Hackit: Consumer RFID

March 2, 2009 by Nick Caiello 29 Comments

Touchatag

RFID seems to have invaded every part of our lives. Sure, the technology has been primarily used in government and industry, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have consumer applications. Recently, we posted about [max’s] RFID dorm room lock, that he built to provide a safe, convenient way to access his room. A while back, we talked about an RFID spatially aware address book that used a combination of rfid tags and post-it notes to control the NFC enabled Nokia 3220 cell phone. Both of these projects highlight unique applications where RFID is used. We bash on RFID from time to time, mostly due to its security (or lack there of). That said, there is an interesting consumer solution out there for people who want to voluntarily use RFID called Touchatag (formerly known as Tikitag). The cool thing about Touchatag is that it uses a combination of RFID and QR (2-D barcode) tags to trigger applications on the Touchatag website. The starter kit, which includes 10 tags and a USB RFID reader, goes for about $40; a decent price considering the hacking potential for the RFID reader. In addition to using the reader, you can also use any NFC enabled phone to read the tags. While NFC enabled phones are currently few and far between, the technology will likely be implemented in many of the new phones released in the coming year.

We’re curious, what do you think is next for consumer RFID? What kind of innovative project ideas do you have?

Tweet-a-Watt Wins Greener Gadgets Design Competition

February 27, 2009 by Eliot 28 Comments

tweetawatt

The team behind the the Tweet-a-Watt/Wattcher just won first prize at the Greener Gadgets design competition. The device is a hacked Kill A Watt that transmits power consumption using an XBee. After checking out DVICE’s preview of the competitors yesterday, we’re happy to see a prototype win instead of just a concept sketch.

QRSS: Radio Amateurs’ Slow-speed Narrowband

February 22, 2009 by Eliot 30 Comments

qrss

Host of the Soldersmoke podcast, [Bill Meara], contributed this guest post.

While the rest of the world is moving toward high speed broadband, some hams—including one Nobel Prize winner—are going in exactly the opposite direction. Our ‘QRSS’ mode makes use of an unusual mixture of modern digital signal processing (DSP), ancient Morse code, and simple homebrewed transmitters. Very narrow bandwidth is desirable because this reduces the noise in the radio communication channel, greatly improving the S/N ratio. But Shannon’s communication theory tells us that narrow bandwidth comes with a cost: slow data rates. In QRSS, beacon transmitters using only milliwatts churn out slow speed Morse ID signals on 10.140 MHz that are routinely picked up by DSP-based receivers on the other side of the globe. Many of the receivers, ‘grabbers’, have visual outputs that are available online in real time. QRSS has been getting a lot of attention on the Soldersmoke podcast and on the Soldersmoke Blog. For more information check out this overview and the hardware involved. Here’s a gallery of received signals.

ShmooCon 2009: Chris Paget’s RFID Cloning Talk

February 16, 2009 by Eliot 13 Comments

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-282861825889939203]

When we first saw [Chris Paget]’s cloning video, our reaction was pretty ‘meh’. We’d seen RFID cloning before and the Mifare crack was probably the last time RFID was actually interesting. His ShmooCon presentation, embedded above, caught us completely off-guard. It’s very informative; we highly recommend it.

The hardest part about selling this talk is that it has to use two overloaded words: ‘RFID’ and ‘passport’. The Passport Card, which is part the the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), is not like the passport book that you’re familiar with. It has the form factor of a driver’s license and can only be used for land and sea travel between the USA, Canada, the Caribbean region, Bermuda, and Mexico. They’ve only started issuing them this year.

Continue reading “ShmooCon 2009: Chris Paget’s RFID Cloning Talk” →

Vaio P HSDPA Mod

February 13, 2009 by Eliot 4 Comments

sim

[tnkgrl] has concluded her Sony Vaio P by adding GSM support. We covered the switch to XP earlier, but this should work on Vista too. The Vaio P is sold in the US with support for Verizon’s EVDO wireless broadband, but it uses the same hardware as the European model that uses GSM. This is possible because of the the Qualcomm Gobi radio module. To get GSM support, you trick the VZAccess Manager into loading a different firmware than the stock EVDO. The difficult part is that the Vaio P doesn’t come with a SIM card slot, so you’ll have to solder in your own. When you’ve got the computer reassembled, just change VZAccess Manager to use your carrier.

UPDATE: Wired has an article on the Gobi chipset.

WiFi And Bluetooth Tethering On Android

February 10, 2009 by Eliot 11 Comments

tmobileg1

Many G1/ADP1 owners have been using the app Tetherbot to get internet access on their laptop via USB to the phone’s data connection. The app relied on the Android Debug Bridge to forward ports. It worked, but people wanted a solution better than a SOCKS proxy. The community figured out a way to create a properly NAT’d connection using iptables and then [moussam] rolled them up into easy to use applications. There’s one for setting up a PAN device on Bluetooth and another for adhoc WiFi networking. It requires you to have root on your phone, but hopefully you’ve achieved that and are already running the latest community firmware.

[photo: tnkgrl]

Wireless TAC-2 Joystick

February 4, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 9 Comments

wjs

[Aki] had a broken TAC-2 joystick that was just begging for some new and improved use. Since it was the cable that was broken, [Aki] had the idea to make it wireless. He designed custom boards for the transmitter and receiver. Each is controlled by an ATTiny2313. He fitted it with the stock connector so it could possibly even still work on a commodore 64. He hasn’t tested that yet though.

[via the Hack A Day flickr pool]