Hackaday Links: September 29, 2024

September 29, 2024 by Dan Maloney 16 Comments

There was movement in the “AM Radio in Every Vehicle Act” last week, with the bill advancing out of the US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee and heading to a full floor vote. For those not playing along at home, auto manufacturers have been making moves toward deleting AM radios from cars because they’re too sensitive to all the RF interference generated by modern vehicles. The trouble with that is that the government has spent a lot of effort on making AM broadcasters the centerpiece of a robust and survivable emergency communications system that reaches 90% of the US population.

The bill would require cars and trucks manufactured or sold in the US to be equipped to receive AM broadcasts without further fees or subscriptions, and seems to enjoy bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate. Critics of the bill will likely point out that while the AM broadcast system is a fantastic resource for emergency communications, if nobody is listening to it when an event happens, what’s the point? That’s fair, but short-sighted; emergency communications isn’t just about warning people that something is going to happen, but coordinating the response after the fact. We imagine Hurricane Helene’s path of devastation from Florida to Pennsylvania this week and the subsequent emergency response might bring that fact into focus a bit.

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Gaze Upon This Intricate Victorian-Era Time Lock

May 29, 2019 by Donald Papp 7 Comments

The concept of a time lock is an old one, and here you can see an example of the clockwork and gears version that kept vaults sealed against unauthorized openings. Even if the correct combination was known, these devices prevented opening until a pre-arranged amount of time had passed. The fine folks at [Industrial Alchemy] got a copy of a Yale Triple L mechanical time lock, and like other devices of its kind it required manual winding to function. Since the device as a whole was sealed against tampering, winding and setting was done with a key via the small holes in the front.

These devices were mounted on the inside of a vault door, and worked by mechanically interfacing with the lock mechanism in a variety of different ways depending on make and model. While the time lock was engaged, opening the door was prevented even if the correct combination was used. You may notice the multiple movements; this was for redundancy. The movements were interfaced in a mechanical OR arrangement, meaning that the first one to count down to zero would disengage the time lock. In the case of a malfunction, the backup movements would be responsible for preventing a total lockout — a condition as inconvenient and embarrassing as it would be costly.

Embedded below is a video that focuses on swapping movements in a time lock, but happens to also do a good job of showing off the mechanical design and components. Clockwork was the high technology of its time, and interest in it has seen something of a resurgence now that 3D printing is commonplace.

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Colette Biometric Security Purse Screams When Stolen

November 8, 2017 by Brian McEvoy 18 Comments

A team of college hackers was disappointed with the selection of secure purses available. Nearly every purse on the market is attractive, secure, or neither so they are designing their own security purse with some style. Instead of just brass or leather clasps keeping unwanted hands out, they are upgrading to automation and steel.

Everything starts with a fingerprint reader connected to an Arduino. Once an acceptable finger is recognized, a motor opens a coffin lock, also known as a butt-joint fastener, which can be completely hidden inside the purse and provides a lot of holding force. That is enough to keep quick fingers from reaching into an unattended purse.

In the case of a mugging, a sound grenade will trigger which should convince most thieves to quickly abandon it. Then, the internal GPS tells the owner where the purse can be found.

We can’t imagine a real-life purse thief prepared to tackle this kind of hardware. Hackaday loves knowing the ins and out of security from purses to cars and of course IoT.

Playing Hacker With A Toy Vault

November 15, 2010 by Mike Szczys 22 Comments

[Thomas Cannon] created his own hacking game by adding some circuitry to this toy vault. The original toy uses the keypad to control a solenoid keeping the door shut. He kept the mechanical setup, but replaced the original circuit board with his own ATmega328 based internals. He also added a USB port to the front. The gist of the game is that you plug-in through USB to gain access to the vault’s terminal software. If you can make your way through the various levels of admin access the loot inside will be yours.

Portable Password Vault

September 26, 2010 by Mike Szczys 38 Comments

This little box remembers all of your user names and passwords. Inside you’ll find an Atmel AT89S5131 microcontroller which has built-in USB capability. When the box is plugged into a USB port it identifies as a keyboard. Manipulating the buttons on the top and side will select and print out various stored usernames and passwords. Passwords are generated on-chip from a random seed and the device itself requires a passcode after power up as a security feature.

[SigFLUP’s] included a pretty nifty configuration algorithm. It doesn’t rely on a terminal connection, since the device is a keyboard you can communicate with it in an editor window (which should make it platform independent). There’s no code available, but trying to write your own to the spec outlined in the demo after the break will make for a fun weekend project.

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