounted on a wooden scaffold. This provides plenty of thrust with a servo motor moving turning the prop for directional control. There is no dagger board so the craft is a bit slow to respond to turns. But how responsive do you expect a floating melon to be?

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