Book Review: The Art Of The Patent

July 5, 2017 by Jenny List 20 Comments

In bringing suitable illustrations to our articles, we Hackaday scribes use a variety of sources that offer images featuring permissive licences. Among the usual free image libraries there is one particularly rich source, the line drawings contained within the huge archives of patents granted by the various countries around the world. These are the illustrations used as part of the patent itself to describe the working of the patent being claimed. We use them because though the items they depict are legally protected from copying by the patents they are part of, they as part of the patents themselves are in the public domain. Thus we can easily find detailed hand drawn pictures of all kinds of technical innovations from the last couple of hundred years or so, and from time to time you as our readers reap the benefit.

The beauty in hand-rendered fonts from patent artwork, collected within the book.

If you spend a while browsing old patents through a search engine such as Google Patents, you can quickly become engrossed in these beautiful images of inventions past. Though their purpose is a functional one to convey the workings of an invention, the anonymous artists have often poured all of their skill into rendering them as considerably more than mere draughtsmanship. In those dusty Government archives lurk masterpieces, just waiting to be found.

It seems we here at Hackaday are not alone in sharing a fascination with these images, for a US patent agent, [Kevin Prince], wrote a fascinating exploration of the medium in his book, The Art of the Patent. Continue reading “Book Review: The Art Of The Patent” →

Malduino Elite – First Impressions

May 31, 2017 by Pedro Umbelino 39 Comments

A while back, I wrote an article about Malduino, an Arduino-based, open-source BadUSB device. I found the project interesting so I signed up for an Elite version and sure enough, the friendly postman dropped it off in my mail box last Friday, which means I got to play around with it over the weekend. For those who missed the article, Malduino is USB device which is able to emulate a keyboard and inject keystrokes, among other things. When in a proper casing, it will just look like a USB flash drive. It’s like those things you see in the movies where a guy plugs in a device and it auto hacks the computer. It ships in two versions, Lite and Elite, both based on the ATmega32U4.

The Lite version is really small, besides the USB connector it only contains a switch, which allows the user to choose between running and programming mode, and a LED, which indicates when the script has finished running.

Original Malduino Elite sketch and Lite prototype

The Elite version is bigger, comes with a Micro-SD card reader and four DIP switches, which allow the user to choose which script to run from the card. It also has the LED, which indicates when a script has finished to run. This allows the user to burn the firmware only once and then program the keystroke injection scripts that stored in the Micro-SD card, in contrast to the Lite version which needs to be flashed each time a user wants to run a different script.

These are the two Malduinos and because they are programmed straight from the Arduino IDE, every feature I just mentioned can be re-programmed, re-purposed or dropped all together. You can buy one and just choose to use it like a ‘normal’ Arduino, although there are not a lot of pins to play around with. This freedom was one the first things I liked about it and actually drove me to participate in the crowd-funding campaign. Read on for the full review.
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Scope Review: Keysight 1000 X-Series

May 2, 2017 by Adil Malik 73 Comments

A few weeks ago we published an article on the newly released Keysight 1000X, an oscilloscope that marks Keysight’s late but welcome entry into the hacker-centric entry-level market. Understandably, this scope is causing a lot of excitement as it promises to bring some of the high-end pedigree of the well-known 2000X and 3000X models down to a much affordable price. Now couple that with the possibility of hacking its bandwidth lock and all this fuss is well justified.

[Dave Jones] from the EEVblog got his hands on one, and while conducting a UART dump saw the scope report 200 MHz bandwidth despite being labelled as a 100 MHz model. He then proceeded to actually hack the main board to unlock an undocumented 200 MHz bandwidth mode. This created a lot of confusion: some said [Dave] got a “pre-hacked” version, others assumed all 100 MHz versions actually have a stock bandwidth of 200 MHz.

Alongside the question of bandwidth, many wondered how this would fare against the present entry-level standard, the Rigol 1054Z. Is the additional cost and fewer channels worth the Keysight badge?

Keysight’s response to our queries and confusion was the promise to send us a review unit. Well, after receiving it and playing around with it, clearly a lot of Keysight’s high-end excellence has trickled down to this lower end version. However, this machine was not without some silly firmware issues and damning system crashes! Read on the full review below. Continue reading “Scope Review: Keysight 1000 X-Series” →

Review: The O-scope Mayer D4/WG5 Calibrated Fleshy Test Probe

April 1, 2017 by Jenny List 54 Comments

A selection of probes, from [Jim Williams'] Linear Technology app note 72. — A selection of probes, from [Jim Williams’] Linear Technology app note 72.

It’s not often that we are shown an entirely new class of test equipment here at Hackaday, so it was with some surprise that we recently received the new O-scope Mayer offering. If your most simple piece of test equipment is your own finger, able to measure temperature, detect voltage, and inject a 50 or 60 Hz sine wave, then what they have done is produce a synthetic analogue with a calibrated reading. The idea is that where previously you could only say “Too hot!”, or “High voltage!”, you should now be able to use their calibrated probe to gain an accurate reading.

The O-scope Mayer D4/WG5 Calibrated Fleshy Test Probe is a roughly 4″ (100mm) long cylinder of their InteliMeat™ synthetic finger analogue terminated with a calibrated matching unit and a BNC socket. In the box aside from the instruction leaflet is a BNC lead through which you can connect it to your oscilloscope.

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Antenna Analyzer Is A Lab In A Box

March 3, 2017 by Al Williams 6 Comments

There was a time when the measure of a transmitting radio antenna was having it light an incandescent bulb. A step up was a classic SWR/Power meter that showed you forward and reflected power. Over the years, a few other instruments have tried to provide a deeper look into antenna performance. However, the modern champion is the antenna analyzer which is a way of measuring vector impedance.

[Captain Science] did a review of an inexpensive N1201SA analyzer. This device is well under $200 from the usual Chinese sellers. The only thing a bit odd is the frequency range which is 140 MHz to 2700 MHz. For some extra money (about $80 or $100 more) you can drop the low-end frequency to just under 35 MHz.

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Review: Hammer-Installed Solderless Raspberry Pi Pin Headers

January 16, 2017 by Jenny List 106 Comments

A few days ago we reported on a new product for owners of the Raspberry Pi Zero, a set of solderless header pins that had a novel installation method involving a hammer. We were skeptical that they would provide a good contact, and preferred to stick with the tried-and-trusted soldered pins. It seems a lot of you agreed, and the comments section of the post became a little boisterous. Pimoroni, the originator of the product, came in for a lot of flak, with which to give them their due they engaged with good humor.

It’s obvious this was a controversial product, and maybe the Hackaday verdict had been a little summary based on the hammer aspect of the story. So to get further into what all the fuss had been about I ordered a Pi Zero and the solderless pin kit to try for ourselves.

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Books You Should Read: The Hardware Hacker

December 16, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 20 Comments

There’s no one quite like Andrew ‘Bunnie’ Huang. His unofficial resume begins with an EE degree from MIT, the author of Hacking the Xbox, creator of the Chumby, developer of the Novena, the first Open Source laptop, and has mentored thousands of people with dozens of essays from his blog.

Above all, Bunnie is a bridge across worlds. He has spent the last decade plying the markets of Shenzhen, working with Chinese manufacturers, and writing about his experiences of taking an idea and turning it into a product with the help of Chinese partners. In short, there is no person better suited to tell the story of how Shenzhen works, what can be done, and how to do it.

Bunnie’s The Hardware Hacker ($29.95, No Starch Press) is the dead tree expression of years of living and working in Shenzhen, taking multiple products to market, and exploring the philosophy that turned a fishing village into a city that produces the world’s electronic baubles.

Continue reading “Books You Should Read: The Hardware Hacker” →