Comparing USB To Ethernet Converters: Apple Vs. Knock-off

March 22, 2013 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

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[Angus Gratton] recently cracked open a pair of USB to Ethernet converters to see what’s inside. One was an Apple branded device, the other a no-name from eBay. The former rings in at $30, with the latter just $4. This type of comparison is one of our favorites. It’s especially interesting with Apple products as they are known for solid hardware choices and the knock-offs are equally infamous for shoddy imitations.

From the outside both devices look about the same. The internal differences start right away with a whole-board metal shield on the Apple dongle and none on the off-brand. But the hardware inside is actually quite similar. There’s an RJ-45 jack on the left, followed by the Ethernet isolation chip next to it. From there we start to see differences. The off-brand had a blank chip where Apple’s ASIX AX88772ALF USB to Ethernet bridge controller is located. There is also a difference with the clock; Apple is using two crystals with the other using just one.

[via Reddit]

Build Your Own Dumb USB Power Strip

February 22, 2013 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

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Here’s a USB charging center which [Kenneth Finnegan] built using parts from his junk bin. We’d like to reiterate our claim that he must have the most magical of junk bins (the last thing we saw him pull out of it was a 24-port managed Ethernet switch).

The jack on the side accepts the barrel connector from a 12V wall wart. [Kenneth] mentions that the 2.1mm jack is a standard he uses in all of his projects. Inside there’s a switch mode power supply that provides the regulated 5V to each USB port. We really like the fact that he added some protection; diy is no fun if you end up frying your beloved multi-hundred dollar devices. The yellow components are polyfuses which will cut the power if 600 mA of current is exceeded. This works great for almost all of his devices, but his iPod 4G doesn’t like the system. It sees the voltage dip just a bit and stops charging entirely.

Converting An IBM PCjr Joystick To USB

February 12, 2013 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

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Seeing this IBM joystick again really brings back memories. But it can be used on a modern system thanks to this USB conversion project.

This particular model had a connector which is foreign to us. It looks like a boxy USB-A plug, but has an eight-pin sockets which looks like it’s 0.1″ pitch. You could try to make your own male connector using a dual-row pin header, but [Gruso] just went ahead and lopped off the end of the cable. He managed to dig up the pin-out for the device and found that it could be wired up to a gameport — the connector being the only real difference. He gutted a USB gameport adapter, removing the DB15 connector and soldering directly to the board. The boxy old peripheral has just enough room to house that PCB.

If you’re looking for a few more details than this build album provides check out [Gruso’s] comments in the Reddit thread.

Type4me Is A Hardware Clipboard For Your Digital Copy And Paste Needs

January 14, 2013 by Mike Szczys 41 Comments

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It doesn’t happen often, but every now and again we find ourselves wanting for a more extensible cut and paste experience. Most notably we’ve searched for something that makes is very easy to keep multiple things in the clipboard and paste them as needed. Although we’ve tried several software offerings nothing really made it up to grade, but this hardware clipboard looks very promising. [Luca Dentella] calls it Type4me as it functions as a USB keyboard.

The PIC 18F14K50 enumerates as a USB keyboard, allowing it to send characters anywhere the cursor is located. It sends whatever string is stored inside, with an optional return character at the end. In addition to its keyboard properties it also establishes a serial connection, which allows you to push new strings to the device. This setup does require you to do copy or type your strings into a serial terminal, along with one of four special commands which are parsed by the microcontroller. One of these commands allows you to save the string to EEPROM so that it will be persistent through a power cycle.

The pasting back to the computer takes a mere push of the button. We’ve embedded the video demo after the break. It’s in Italian but there are English subtitles. Near the end [Luca] shows off the device as a macro button for gaming.

Continue reading “Type4me Is A Hardware Clipboard For Your Digital Copy And Paste Needs” →

Reverse Engineering ST-Link/V2 Firmware

January 7, 2013 by Mike Szczys 39 Comments

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The chip seen just above the center of this image is an ARM Cortex-M3. It provides the ability to interface and program the main chip on the STM32F3 Discovery board. The protocol used is the ST-Link/V2 which has become the standard for ST Microelectronics development boards. The thing is, that big ARM chip near the bottom of the image has multiple UARTs and bridging a couple of solder points will connect it to the ST-Link hardware. [Taylor Killian] wanted to figure out if there is built-in firmware support to make this a USB-to-serial converter and his path to the solution involved reverse engineering the ST-Link/V2 firmware.

The first part of the challenge was to get his hands on a firmware image. When you download the firmware update package the image is not included as a discrete file. Instead he had to sniff the USB traffic during a firmware update. He managed to isolate the file and chase down the encryption technique which is being used. It’s a fun read to see how he did this, and we’re looking forward to learning what he can accomplish now that’s got the goods he was after.

This Day In Hack A Day History: January 1st 2005

January 1, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 42 Comments

A new feature that we’re playing with is an occasional look back at this day in Hack a Day history. While we’re still hotly disputing exactly what, when, and how to show, we thought today would be a great day to introduce the idea.

So, in on this day in Hack a Day history we’re reaching back to our very first January 1, which was 2005. There are some interesting things to consider when reading this post. At this point in time, we were still sort of a growth off the side of engadget like [Kuato] from the 1990 version of Total Recall. We were less than a year old and still hadn’t completely developed our style, we didn’t really share much information about the project, and yep, the very first comment is “not a hack”.

Continue reading “This Day In Hack A Day History: January 1st 2005” →

Hackaday Links: December 13th, 2012

December 13, 2012 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

Cardboard box computer

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[Alistair] chapman had a Laptop with a broken screen sitting in his parts bin. He knew he had an LCD panel on hand that would probably work with it, but it wouldn’t fit in the case. His solution was to transplant all the computer parts into a cardboard box from a motherboard.

This violin is garbage

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The kids in this orchestra live in a villiage built on top of a landfill. But they make the most out of what they have. This orchestra is composed of instruments built from garbage and they seem to work pretty well. [Thanks Bruce]

More LED mystery puzzles

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[Henryk] is at it again. He puts together some very impressive circuits that play tricks on your engineering mind. His latest is three LEDs in series. Look closely and you’ll see they’re not performing as expected. Watching the solution to one of his previous puzzles will help you figure out how he’s doing it. His work is simply amazing.

Netbook framed as a dedicated weather station

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Not wanting to get rid of old but still working hardware, [Retro Toaster] built a dedicated weather station by mounting the screen, keyboard, and track pad in a picture frame.

Current and voltage testing your USB projects

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