The Hacklet #1

April 15, 2014 by Eric Evenchick 11 Comments

With the launch of hackaday.io, our project hosting site, we’ve seen quite a bit of interesting hacks flowing in. While we feature some of our favorite projects on the blog, we’ve decided it’s time to start a regular recap of what’s going on in the Hackaday Projects community. We call it The Hacklet, and the first issue is now available.

This installment starts off with information on our Sci-fi Contest and improvements to the Hackaday Projects site. We talk a bit about the various projects relating to the Mooltipass password manager being developed on Hackaday. The Mooltipass has its own project page, but there’s also separate projects for the low level firmware being developed. Next we look at a pair of NFC rings for unlocking Android devices, and finish off with advice on soldering tiny packages.

Check it out and let us know what you think. Our goal is to summarize some of the neat things going on in the community, and we’re always happy to get constructive feedback from the community itself. Or you can flame us… whichever you prefer.

Unlocking Your Computer With A Leonardo And An NFC Shield

April 1, 2014 by Mathieu Stephan 21 Comments

Manually typing your login password every time you need to login on your computer can get annoying, especially if it is long and complex. To tackle this problem [Lewis] assembled an NFC computer unlocker by using an Arduino Leonardo together with an NFC shield. As the latter doesn’t come with its headers soldered, a little bit of handy work was required.

A custom enclosure was printed in order to house the two boards together and discretely mount them under a desk for easy use. Luckily enough very few code was needed as [Lewis] used the Adafruit NFC library. The main program basically scans for nearby NFC cards, compares their (big-endianned) UIDs against a memory stored-one and enters a stored password upon match. We think it is a nice first project for the new generation of hobbyists out there. This is along the same lines as the project we saw in September.

Continue reading “Unlocking Your Computer With A Leonardo And An NFC Shield” →

Vending Machine Is Now Cyborg Friendly

March 25, 2014 by James Hobson 34 Comments

OZ6dlvn

Don’t you hate having to pull out your wallet or cellphone in order to pay for something? What if you could just wave your hand and transfer money that way? Well [David] did, so he decided to do something about it. He made the vending machine in his hackerspace, FamiLAB, cyborg friendly.

The problem was, the vending machine wasn’t technically his to play around with… so he had to do this hack without actually modifying the machine itself — which we admit, actually makes it quite a bit more interesting!

But first, why is [David] even doing this? Is he a cyborg or something? Well, not quite, but he’s quite enthusiastic about bio-tech (is that what we call it now?) — anyway, he has NFC implants in his hand, and magnets in his fingertips to give him a sixth “electro-sense”. Wanting to take the most advantage of these augmented abilities, he put together this clever NFC credit card emulator.

Continue reading “Vending Machine Is Now Cyborg Friendly” →

NFC Ring Unlocks Your Phone

March 17, 2014 by Eric Evenchick 31 Comments

This little ring packs the guts of an NFC keyfob, allowing [Joe] to unlock his phone with a touch of his finger.

The NFC Ring was inspired by a Kickstarter project for a similar device. [Joe] backed that project, but then decided to build his own version. He took apart an NFC keyfob and desoldered the coil used for communication and power. Next, he wrapped a new coil around a tube that was matched to his ring size. With this assembly completed, epoxy was used to cast the ring shape.

After cutting the ring to size, and quite a bit of polishing, [Joe] ended up with a geeky piece of jewelry that’s actually functional. To take care of NFC unlocking, he installed NFC LockScreenOff. It uses Xposed, so a rooted Android device is required.

We’ll have to wait to see how [Joe]’s homemade solution compares to his Kickstarter ring. Until then, you can watch a quick video of unlocking a phone with the ring after the break.

Continue reading “NFC Ring Unlocks Your Phone” →

A DIY NFC Tag

November 14, 2013 by Eric Evenchick 10 Comments

[Nicholas] built a simple NFC tag using an ATtiny84 microcontroller, four resistors, three capacitors, a diode, and an antenna. It implements ISO 14443-3, a standard for identification cards, and can communicate with the NFC chip sets found in most new smartphones.

This standard uses on-off keying for communication, which makes the hardware slightly more complex than the AVR RFID tag that we saw a few years back. The antenna and a variable capacitor form an LC circuit tuned at 13.56 MHz, which is the carrier frequency for the protocol. The diode acts as an envelope detector, letting the microcontroller recover the signal.

It may not be fully compliant with the standard, but [Nicolas] successfully tested out the device with his Lumia 620 phone. The firmware is available on Google Code so you can program your own tag data into main.c, build the firmware, and send some NFC packets. You can also check out a demo of the device after the break.

Continue reading “A DIY NFC Tag” →

Hackaday Interview With Amal Graafstra, Creator Of XNT Implant Chip

October 30, 2013 by Mathieu Stephan 111 Comments

Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled devices are starting to appear in our everyday lives. Shown in the picture above is the xNT (fundraiser warning), a 2mm x 12mm fully NFC Type 2 compliant 13.56MHz RFID tag encased in a cylindrical Schott 8625 bioglass ampule. It was created by [Amal Graafstra], who therefore aims to produce the world’s first NFC compliant RFID implant. The chip used is the NTAG203, which is (for the sake of simplicity) a 144bytes EEPROM with different protection features.

We can only start thinking of the different possibilities this chip will create in the near future, but also wonder which precedent this may set for future NFC enabled humans. Embedded after the break is the presentation video of xNT but also an interview I conducted with [Amal Graafstra], who has already been living for 8 years with RFID tags in each hand.

Continue reading “Hackaday Interview With Amal Graafstra, Creator Of XNT Implant Chip” →

Audiobook Player Used Only NFC Tags For Control

March 4, 2013 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

[Martynas Mickevičius] has a Grandmother who is visually impaired. She enjoys listening to audiobooks and has been doing so using a DVD player for quite some time. The problem is that there is no way for her to save her position in between listening session. He set out to help by building a dedicated audiobook reader that doesn’t have any buttons.

The project was inspired by a one-button reader we featured back in November. Like that project, [Martynas] chose to use the inexpensive, yet powerful Raspberry Pi. The main difference comes in the control method. He’s using an NFC tag reader, which is mounted in the top portion of the RPi case. The image above shows the rig during prototyping, but his final version is all bundled up in the pink enclosure and only needs the power and audio cables connected to it. See for yourself in the demo after the jump.

Each book has its own NFC tag. When she’s done reading she can simply cut the power and it will resume in the same place the next time it is plugged in. The tag setup is a vast improvement since it allows an entire library to be stored on the SD card and chosen using a different tag. With this hardware in place it should be trivial to code extensions to the system, like a script that uses text-to-speech to announce which book is being played before playback starts.

Continue reading “Audiobook Player Used Only NFC Tags For Control” →