This WiFi Signal Strength Meter Ain’t Afraid Of No Ghosts

December 23, 2022 by Dan Maloney 5 Comments

The original Ghostbusters movie is a classic that’s still delivering nearly 40 years after its release — just let that sink in for a minute. Almost every aspect of the film, from hand props to quotes, is instantly recognizable, even to people who haven’t based their lives on the teachings of [Venkman], [Stantz], and [Spengler]. To wit, we present this PKE meter-style WiFi scanner.

Of course, [Kevin McAleer]’s project is strictly in the “Just for Fun” category. But that doesn’t mean it’s not at least somewhat useful. The design is pretty close to the original PKE meter, with a little bit of creative license taken to make it easier to build. Guts include a Raspberry Pi Pico W and a generous 320×240 LCD display. The body of the meter is entirely 3D printed; design files are of course available. The meter’s arms are geared together to move with a single hobby servo.

On the software side, [Kevin]’s GUI lets users see a list of WiFi hotspots in the area and select one from the list. From there, the position of the arms is determined by the RSSI for the hotspot, similar to how the prop was supposed to indicate the proximity to a spook, specter, or ghost. There’s perhaps a bit of a missed opportunity by not adding LEDs to the arms, but we’ll let that slide.

The video below has full design and build details, but fair warning that it’s a bit on the long side. That’s probably just a reflection of how much work [Kevin] put into this, though. Of course, you may rather build a PKE meter that “actually” detects ghosts, in which case we’ve got you covered.

Continue reading “This WiFi Signal Strength Meter Ain’t Afraid Of No Ghosts” →

Snail Mail Notifier’s Simple Power Management To Maximize Battery Life

December 19, 2022 by Donald Papp 33 Comments

There are no weird, specialized components nor esoteric sleep mode tricks behind the long battery life of [Zak]’s WiFi mail slot watcher. Just some sensible design and clever focus on the device’s purpose: to send an HTTP request whenever it detects that the front door’s mail slot has been opened. The HTTP request is what kicks off useful notifications, but it’s the hardware design that’s really worth a peek.

The watcher’s main components are a ESP-M2 WiFi module, a reed switch, and a single lithium cell. Here’s how it works at a high level: when the mail slot is opened (detected by the reed switch), the ESP module is powered up just long enough to connect to the local WiFi network and send a single HTTP request, after which it shuts back down. The whole process takes between four and ten seconds.

As mentioned, the power control isn’t managed by any unusual components; it comes down to a NAND gate with a single inverted input, and a MIC5504 3.3 V regulator responsible for feeding the ESP board. The logic gate controls whether the voltage regulator is enabled or disabled, and therefore whether the microcontroller receives any power at all. Most of the time the regulator is disabled, but when the reed switch triggers, its input to the NAND gate is pulled low and the regulator is turned on, booting up the ESP board.

In order to stay on, the first thing the ESP board does is use a GPIO pin to drive the inverted input of the NAND gate high in order to keep the regulator enabled, and it has a window of about half a second to do this. Once the HTTP request is sent (and the battery voltage sensed), the ESP board pulls that pin low, disabling the regulator and turning itself off until the reed switch once again begins the process.

After seven months of use, the battery has dropped from 4.2 V to 3.9 V, so there’s plenty of life left. The project’s GitHub repository has the necessary code if you’d like to apply some of its ideas to your own projects. Alternately, you may wish to consider supercapacitors and solar in lieu of batteries. Even if ultra-level power savings isn’t your bag, when WiFi and networking is involved, there are software-level opportunities to be more efficient. Even a judicious 1 ms delay can save a surprising amount of power in the right circumstances.

The WiFi Pumpkin Is The WiFi Pineapple We Have At Home

October 27, 2022 by Lewin Day 5 Comments

While networking was once all about the Cat 5 cables and hubs and routers, now most of us connect regularly in a wireless manner. Just like regular networks, wireless networks need auditing, and [Brains933] decided to whip up a tool for just that, nicknaming it the PumpkinPI_3.

The build is inspired by the WiFi Pineapple, which is a popular commercial pentesting tool. It runs the WiFi Pumpkin framework which allows the user to run a variety of attacks on a given wireless network. Among other features, it can act as a rogue access point, run man-in-the-middle attacks, and even spoof Windows updates if so desired.

In this case, [Brains933] grabbed a Raspberry Pi Zero W to run the framework. It was stuffed in a case with a Alfa Network AWUS036NHA wireless card due to its ability to run in monitoring mode — a capability required by some of the more advanced tools. It runs on a rechargeable LiPo battery for portability, and can be fitted with a small screen for ease of operation.

It should prove to be a useful tool for investigating wireless security on the go. Alternatively, you can go even leaner, running attacks off an ESP32.

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A Raspberry Pi Phone For The Modern Era

October 10, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 43 Comments

While it might seem like mobile phones are special devices, both in their ease of use and in their ubiquity in the modern culture, they are essentially nothing more than small form-factor computers with an extra radio and a few specific pieces of software to run. In theory, as long as you can find that software (and you pay for a service plan of some sort) you can get any computer to work as a phone. So naturally, the Raspberry Pi was turned into one.

[asherdundas], the phone’s creator, actually found a prior build based around the Raspberry Pi before starting this one. The problem was that it was built nearly a decade ago, and hadn’t been updated since. This build brings some modernization to the antiquated Pi phone, and starts with a 3D printed case. It also houses a touchscreen and a GSM antenna to connect to the cell network. With some other odds and ends, like a speaker and microphone, plus a battery and the software to tie it all together, a modern functional Raspberry Pi phone was created, with some extra details available on the project page.

The phone has the expected features — including calling, texting, and even a camera. A small WiFi USB dongle allows it to connect to the Internet too, allowing it to do all of the internet browsing a modern smartphone might want to do. The only thing that it might be pretty difficult to do is install Android apps, and although there are ways to get Android apps working in Linux, it’s not always strictly necessary to have this functionality.

A person sits on a couch in the background wearing a VR headset. A keyboard is on their lap and a backpack studded with antennas and cables sits in the foreground.

2022 Cyberdeck Contest: Cyberpack VR

September 25, 2022 by Navarre Bartz 4 Comments

Feeling confined by the “traditional” cyberdeck form factor, [adam] decided to build something a little bigger with his Cyberpack VR. If you’ve ever dreamed of being a WiFi-equipped porcupine, then this is the cyberdeck you’ve been waiting for.

Craving the upgradability and utility of a desktop in a more portable format, [adam] took an old commuter backpack and squeezed in a Windows 11 PC, Raspberry Pi, multiple wifi networks, an ergonomic keyboard, a Quest VR headset, and enough antennas to attract the attention of the FCC. The abundance of network hardware is due to [adam]’s “new interest: a deeper understanding of wifi, and control of my own home network even if my teenage kids become hackers.”

The Quest is setup to run multiple virtual displays via Immersed, and you can relax on the couch while leaving the bag on the floor nearby with the extra long umbilical. One of the neat details of this build is repurposing the bag’s external helmet mount to attach the terminal unit when not in use. Other details we love are the toggle switches and really integrated look of the antenna connectors and USB ports. The way these elements are integrated into the bag makes it feel borderline organic – all the better for your cyborg chic.

For more WiFi backpacking goodness you may be interested in the Pwnton Pack. We’ve also covered other non-traditional cyberdecks including the Steampunk Cyberdeck and the Galdeano. If you have your own cyberdeck, you have until September 30th to submit it to our 2022 Cyberdeck Contest!

A black PCB with an ESP32 and an SBM-20 geiger counter

Flexible Radiation Monitoring System Speaks LoRa And WiFi

September 10, 2022 by Robin Kearey 12 Comments

Radioactivity has always been a fascinating phenomenon for anyone interested in physics, and as a result we’ve featured many radioactivity-related projects on these pages over the years. More recently however, fears of nuclear disaster have prompted many hackers to look into environmental radiation monitoring. [Malte] was one of those looking to upgrade the radiation monitor on his weather station, but found the options for wireless geiger counters a bit limited.

So he decided to build himself his own Wifi and LoRa compatible environmental radiation monitor. Like most such projects it’s based on the ubiquitous Soviet-made SBM-20 GM tube, although the design also supports the Chinese J305βγ model. In either case, the tube’s operating voltage is generated by a discrete-transistor based oscillator which boosts the board’s 5 V supply to around 400 V with the help of an inductor and a voltage multiplier.

Graphs showing temperature, humidity and radiation levels — Data can be visualized in graphs, together with other data from the weather station like temperature and humidity

The tube’s output signal is converted into clean digital pulses to be counted by either an ESP32 or a Moteino R6, depending on the choice of wireless protocol. The ESP can make its data available through a web interface using its WiFi interface, while the Moteino can communicate through LoRa and sends out its data using MQTT. The resulting data is a counts-per-minute value which can be converted into an equivalent dose in Sievert using a simple conversion formula.

All design files are available on [Malte]’s website, including a PCB layout that neatly fits inside standard waterproof enclosures. Getting more radiation monitors out in the field can only be a good thing, as we found out when we tried to detect a radiation accident using community-sourced data back in 2019. Don’t like WiFi or LoRa? There’s plenty of other ways to connect your GM tubes to the internet.

Hackaday Prize 2022: Soviet Geiger Counter Gets WiFi

July 30, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 4 Comments

[Marek] has an impressive collection of old Soviet-style Geiger counters. These are handy tools to have in some specific situations, but for most of us they would be curiosities. Even so, they need some help from the modern world to work well, and [Marek] has come up with some pretty creative ways of bringing them into the 21st century. This version, for example, adds WiFi capabilities.

This build is based on the STS-5 Geiger tube but the real heavy lifting is handled by an ESP8266 which also provides a wireless network connection. There are some limitations to using an ESP8266 to control a time-sensitive device like a Geiger tube, especially the lack of local storage, but [Marek] solves this problem by including a real-time clock and locally caching data until a network connection is re-established. Future plans for the device include adding temperature and atmospheric temperature sensors.

Eventually this Geiger counter will be installed in a watertight enclosure outside so [Marek] can keep an eye on the background radiation of his neighborhood. Previously he was doing this with another build, but that one only had access to the network over an Ethernet cable, so this one is quite an upgrade.