Kritik sah

Some projects are a rite of passage within their respected fields. For computer science, building one’s own computer from scratch is certainly among those projects. Of course, we’re not talking about buying components online and snapping together a modern x86 machine. We mean building something closer to a fully-programmable 8-bit computer from the ground up, like this one from [Federico] based on 74LS logic chips . The computer was designed and built from scratch which is impressive enough, but [Federico] completed this project in about a month as well. It can be programmed manually through DIP switches or via a USB connection to another computer, and also includes an adjustable clock which can perform steps anywhere from 1 Hz to 32 kHz. Complete with a 1024 byte memory, a capable ALU, four seven-segment LEDs and (in the second version of the computer) a 2×16 LCD disply, this 8-bit computer has it all. Not only is this a capable machine designed by someone who clearly knows his way

Anyone who has through the process of learning to play a musical instrument for the first time, or listening to someone attempting to do so will know that it can be a rather painful and frustrating experience. [Alessandro Perini] apparently couldn’t get enough of the sound of a first-time musician, so he created a robot to play the melodica badly for hours on end, as demonstrated in the video after the break. The project is appropriately named “AI’ve just started to learn to play”, and attempts to copy every melody it hears in real-time. The robot consists of the cartridge carriage from an old printer, mounted on a wooden frame to hold the melodica. The original carriage used a DC motor with an encoder for accurate movement, but since position accuracy was not desirable, [Alessandro] ditched the encoder. Two small trolley wheels are mounted on the cartridge holder to push down on the melodica’s key. A bistable solenoid valve controls airflow to the melodica from an air compressor. Th

After the year humanity has endured, we could all use a little more relaxation in our lives. This atmosphere lamp is just the thing to set a relaxing ambience for work, studying, or hanging out . Just touch the surface and the light ripples to life, resembling the concentric circles that form on the surface of still water when it is touched. When the light settles, it looks like an inviting pool that’s ready for a nighttime swim. There aren’t really any surprises inside — the lamp is operated via capsense by touching the center of the top. Three NeoPixel rings and an RGB LED strip provide the lighting, and an Arduino UNO runs the show. [Qttting_F] used an inexpensive ceramic bowl with a piece of acrylic for a lid, but this could just as easily be printed in white PLA or something. Check it out in action after the break. Ambience is nice, but sometimes you need something more functional. Those types of lamps can be printed, too . from Blog – Hackaday https://ift.tt/3aZEt6K

Baking cupcakes is a fun pastime, and one which we imagine many people took up in this year of quarantine and lockdown. However, anything a human can do, a machine can certainly make an attempt at, as [Skyentific] shows with this roboticized cupcake machine . The build will be familiar to anyone who has worked with 3D printers or DIY CNC machines before. A series of stepper motors move a carriage carrying a regulation-sized patty pan. This is filled with dough from a tube, squirted out by a modified electric caulking gun. The carriage then transports it to a small microwave chamber of custom construction. After a minute or so of cooking, it’s then removed, and topping is applied from a further two caulking guns. An Arduino is in charge of the operation, running the show with some stepper drivers, limit switches, and a bank of relays. The final product isn’t the prettiest cupcake we’ve ever seen, but it’s perfectly edible. We can imagine with some small modifications the device could

Hardware hacking can be extremely multidisciplinary. If you only know bits and bytes, but not solder and electrons, you’re limited in what you can build. The same is true for mechanical design, where the forces of stress and strain suddenly apply to your project and the pile of code and PCBs comes crashing to the ground. In the first half of his workshop, Naman Pushp walks you through some of the important first concepts in mechanical engineering — how to think about the forces in the world that act on physical objects. And he brings along a great range of home-built Jugaad props that include a gravity-defying tensegrity string sculpture and some fancy origami that help hammer the topics home. In the second half of the workshop, Naman takes these concepts into computer simulation, and gives us good insight into the way that finite-element analysis simulation packages model these same forces on tiny chunks of your project’s geometry to see if it’ll hold up under real world load. T

Merry Christmas and happy holidays! I took Christmas day off from writing the security roundup, coming in a day early with this week’s installment, dodging New year’s day. The SolarWinds story has continued to dominate the news, so lets dive into it a bit deeper. Microsoft has published their analysis of Solorigate , and the details are interesting. The added code was carefully written to blend in with the rest of the code, using the name OrionImprovementBusinessLayer.Initialize , which sounds like a perfectly boring-yet-legitimate function. The actual backdoor is obfuscated using zip compression and base64 encoding. Once this bootstrap code begins, it runs a series of checks before actually doing anything malicious. It waits 2 weeks after installation to do anything, and then checks the system domain name for any indication it’s running in a test environment. It then checks for certain security applications, like Wireshark, and refuses to run if they are detected. This series of che

We rarely see teardowns this detailed. [txyzinfo] wanted to know what hardware was under the hood, and did an amazing Amazon Halo Teardown . Sometime around the middle of 2020, Amazon jumped on to the health and fitness tracker space with the introduction of the Halo — a $100 device with an add on $4 monthly subscription service if you wanted additional features, which Amazon calls “labs”, many of which are third-party services. The device does not have any display at all, and any metrics that need to be displayed (heart rate, steps, calories, etc.) show up on the Halo phone app. Halo’s focus is more on health, rather than fitness. It helps monitor your active and sleep states, keeps track of body fat, and reports your emotional state. We won’t delve much in to the pros and cons of the device, other than mention two features which have the potential to creep out most folks. The device has a pair of microphones, which listen to the “tone” of your voice and report on your emotional sta

The Zoom Meeting Connector suffers from a post-authentication remote root code execution vulnerability via the proxy server functionality. Zoom has patched this issue around 12/29/2020 and every user should update to the latest client to ensure they are not vulnerable. from Packet Storm https://ift.tt/2KPDFqq

Openpilot has a default SSH key that can allow attackers remote access if not changed. This script port scans and attempts to login to Openpilot SSH servers with the default key. from Packet Storm https://ift.tt/3aYKfFQ

qdPM versions 9.1 and below suffer from an executeExport PHP object injection vulnerability. from Packet Storm https://ift.tt/34YPr8V

114 bytes small Linux/x86 reverse TCP shellcode. from Packet Storm https://ift.tt/380WdfX

NASA is always keen to highlight the space agency’s many successes, and rightly so — those who pay for these expensive projects have a right to know what they’re getting for their money. And so the news was recently sprinkled with stories of the discovery of electron bursts beyond the edge of our solar system , caused by shock waves from coronal mass ejection (CME) from our Sun reflecting and accelerating electrons in interstellar plasmas. It’s a novel mechanism and an exciting discovery that changes a lot of assumptions about what happens out in the lonely space outside of the Sun’s influence. The recent discovery is impressive in its own right, but it’s even more stunning when you dig into the details of how it was made: by the 43-year-old Voyager spacecraft, each now about 17 light-hours away from Earth, and each carrying an instrument so simple and efficient that they’re still working all after this time — and which very nearly were left out of the mission’s science payload. Nic

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Since its debut back in 2012 there have been a variety of inventive displays used with the Raspberry Pi. Perhaps you remember the repurposed Motorola phone docks, or you have one of those little displays that plugs into the expansion port. Inevitably the smaller options become disappointing as desktop displays, because while the advert triumphantly shows them sporting a Raspberry Pi OS desktop the reality is almost unusable. Until now. Along comes [igbit] with a solution in the form of a little SPI display with a different approach to displaying a desktop . Instead of displaying a matchbox-sized desktop over the whole screen it divides into two halves. At the top is a representation of the desktop, while below it is a close-up on the area around the mouse pointer. Unexpectedly its mode of operation is very accessible to the non-Linux guru, because it works through a Python script that takes screenshots of both areas and passes them as a composite to the display. An area the size of t

Augmented reality (AR) technology hasn’t enjoyed the same amount of attention as VR, and seriously lags in terms of open source development and accessibility.  Frustrated by this, [Arnaud Atchimon] created CheApR , an open source, low cost AR headset that anyone can build at home and use as a platform for further development [Arnaud] was impressed by the Tilt Five AR goggles, but the price of this cutting edge hardware simply put it out of reach of most people. Instead, he designed and built his own around a 3D printed frame, ESP32, cheap LCDs, and lenses from a pair of sunglasses. The electronics is packed horizontally in the top of the frame, with the displays pointed down into a pair of angled mirrors, which reflect the image onto the sunglasses lenses and into the user’s eyes. [Arnaud] tested a number of different lenses and found that a thin lens with a slight curve worked best. The ESP32 doesn’t actually run the main software, it just handles displaying the images on the LCDs.

The LED is one of those fundamental building block components in electronics, something that’s been in the parts bin for decades. But while a simple LED costs pennies, that WS2812 or other fancy device is a bit expensive because internally it’s a hybrid of a silicon controller chip and several LEDs made from other semiconductor elements. Incorporating an LED on the same chip as its controller has remained something of a Holy Grail, and now an MIT team appear to have cracked it by demonstrating a CMOS device that integrates a practical silicon LED . It may not yet be ready for market but it already displays some interesting properties such as a very fast switching speed. Perhaps more importantly, further integration of what have traditionally been discrete components would have a huge impact on reducing manufacturing costs. Anyone who has read up on the early history of LEDs will know that the path from the early-20th-century discoveries of semiconductor luminescence through the early

Who doesn’t love epoxy? Epoxy resins, also known as polyepoxides, are an essential adhesive in many applications, both industrially and at smaller scales. Many polyepoxides however require the application of heat (around 150 °C for most types) in order to cure (harden), which can be complicated when the resin is applied to or inside layers of temperature sensitive materials. Now researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore have found a way to heat up resins using an alternating magnetic field (PDF), so-called magnetocuring. As detailed in the research article by R. Chaudhary et al., they used commercially available epoxy resin and added nano particles of a Mn x Zn 1-x Fe 2 O 4 alloy. This mixture was exposed to an alternating magnetic field to induce currents in the nano particles and subsequently produce heat that served to raise the temperature of the surrounding resin to about 160 °C in five minutes, allowing the resin to cure. There is no risk of overheatin

Last year [Emil] found themselves in the situation where a SEGGER J-link debug probe suddenly just stopped working. This was awkward not only because in-circuit debuggers are vital pieces of equipment in embedded firmware development, but also because they’re not that cheap. This led [Emil] to take the device apart to figure out what was wrong with it . After checking voltages on the PCB, nothing obvious seemed wrong. The Tag-Connect style JTAG header on the PCB appeared to be a good second stop, requiring only a bit of work to reverse-engineer the exact pinout and hook up an ST-Link V2 in-circuit debugger to talk with the STM32F205RC MCU on the PCB. This led to the interesting discovery that apparently the MCU’s Flash ROM had seemingly lost the firmware data. Fortunately [Emil] was able to flash back a version of the firmware which was available on the internet, allowing the J-Link device to work again. This was not the end of the story, however, as after this the SEGGER software wa

Sticking a Raspberry Pi in a Pelican-style case and calling it a cyberdeck has become something of a meme these days, and while we certainly don’t look down on such projects, we recognize they can get a bit repetitive. But we think this one is unique enough to get a pass. Sure [eizen6] mounted a Pi inside of a rugged waterproof case, but it’s simply serving as a display for the real star of the show: a vintage Atari 800XL computer . The overall look of the build, from the stenciled  Nostromo on the back to the self-destruct warning sticker over the display is a reference to Alien . Partly because both the film and the Atari 800 were released in 1979, but also because [eizen6] says this particular aesthetic is simply the way computers should look. The visual style is also meant to signify that the project embraces the old ways despite the sprinkling of modern technology. A custom cable lets the 800XL run on USB power. To that end, retro aficionados will be happy to hear that the A

We may have wooden satellites in just a few years, according to an announcement this month by  Kyoto University and Sumitomo Forestry , organizations whose combined roots go back 550 years. Wood’s place in high-technology has a long track record. During World War 2, wooden boats were used for minesweepers , the Spruce Goose was designed to circumvent wartime material restrictions, and Britain’s plywood-built De Havilland Mosquito had a very low radar cross section. In this century, a man in Bosnia has even built a Volkswagen Beetle out of oak . The newly-announced aerospace project, led by retired astronaut and engineer Prof Takao Doi , plans to launch satellites built from wood in order to reduce space debris and hazardous substances resulting from re-entry. We’re somewhat skeptical on the hazardous substances angle (and we’re not alone in this ), but certainly as a way to help ensure complete burn up upon re-entry, wood is an interesting material. It also achieves a great stren

It is not uncommon for a Hackaday writer to trawl the comments section of a given article, looking for insights or to learn something new. Often, those with experience in various fields will share kernels of knowledge or raise questions on a particular topic. Recently, I happened to be glazing over an article on aluminium casting with interest, given my own experience in the field. One comment in particular caught my eye .  And no, the water won’t cause a steam explosion. There’s a guy on youtube (myfordlover, I think) who disproves that myth with molten iron, pouring the iron into water, pouring water into a ladle of molten iron and so on. We’ll be happy to do a video demonstrating this with aluminum if so desired. Having worked for some time in an aluminium die casting plant, I sincerely hope [John] did not attempt this feat. While there are a number of YouTube videos showing that this can be done without calamity, there are many showing the exact opposite. Mixing molten alumini

How do you get people to love you and sidestep existential fear of robots eclipsing humans as the solar system’s most advanced thinking machines? You put on a dance routine to the music of Berry Gordy . The video published by Boston Dynamics shows off a range of their advanced robots moving as if they were humans, greyhounds, and ostriches made of actual flesh. But of course they aren’t, which explains the safety barriers surrounding the dance floor and that lack of actual audio from the scene. After picking our jaws up off the floor we began to wonder what it sounds like in the room as the whine of motors must certainly be quite impressive — check out the Handle video from 2017 for an earful of that . We also wonder how long a dance-off of this magnitude can be maintained between battery swaps. Anthropomorphism (or would it be canine-pomorphism?) is trending this year. We saw the Spot robot as part of a dance routine in an empty baseball stadium back in July. It’s a great marketing

On November 8th, 2020 the Sun exploded. Well, that’s a bit dramatic (it explodes a lot) — but a particularly large sunspot named AR2781 produced a C5-class solar flare which is a medium-sized explosion even for the Sun. Flares range from A, B, C, M, and X with a zero to nine scale in each category (or even higher for giant X flares). So a C5 is just about dead center of the scale. You might not have noticed, but if you lived in Australia or around the Indian Ocean and you were using radio frequencies below 10 MHz, you would have noticed since the flare caused a 20-minute-long radio blackout at those frequencies . According to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center , the sunspot has the energy to produce M-class flares which are an order of magnitude more powerful. NOAA also has a scale for radio disruptions ranging from R1 (an M1 flare) to R5 (an X20 flare). The sunspot in question is facing Earth for the moment, so any new flares will cause more problems. That led us to ask ourselve

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EgavilanMedia My To Do List version 1.0 suffers from a persistent cross site scripting vulnerability. from Packet Storm https://ift.tt/3n10bJK

The smaller ATtiny microcontrollers have a limited number of pins, and therefore rely on an internal 9.6 MHz oscillator rather than an external crystal. This oscillator lacks the accuracy of a crystal so individual chips can vary over a significant tolerance from the nominal figure. Happily the resulting timing inaccuracies can be mitigated through a calibration process, and [Stefan Wagner] has incorporated this into his Tiny Calibrator . In addition, it also has the required charge pump circuitry to reset the internal fuses to rescue “bricked” ATtinys, thus allowing those little mistakes to be salvaged. The board has its own larger ATtiny with a crystal oscillator and an OLED screen, allowing it to measure that of the test ATtiny and generate a correction factor which it applies to the chip. This process is repeated until there is the smallest possible difference from the standard. You can find the files for the hardware on EasyEDA , and the software in a GitHub repository . It’s im

If you had an Amiga during the 16-bit home computer era it’s possible that alongside the games and a bit of audio sampling you had selected it because of its impressive video capabilities. In its heyday the Amiga produced broadcast-quality graphics that could even be seen on more than a few TV shows from the late 1980s and early 1990s. It’s fair to say though that the world of TV has moved on since the era of Guru Meditation, and an SD video signal just won’t cut it anymore. With HDMI as today’s connectivity standard, [c0pperdragon] is here to help by way of a handy HDMI upgrade that taps into the digital signals direct from the Amiga’s Denise chip. At first thought one might imagine that an FPGA would be involved, however instead the signals are brought out via a daughterboard to the expansion header of a Raspberry Pi Zero. Just remove the DENISE display encoder chip and pop in the board with uses a long-pinned machined DIP socket to make the connections. The Pi runs software from t

There’s an old joke that the CEO of IKEA is running to be Prime Minister of Sweden. He says he’ll be able to put together his cabinet in no time. We don’t speak Swedish, but [Adam Miklosi] tells us that the word “uppgradera” means “upgrade” in Swedish. His website, uppgradera.co has several IKEA upgrade designs you can 3D print. There are currently six designs that all appear to be simple prints that have some real value. These are all meant to attach to some IKEA product and solve some consumer problem. For example, the KL01 is a cup holder with a clip that snaps into the groove of a KLIPSK bed tray. Without it, apparently, your coffee mug will tend to slide around the surface of the tray. The CH01 adds a ring around a cheese grater. There are drains for a soap dish and a toothbrush holder, shoulder pads for coat hangers, and a lampshade. We worry a little about the safety of the cheese grater and the toothbrush because you will presumably put the cheese and the toothbrush into yo