Giving Recalled Fitness Trackers A Second Chance

November 18, 2020 by Tom Nardi 6 Comments

When it was released back in 2012, the Basis B1 fitness tracker was in many ways ahead of its time. In fact, the early smartwatch was so impressive that Intel quickly snapped up the company and made it the cornerstone of their wearable division. Unfortunately a flaw in their next watch, the Basis Peak, ended up literally burning some wearers. Intel was forced to recall the whole product line, and a year later dissolved their entire wearable division.

Given their rocky history, it’s probably no surprise that these gadgets can be had quite cheaply on the second hand market. But can you do anything with them? That’s what [Ben Jabituya] recently decided to find out, and the results of his experiments certainly look very promising. So far he hasn’t found a way to activate a brand-new Basis watch, but assuming you can get your hands on one that was actively being used when Intel pulled the plug, his hacks can be used to get it back up and running.

The Basis Android application has long since been removed from the Play Store, but [Ben] said it wasn’t too hard to find an old version floating around on the web. After decompiling the application he discovered the developers included a backdoor that lets you configure advanced options that would normally be hidden.

How do you access it? As a reminder of the era in which the product was developed, you simply need to log into the application using Jersey and Shore as the username and password, respectively.

Between the developer options and API information he gleaned from the decompiled code, [Ben] was able to create a faux Basis authentication server and point the application to it. That let him get past the login screen, after which he was able to sync with the watch and download its stored data. Between examinations with a hex editor and some open source code that was already available online, he was able to write a Python script for parsing the data which he’s been kind enough to share with the world.

We’re very pleased to see an open source solution that not only gets these “bricked” smartwatches back online, but allows the user to keep all of the generated data under their own control. If you’d like to do something similar with a device that doesn’t have a history of releasing the Magic Smoke, the development of an open source firmware for more modern fitness trackers might be of interest.

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Core Devs Say A Fond But Firm Farewell To Python 2

April 24, 2020 by Tom Nardi 34 Comments

Saying that it was finally time for the community to bid a “fond but firm farewell to Python 2”, core developer Benjamin Peterson marked the release of Python 2.7.18 on April 20th; officially ending support for the 2.x branch of the popular programming language. It was hardly a snap decision. Python 3.0 was released all the way back in December 2008, and it was never a secret that the newer branch was not only incompatible with the earlier version, but that it would eventually superseded it to become the standard.

But migrating the incredible amount of Python code in the wild over to the latest and greatest was easier said than done. Millions upon millions of lines of code used in everything from Linux distributions to virtually every major web service needed to be reviewed and migrated over to Python 3. In many cases the changes were relatively minor, but when code is being used in mission critical applications, even the smallest of changes are often avoided unless it’s absolutely necessary. The voluntary migration took far longer than expected, and the end-of-life (EOL) for Python 2 was pushed back by years to accommodate developers who hadn’t made the necessary changes yet.

Given the somewhat fluid nature of the Python 2 EOL date, it seems fitting that this last final release would come several months after the “official” January 2020 deadline. The intention was for it to coincide with PyCon 2020, but just like so many of the events planned for the first half of the year, the in-person conference had to be canceled in favor of a virtual one due to the COVID-19 epidemic. That might have stymied the celebration somewhat, but the release of Python 2.7.18 will still be looked on as a special moment for everyone involved.

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How To Keep Unique Equipment Running When Parts Run Out

April 23, 2020 by Donald Papp 16 Comments

[JGlass] deals with public-facing technology, which he says includes things like theatre equipment, retail displays, and museum displays. Many of these pieces of technology are literally one-of-a-kind devices, even if they were constructed from what was once off-the-shelf, commercially available parts. When these machines need servicing, replacement parts aren’t always available, and reverse engineering comes in handy. He recently began documenting exactly how to approach this process by using the identification and replacement of an obsolete 7-segment industrial display as an example.

The particular part shown is the Lascar EM32-4-LED, which up and died in a unique piece of equipment. The trouble is that the EM32-4-LED is out of production and unobtainable, and the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) that drives the whole thing is a black box that cannot be modified. It’s very good news that a datasheet exists, but that’s often just a starting point. To create a one-off, drop-in solution requires a combination of research, troubleshooting, and design work.

To do this, [JGlass] starts off by walking through datasheet elements and explains that it’s important to build a high level understanding of function first, then drill down into details, and always be ready to verify, challenge, or throw out one’s assumptions. After establishing a high level understanding comes matching physical evidence to things like block and functional diagrams, then cracking open the faulty component to see if anything else can be learned. Only then are multimeters and probes taken out for more active research. All of this sleuthing must always be done with the end goal firmly in mind: creating a new device that acts like the one being replaced. Without focus, one can easily get lost in details and unknowns.

Reverse Engineering is a process, and the more tools, the better. If you missed our earlier post about a hacker’s guide to JTAG, here’s your chance to check it out and be all the more prepared for the next time you need to do some electron detective work of your own.

BSD Breathes New Life Into Obsolete Equipment

January 4, 2019 by Bryan Cockfield 26 Comments

An old laptop or desktop computer that’s seen better days might still have a little bit of use left in it for a dedicated task. Grabbing a lightweight flavor of Linux and running a web server, firewall, or Super Nintendo emulator might get a few more years out of it. You can also get pretty creative repurposing obsolete single purpose machines, as [Kristjan] did with some old Cisco server equipment.

The computer in question isn’t something commonly found, either. It’s an intrusion detection system meant to mount in a server rack and protect the server itself from malicious activity. While [Kristjan] mentions that Cisco equipment seems to be the definition of planned obsolescence, we think that this Intel Celeron machine with an IDE hard drive may have gone around the bend quite some time ago. Regardless, it’s modern enough to put back to work in some other capacity.

To that end, a general purpose operating system was installed, and rather than use Linux he reached for BSD to get the system up and running. There’s one other catch, though, besides some cooling issues. Since the machine was meant to be used in a server, there’s no ACPI which means no software shutdown capability. Despite all the quirks, you can still use it to re-implement a network security system if you wanted to bring it full-circle.

Planned Obsolescence Isn’t A Thing, But It Is Your Fault

September 24, 2018 by Bob Baddeley 192 Comments

The common belief is that big companies are out to get the little people by making products that break after a short period, or with substantially new features or accessories that make previous models obsolete, requiring the user to purchase a new model. This conspiracy theory isn’t true; there’s a perfectly good explanation for this phenomenon, and it was caused by the consumers, not the manufacturers.

When we buy the hottest, shiniest, smallest, and cheapest new thing we join the wave of consumer demand that is the cause of what often gets labelled as “Planned Obsolescence”. In truth, we’re all to blame for the signals our buying habits send to manufacturers. Dig in and get your flamewar fingers fired up.

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Funkytown Performed By Old Hardware

July 13, 2008 by Eliot 8 Comments

Inspired by [James Houston]’s remix of Radiohead’s Nude on obsolete hardware, [bd594] put together this mix of Lipps Inc.’s Funkytown. No sampling was used, but he had to loop the footage of the Avaya dot matrix printer’s drum part because it shook the table too much. The guitar and bass line are performed by a Commodore 64. An Intel 14.4 external modem uses DTMF tones for the first part of of the lead and a TI-99/4A beeps out the rest. The TI is also used as a speech synthesizer and a Maxtor harddrive plays the the vocal track.

[via Matrixsynth]