[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI3KNy9GKB8]
[dunk] sent his home made Radio Control system. It is constructed from a Playstation 2 controller, an Atmega 2561, microcontroller, some RF modules and various servos and motors. It seems to work pretty well. You can get all the schematics and source code on his site. Several people have submitted a similar project which involves an iPhone and a helicopter, but that one is a bit dubious, mainly due to it’s lack of detail.
Host of the Soldersmoke podcast, [Bill Meara], contributed this guest post.
WSPR is a new communications protocol written by radio amateur and Nobel Prize winner [Joe Taylor]. Like the very slow QRSS system described in a previous post, WSPR (Weak Signal Propagation Reporter) trades speed for bandwidth and allows for the reception of signals that are far below the level of radio noise. WSPR takes “low and slow” communications several important steps ahead, featuring strong error correction, high reliability, and (and this is really fun part) the automatic uploading (via the net) of reception reports — [Taylor]’s WSPR web page constantly gathers reports and produces near real-time Google maps of showing who is hearing who. The WSPR mode is very hack-able: [Bill Meara] is running a 20 milliwatt homebrew transmitter from Rome, Italy that features an audio amplifier from a defunct computer speaker pictured below. This contraption recently crossed the Atlantic and was picked up by the Princeton, New Jersey receiving station of WSPR’s esteemed creator, [Joe Taylor]. Continue reading “WSPRing Across The Atlantic”
GNUCITIZEN has posted information on linksys wireless IP camera hacking. It turns out that some models send the administrator user name and password to the computer when the setup wizard requests a connection. In theory, someone could send the request and harvest your passwords wirelessly. This seems like a pretty careless oversight. We would think that linksys will probably remedy this before too long.
Update: Part 2 has been posted.
Update: Part 3 has been posted.
[Trax] sent in his writeup on this RF modem with built in 250mW amplifier. The original power of the RF transceiver was around 10mW, his final results after testing were nearly 250mW. He was able to to easily transmit data over 1000 meters using his test setup. He states that he was actually able to achieve this without an antenna on the receiving side. That’s pretty impressive performance. It’s also worth noting that he soldered all of the components in place using a home clothing iron and some soldering paste. That must have been fairly tedious.
[Travis Goodspeed] posted a preview of what he’s working on for this Summer’s conferences. Last weekend he gave a quick demo of sniffing AES128 keys on Zigbee hardware at SOURCE Boston. The CC2420 radio module is used in many Zigbee/802.15.4 sensor networks and the keys have to be transferred over an SPI bus to the module. [Travis] used two syringe probes to monitor the clock line and the data on a TelosB mote, which uses the CC2420. Now that he has the capture, he’s planning on creating a script to automate finding the key.
Former Hack a Day contributor [Will] has been using a Eye-Fi SD card to automate his photo transfers. Unfortunately this requires using Eye-Fi’s software and talking to their servers. He used [Jeff Tchang]’s replacement server written in Python to recieve the images from the card. [Will] manages his own online photo gallery using Gallery 2. To get the images uploaded, he added a call to GUP. Now all of his photos are transfered just as easily as with the standard Eye-Fi but without all of the middleman.
[photo: Eye-Fi teardown]
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?
