Energia On The CC3200

September 13, 2014 by Eric Evenchick 13 Comments

If you’re looking to connect things to the internet, with the goal of building some sort of “Internet of Things,” the new CC3200 chip from TI is an interesting option. Now you can get started quickly with the Energia development environment for the CC3200.

We discussed the CC3200 previously on Hackaday. The chip gives you an ARM Cortex M4 processor with a built-in WiFi stack and radio. It supports things like web servers and SSL out of the box.

Energia is an Arduino-like development environment for TI chips. It makes writing firmware for these devices easier, since a lot of the work is already done. The collection of libraries aids in getting prototypes running quickly. You can even debug Energia sketches using TI’s fully featured IDE.

With this new release of Energia, the existing Energia WiFi library supports the built-in WiFi radio on the CC3200. This should make prototyping of WiFi devices easier, and cheaper since the CC3200 Launchpad retails for $30.

A Remote Controlled, Fully Functional, Steam Powered Tank

August 31, 2014 by James Hobson 19 Comments

Steam Powered Tank for the 21st Century

Steam power anything these days is pretty cool, but rarely have we ever seen such a complex build as this steam powered, remote controlled 1/16th scale tank.

[Ian] is an electronics design engineer whose hobbies include messing around with steam power. The Steam Turret Tank is based on a 1/16th scale Tamiya King Tiger die-cast model tank. It features a 3.5″ diameter marine boiler from MaccSteam, which is a fully equipped miniature version of a real boiler, complete with pressure gauges, safety valves, and a ceramic burner. It can produce pressures of up to 70PSI (max 120PSI), but for this project, [Ian] is limiting it to around 30PSI.

A small 2″ diameter fuel tank contains a propane mixture to fuel the boiler. Two Regner 40451 Piccolo steam engines make up the drive train, with mechanical linkages controlled by servos to engage the various features. The tank can go forward, backward, spin in place, and the turret can both rotate and adjust trajectory. It also has controllable headlights, and can even “fire” the turret.

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Green Light Your Commute With America’s Unsecured Traffic Lights

August 31, 2014 by Edward Becker 85 Comments

Remember that episode of Leverage (season 5, episode 3), where Alec uses Marvin to wirelessly change all the street lights green so they can catch up to an SUV? And you scoffed and said “that’s so not real!”… well actually they got it right. A new study out of the University of Michigan (PDF warning), shows just how easy it is to make your morning commute green lights all the way.

The study points out that a large portion of traffic lights in the United States communicate with each other wirelessly over the 900Mhz and 5.8Ghz ISM band with absolutely no encryption. In order to connect to the 5.8Ghz traffic signals, you simply need the SSID (which is set to broadcast) and the proper protocol. In the study the researchers used a wireless card that is not available to the public, but they do point out that with a bit of social engineering you could probably get one. Another route is the HackRF SDR, which could be used to both sniff and transmit the required protocol. Once connected to the network you will need the default username and password, which can be found on the traffic light manufacturer’s website. To gain access to the 900Mhz networks you need all of the above and a 16-bit slave ID. This can be brute forced, and as the study shows, no ID was greater than 100. Now you have full access, not to just one traffic signal, but EVERY signal connected to the network.

Once on the network you have two options. The completely open debug port in the VxWorks OS which allows you to read-modify-write any memory register. Or by sending a(n) UDP packet where the last byte encodes the button pressed on the controller’s keypad. Using the remote keypad you can freeze the current intersection state, modify the signal timing, or change the state of any light. However the hardware Malfunction Management Unit (MMU) will still detect any illegal states (conflicting green or yellow lights), and take over with the familiar 4-way red flashing. Since a technician will have to come out and manually reset the traffic signal to recover from an illegal state, you could turn every intersection on the network into a 4-way stop.

So the next time you stop at a red light, and it seems to take forever to change, keep an eye out for the hacker who just green lit their commute.

Thanks for the tip [Matt]

New Chip Alert: The ESP8266 WiFi Module (It’s $5)

August 26, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 145 Comments

Every so often we run across something in the Hackaday tip line that sends us scurrying to Google, trying to source a component, part, or assembly. The ESP8266 WiFi module is the latest, made interesting because it pretty much doesn’t exist outside China.

Why is it cool? It’s a WiFi module with an SOC, making it somewhat similar to TI’s CC300 in conception (A.K.A. the thing that makes the Spark Core so appealing), in that a microcontroller on the module takes care of all the WiFi, TCP/IP stack, and the overhead found in an 802.11 network. It’s addressable over SPI and UART, making this an exceptionally easy choice for anyone wanting to build an Internet of Things thing; you can simply connect any microcontroller to this module and start pushing data up to the Internet. Oh, it’s also being sold for $5 in quantity one. Yes, for five dollars you can blink a LED from the Internet. That’s about half the price as the CC3000 itself, and a quarter of the price if you were to build a CC3000 breakout board.

There’s a catch, right, there’s always a catch. Yep. About two hours after this post is published it will be the number one English language Google result for “ESP8266.” As far as the English-speaking world is concerned, there is absolutely nothing to be found anywhere on the Internet on this module.

Seeed Studio recently sold a few of these modules for $7 and has some documentation, including a full datasheet and an AT command set. All the documentation is in Chinese. There’s also an “ESP8266 IoT SDK”, but from a quick glance at the code, this appears to be an SDK for the SOC on the module, not a simple way to connect the module to a microcontroller.

Anyone wanting to grab one of these modules can do so on Ali Express. Anyone wanting to do something with one of these modules will have a much more difficult time, most likely poking and prodding bits randomly with the help of Google translate. Should someone, or even a group of people, want to take up the task of creating a translation of the datasheet and possibly a library, we have a pretty collaborative project hosting site where you can do that. You may organize in the comments below; we’ll also be taking bets as to when a product using the ESP8266 will be found on Kickstarter. My guess is under a month.

EDIT: Here’s a translation of the datasheet and AT command set.

Edit two: [bafeigum] is writing a library go help him out.

Thanks [Liam] for the tip.

Bluetooth Low Energy Beacons In A Flock Of Birds

August 15, 2014 by Bryan Cockfield 11 Comments

birds_ready

No, not real birds! [Kyle] works in operations at a web company and needed a way to send alerts to his fellow coworkers, so he modified a flock of Audubon Society plush birds to respond to a Bluetooth beacon.

Using NRF24L01+ Bluetooth Low Energy modules, [Kyle] installed one each in these battery-powered singing birds. The devices are presumably powered off of the battery that comes with the birds, but the use of the BTLE module means the batteries won’t discharge as rapidly.

[Kyle] also built an API that works over HTTP or IRC, which means that the employees in the office can activate everyone else’s birds over a simple and intuitive interface. The birds can be activated one at a time, or all together in “panic” mode as one giant flock (in case of an emergency in the office). They can also be activated one at a time on a specific hour to simulate the Audubon Society’s bird call clock.

He calls the device equail and it’s a very unique notification system with a lot of applications. All of [Kyle]’s code and documentation of his project are available on his github site. He also used this primer on BTLE to get started, and this guide on sending data over BTLE to help get the project in the air.

Sniffing NRF24L01+ Traffic With Wireshark

August 5, 2014 by Mathieu Stephan 6 Comments

We’re sure that some of our readers are familiar with the difficult task that debugging/sniffing nRF24L01+ communications can be. Well, [Ivo] developed a sniffing platform based on an Arduino Uno, a single nRF24L01+ module and a computer running the popular network protocol analyzer Wireshark (part1, part2, part3 of his write-up).

As these very cheap modules don’t include a promiscuous mode to listen to all frames being sent on a particular channel, [Ivo] uses for his application a variation of [Travis Goodspeed]’s technique to sniff Enhance Shockburst messages. In short, it consists in setting a shorter than usual address, setting a fix payload length and deactivating the CRC feature. The Arduino Uno connected to the nRF24L01+ is therefore in charge of forwarding the sniffed frames to the computer. An application that [Ivo] wrote parses the received data and forwards it to wireshark, on which can be set various filters to only display the information you’re interested in.

Adding Bluetooth And A Lightning Connector To Beats Pro Headphones

July 30, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 42 Comments

Beats

Not wanting to wait for Apple to step up their game and complete their purchase of Beats headphones, [Carnivore] decided he wanted his own pair of Apple-compatible Beats cans with Bluetooth. He created something that will probably be for sale in the Apple store come Christmas: a pair of Beats Pro headphones with Bluetooth and a Lightning connector for charging.

[Carnivore] liked the sound of his Beats Pro headphones but hated the wires. After disassembling the headphones, he carefully rewired the speakers with smaller gauge wire, added a small Bluetooth module and battery, and sealed everything back up.

There are a few interesting bits to this build – by getting rid of all external wires, [Carnivore] was left with a few holes in the headphones. These were a perfect place to add a 3D printed mount for the power button and the Lightning adapter taken from an Apple Lightning extension connector.

Thanks [Tony] for the tip!