Sticking the perfect landing can take years of practice for a human gymnast, and it seems the same is true for little monopedal jumping robots. Salto-1P, an old acquaintance here on Hackaday, always needed to keep jumping to stay upright. With some clever control software improvements, it can now land reliably on an area the size of a coin, and then stay there. (Video after the break)

[Justin Yim] from the UC Berkeley’s Biomimetics Lab has been working on Salto for the past four years, and we’ve covered it twice before. Attitude control is handles by a combination of propeller thrusters for roll and yaw, and a reaction wheel for pitch.While it was already impressive before, it had a predictable landing area about the size of a dinner plate.

The trick to the perfect landing is a combination of landing angle, angular velocity and angular momentum. Salto can only correct for ±2.3° of landing angle error, because it doesn’t have a second foot to catch itself when something goes wrong. Ideally the robot’s angular velocity and momentum should be as close as possible to 0 at takeoff, which gives the reaction wheel maximum control authority in flight, as well as on landing.  Basically a well executed takeoff directly influences the chances of a good landing.  [Justin] does an excellent job explaining all this and more on the project’s presentation video.

What is the practical application of Salto, you may ask? Search and rescue of course.

Successfully controlling a robot like Salto is all about control theory. If you want to learn more about the field, you can check out some online lectures on the fundamentals, or get your feet wet with self-blancing robots.

Thanks [Qes] for the tip!

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/02/little-jumping-bot-can-now-stick-the-perfect-landing/

Sticking the perfect landing can take years of practice for a human gymnast, and it seems the same is true for little monopedal jumping robots. Salto-1P, an old acquaintance here on Hackaday, always needed to keep jumping to stay upright. With some clever control software improvements, it can now land reliably on an area the size of a coin, and then stay there. (Video after the break)

[Justin Yim] from the UC Berkeley’s Biomimetics Lab has been working on Salto for the past four years, and we’ve covered it twice before. Attitude control is handles by a combination of propeller thrusters for roll and yaw, and a reaction wheel for pitch.While it was already impressive before, it had a predictable landing area about the size of a dinner plate.

The trick to the perfect landing is a combination of landing angle, angular velocity and angular momentum. Salto can only correct for ±2.3° of landing angle error, because it doesn’t have a second foot to catch itself when something goes wrong. Ideally the robot’s angular velocity and momentum should be as close as possible to 0 at takeoff, which gives the reaction wheel maximum control authority in flight, as well as on landing.  Basically a well executed takeoff directly influences the chances of a good landing.  [Justin] does an excellent job explaining all this and more on the project’s presentation video.

What is the practical application of Salto, you may ask? Search and rescue of course.

Successfully controlling a robot like Salto is all about control theory. If you want to learn more about the field, you can check out some online lectures on the fundamentals, or get your feet wet with self-blancing robots.

Thanks [Qes] for the tip!

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/02/little-jumping-bot-can-now-stick-the-perfect-landing/

Swimming is a great way to exercise, both for the cardiovascular benefits and the improved muscle tone. However, while he’s a fan, [Peter Quinn] sometimes finds it hard to keep track of how far he’s gone when he gets in the zone. Obviously, the solution is an electronic lap counter, which [Peter] promptly set about creating.

The build is based around an ultrasonic distance sensor, which is triggered when it detects a swimmer approaching the end of the lane. It’s run by an Arduino Nano, which is also set up to announce the accumulated distance with a speech synth library. [Peter] notes there have been some stumbling blocks thus far, necessitating modifications along the way. Water ingress into the ultrasonic sensor has required the installation of a protective shroud, while battery operation has required a module to properly handle the lithium-polymer battery.

While we might hesitate to bring a takeaway container full of wires, circuit boards and an LED display to a public pool for fear of being deemed a bomber, the basic bones of the project are a great way to approach the problem. There’s plenty of scope to implement laptiming too, as we’ve seen in other sporting builds!

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/02/swimming-pool-lap-counter-relies-on-ultrasound/

A good instrument stays with its owner for a lifetime, becoming part of their essential trusted toolkit to be consulted as a matter of habit. If you use a caliper to measure dimensions  you’ll know this, and a quick glance at its scale or digital display will be second nature. But if you aren’t fortunate enough to have the eyesight to see the caliper, then it’s off-limits, and that’s something [Naomi Wu] has addressed with her open-source accessible speaking caliper app. It’s an Android app that connects to digital calipers that contain Bluetooth connectivity, and as well as speaking aloud the caliper reading it also displays it in very large text on the device screen. As well as the source link from which you can build the app, it’s available for installation directly from the Google Play Store.

If you’re used to [Naomi] from her video tours of the electronics businesses in her native Shenzhen, her eye-catching wearable projects, or her exploits with an industrial CNC machine in her living room, you might be interested to know that aside from this app she’s been a long-time proponent of open-source in China. She was responsible among other projects for the Sino:bit educational computer board, which holds the distinction for her of having secured the first ever Chinese OSHWA certification.

You can see the caliper app in action below the break.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/02/digital-caliper-talks-for-accessibility-with-this-app/

Hackers being as a rule practical people, we sometimes get a little guff when we run a story on an art installation, on the grounds of not being sufficiently hacky. We understand that, but sometimes the way an artist weaves technology into their pieces is just too cool to pass us, as with this thread-printing art piece entitled On Framing Textile Ambiguities.

We’ll leave criticism of the artistic statement that [Nathalie Gebert]’s installation makes to others more qualified, and instead concentrate on its technical aspects. The piece has four frames made mainly from brass rods. Three of the frames have vertical rods that are connected to stepper motors and around which is wrapped a single thread. The thread weaves back and forth over the rods on one frame, forming a flat surface that constantly changes as the rods rotate, before heading off to do the same on the others. The fourth frame has a platen that the thread passes over with a pen positioned right above it. As the thread pauses in its endless loop, the pen clicks down onto it, making a dot of color. The dots then wend their way through the frame, occasionally making patterns that are just shy of recognizable before morphing into something new. The video below shows it better than it can be easily described.

Love it or hate it, you’ve got to admit that it has some interesting potential as a display. And it sort of reminds us of this thread-art polar robot, although this one has the advantage of being far simpler.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/01/art-piece-builds-up-images-with-dots-on-thread/

It started with an old TV sound chip, and some curiosity. The TDA1701 that [Philip Bragg] found in a box of junk is a complete FM IF strip and audio power amplifier from the golden age of analogue PAL televisions, and while it was designed for the 5.5 MHz or 6 MHz FM subcarrier of European broadcast TV, he found it worked rather well at the more usual 10.7 MHz of a radio receiver. There followed a long thread detailing the genesis bit-by-bit of a decent quality VHF radio receiver, built dead-bug-style on a piece of PCB material.

The TDA1701 was soon joined by a couple of stages of IF amplification with a ceramic filter, and then by several iterations of a JFET mixer. A varicap tuned MOSFET RF amplifier followed, and then a local oscillator. Finally it became a fully-functional FM radio, with probably far better performance than most commercial radios. He admits tuning is a little impractical though, with what appears to be a cermet preset potentiometer covering the entire band.

We suspect this project isn’t finished, and we hope he posts the schematic. But it doesn’t really matter if he doesn’t, because the value here isn’t in the design. Instead it lies in the joy of creating an ad-hoc radio just for the fun of it, and that’s something we completely understand.

We’ve covered a lot of radios in our time, and while it might be the first to feature a TV sound chip, it’s not the first built on bare PCB.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/01/a-homebrew-radio-as-all-the-best-homebrew-radios-should-be/

It started with an old TV sound chip, and some curiosity. The TDA1701 that [Philip Bragg] found in a box of junk is a complete FM IF strip and audio power amplifier from the golden age of analogue PAL televisions, and while it was designed for the 5.5 MHz or 6 MHz FM subcarrier of European broadcast TV, he found it worked rather well at the more usual 10.7 MHz of a radio receiver. There followed a long thread detailing the genesis bit-by-bit of a decent quality VHF radio receiver, built dead-bug-style on a piece of PCB material.

The TDA1701 was soon joined by a couple of stages of IF amplification with a ceramic filter, and then by several iterations of a JFET mixer. A varicap tuned MOSFET RF amplifier followed, and then a local oscillator. Finally it became a fully-functional FM radio, with probably far better performance than most commercial radios. He admits tuning is a little impractical though, with what appears to be a cermet preset potentiometer covering the entire band.

We suspect this project isn’t finished, and we hope he posts the schematic. But it doesn’t really matter if he doesn’t, because the value here isn’t in the design. Instead it lies in the joy of creating an ad-hoc radio just for the fun of it, and that’s something we completely understand.

We’ve covered a lot of radios in our time, and while it might be the first to feature a TV sound chip, it’s not the first built on bare PCB.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/01/a-homebrew-radio-as-all-the-best-homebrew-radios-should-be/

[Donald Bell’s] robotic bartender entry into the 2020 Cocktail Robotics Grand Challenge is one of those things that sounds easy until you start getting into the details. After all, how hard is it to dispense some liquids into a glass? Harder than you might think. Sure there are pumps — [Donald] uses peristaltic pumps — but there’s also two Raspberry Pis, an ESP8622, and at least one more microcontroller lurking underneath. You can see a video about the device below.

Even if you don’t want a refreshing libation, you’ll probably like the VK-01’s Bladerunner cyberpunk styling. What we really enjoyed about the post was that it took you through the concept sketches, some of the design trades, and even a cardboard prototype.

There are some interesting thoughts about the psychology of a robot bartender, too. Apparently, people don’t find it satisfying to push a button and have a drink silently pour out like a hospital coffee machine.

There’s also an RFID card that [Donald] had ambitious plans for, but for now, it just detects that the user scanned a card. The software is something called Hello Drinkbot, so the custom software doesn’t have to do that part.

On the hardware side, there were a few clever tricks. For example, since the pumps only run forward — you never suck liquor back up from a glass — the machine gets double duty out of a motor driver meant to drive four motors bidirectionally.

Definitely not the first robot mixologist we’ve seen. If you don’t want to serve drinks to replicants, maybe you need one of these.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/01/vk-01-is-a-bartender-you-dont-need-to-tip/

If you home has never been subject to a rodent invasion then you are fortunate. Our world is full of rats and mice, and despite the best efforts of humanity to keep them at bay it is inevitable that a few will find their way through. For [Marius Taciuc] this became a problem, as his traps needed constant checking to avoid the prospect of a festering rat carcass. His solution? A humane trap equipped with an ESP8266, that notifies him when the rodent is incarcerated.

The tech behind it is about as simple as it’s possible to get, the trap’s door activates a switch, that powers on an ESP8266 module. The ESP’s code simply wakes it up, connects to a wireless network, and sends a query to IFTTT with a call to a service that sends him an email alert. There’s no need to monitor any GPIO lines or have any code running to keep an eye on the trap, it’s all purely a function of the power switch.

The trap itself is interesting, in that it’s a home-made one constructed from soldered copper wire. Sadly there are few details of its construction, but you can see more of it including a live rat inside it, in the video below the break. And if making a trap catches your interest, we can help you there.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/01/youve-got-rat/

As the retro craze has gone mainstream, we’ve grown used to seeing “mini” versions of classic hardware, preloaded with a selection of games and ready for a wallow in nostalgia. Unfortunately for fans of the less well-know platforms, the only devices to get the mini treatment so far are popular ones such as the Nintendo consoles, or the Commodore 64. This is something [Svofski] is aiming to change for one classig micro, by producing a mini version of the Soviet Vector-06c. And unlike the Commodore with its fake keyboard, this one will work in its entirety and have a fully-functional keyboard.

It’s a build that’s not finished yet. But in this case that’s no bad thing, because such is the extreme attention to detail that you’ll want to stick around and watch it unfold. The electronics will come courtesy of an FPGA recreation of the hardware, while the Vector’s unique keyboard is being recreated in miniature, with keycaps designed to fit a particular Alps switch. These are 3D-printed, painted, and then marked with their decals using stencils carefully etched from copper sheet. Even if you have no interest in the Vector-06c, these techniques could find a place in so many other projects.

The wonderfully ingenious and diverse world of Soviet technology has found its way onto these pages many times over the years, including at least one other microcomputer, and even a supercomputer. If your interests extend behind the Iron Curtain though, you might wish to read our colleague [Voja Antonic]’s account of hacking in Communist Yugoslavia.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/01/this-mini-soviet-micro-will-have-astounding-attention-to-detail/

You’d think that the 8086 microprocessor, a 40-year-old chip with a mere 29,000 transistors on board that kicked off the 16-bit PC revolution, would have no more tales left to tell. But as [Ken Shirriff] discovered, reverse engineering the chip from die photos reveals some hidden depths.

The focus of [Ken]’s exploration of the venerable chip is the charge pump, a circuit that he explains was used to provide a bias voltage across the substrate of the chip. Early chips generally took this -5 volt bias voltage from a pin, which meant designers had to provide a bipolar power supply. To reduce the engineering effort needed to incorporate the 8086 into designs, Intel opted for an on-board charge pump to generate the bias voltage. The circuit consists of a ring oscillator made from a trio of inverters, a pair of transistors, and some diodes to act as check valves. By alternately charging a capacitor and switching its polarity relative to the substrate, the needed -5 volt bias is created.

Given the circuit required, it was pretty easy for [Ken] to locate it on the die. The charge pump takes up a relatively huge amount of die space, which speaks to the engineering decisions Intel made when deciding to include it. [Ken] drills down to a very low level on the circuit, with fascinating details on how the MOSFETs were constructed, and why eight transistors were used instead of two diodes. As usual, his die photos are top quality, as are his explanations of what’s going on down inside the silicon.

If you’re somehow just stumbling upon [Ken]’s body of work, you’re in for a real treat. To get you started, you’ll want to check out how he found pi baked into the silicon of the 8087 coprocessor, or perhaps his die-level exploration of different Game Boy audio chips.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/31/reverse-engineering-the-charge-pump-of-an-8086-microprocessor/

Hand sanitizer is the hot product of 2020, and it seems nobody can get enough. In the same way that touching a dirty tap takes the shine off washing your hands in a public bathroom, one wishes to avoid touching the hand sanitizer bottle entirely. To get around this, [makendo] whipped up a quick solution.

The solution consists of a 3D printed caddy which holds a typical bottle of hand sanitizer. This is affixed to a wall with either screws or double sided tape. A long string is then attached to the dispenser nozzle, and passes down to a foot pedal. By depressing the pedal, it pulls on the string, pulling down the dispenser nozzle and delivering the required sanitizer to the hands.

It’s by no means an advanced hack, but one that can be whipped up in a short time to make sanitizing one’s hands just that little bit more pain-free. If you’re still short on sanitizer, you might want to make your own. If you do, let us know how it goes. Otherwise, consider alternate methods of automating the delivery!

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/31/sanitizer-dispenser-does-it-hands-free/

Hand sanitizer is the hot product of 2020, and it seems nobody can get enough. In the same way that touching a dirty tap takes the shine off washing your hands in a public bathroom, one wishes to avoid touching the hand sanitizer bottle entirely. To get around this, [makendo] whipped up a quick solution.

The solution consists of a 3D printed caddy which holds a typical bottle of hand sanitizer. This is affixed to a wall with either screws or double sided tape. A long string is then attached to the dispenser nozzle, and passes down to a foot pedal. By depressing the pedal, it pulls on the string, pulling down the dispenser nozzle and delivering the required sanitizer to the hands.

It’s by no means an advanced hack, but one that can be whipped up in a short time to make sanitizing one’s hands just that little bit more pain-free. If you’re still short on sanitizer, you might want to make your own. If you do, let us know how it goes. Otherwise, consider alternate methods of automating the delivery!

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/31/sanitizer-dispenser-does-it-hands-free/

Hand sanitizer is the hot product of 2020, and it seems nobody can get enough. In the same way that touching a dirty tap takes the shine off washing your hands in a public bathroom, one wishes to avoid touching the hand sanitizer bottle entirely. To get around this, [makendo] whipped up a quick solution.

The solution consists of a 3D printed caddy which holds a typical bottle of hand sanitizer. This is affixed to a wall with either screws or double sided tape. A long string is then attached to the dispenser nozzle, and passes down to a foot pedal. By depressing the pedal, it pulls on the string, pulling down the dispenser nozzle and delivering the required sanitizer to the hands.

It’s by no means an advanced hack, but one that can be whipped up in a short time to make sanitizing one’s hands just that little bit more pain-free. If you’re still short on sanitizer, you might want to make your own. If you do, let us know how it goes. Otherwise, consider alternate methods of automating the delivery!

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/31/sanitizer-dispenser-does-it-hands-free/

One of the basic truths of ground vehicles is that they are always cooler with tank tracks. Maybe not better, but definitely cooler. [Ivan Miranda] takes this to heart, and is arguably the king of 3D printed tank projects on YouTube. He has built a giant 3D printed electric skateboard with tank tracks with the latest version of his giant 3D printer. Videos after the break.

The skateboard consists of a large steel frame, with tracked bogies on either end. Most of the bogie components are 3D printed, including the wheels and tracks, and each bogie is driven by a brushless motor via a belt. Some bends were added to the steel frame with just 3D printed inserts for his bench vice. The bogies are mounted to the frame with a standard skateboard truck, which allows it to steer like a normal skateboard, by tilting the deck. It looks as though this works well on a smooth concrete floor, but we suspect that turning will be harder on rough surface where the tracks can’t slide. We’ll have to wait for the next video for a full field test.

The large components for this skateboard were printed on [Ivan]’s MK3 version of his giant 3D printer. Although it’s very similar to the previous version, improvements were made in key areas. The sliding bed frame’s weight was reduced by almost 50%, and the wheels were rotated, so they ride on top of the extrusion below it, instead of on it’s side, which helps the longevity of the wheels. This also allows bed levelling to be done by turning the eccentric spacers on each of the wheels. The rigidity of base frame and x-axis beam were increased by adding more aluminium extrusions. Although he doesn’t explicitly mention the print volume, it looks to be the same as the previous version, which was 800x500x500. For materials other than PLA, we suspect a heated build chamber will be required have any chance of making big prints without excessive warping.

[Ivan] really likes big prints, with a number of 3D printed tanks, a giant nerf gun, and a sand drawing bot.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/31/electric-skateboard-with-tank-tracks-from-a-big-3d-printer/

With the movie Man of War shooting in Cyprus, there was a problem. They needed prop guns that looked realistic and ejected cases when fired, but that were also allowed under the country’s firearm laws. The task fell on [Paradym’s] shoulders, and he set to work producing a prop capable of doing the job.

With the laws in Cyprus, using anything off-the-shelf like an Airsoft pistol was simply not allowed. Instead, he had to start from scratch, creating a design outwardly similar to the Colt 1911 to suit the era of the film. Using green gas canisters for power, the first focus was on getting a realistic semi-automatic firing cycle happening. With that done, the next goal was to get the cases to eject from the weapon on each shot. To achieve this, a lever was used, actuated by the slide moving back after a shot, pushing the “spent” cartridge out of the port.

[Paradym] goes into great deal, covering the design of the 3D printed parts, the machining of springs, as well as the final assembly of the prop. We’ve seen other prop gun builds before, too. Video after the break.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/31/producing-a-prop-gun-that-actually-ejects-cases/

Tuning a desktop router and your board designs for isolation routing can be a bit tricky, with thin traces usually being the first victim. For simple prototype boards you usually don’t need tightly packed traces, you just want to isolate the nets. To do this with a minimum amount of routing, [Michael Schembri] created kicad-laser-min, a command-line utility that takes a Kicad PCB design and expands all the tracks and pads to their maximum possible width.

The software takes one layer of the PCB layout, converts it to black and white, and then runs a C++ Voronoi algorithm on it to dilate each track and pad until it meets another expanding region. Each region is colourised, and OpenCV edge detection is used to produce the contours that need to be milled or etched. A contour following algorithm is then used to create the G-code. The header image shows the output of each step.

Full source code is available on GitHub. [Michael] has had good results with his own boards, which are scribed using a laser cutter before etching, but welcomes testing and feedback from other users. He has found that OpenCV doesn’t always completely close all the contours, but the gaps are usually smaller than the engraving width of his laser, so no shorts are created.

This is basically “Scribble style” prototyping with CAD and CNC tools. If you prefer scribe and etch, you might consider building a simple PCB shaker for faster etching. If you have a router but want to avoid the dust, you can use a carbide scribe to scratch out the tracks without needing to etch.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/31/transform-kicad-design-to-patchwork-for-isolation-routing/

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys go down the rabbit hole of hacky hacks. A talented group of radio amateurs have been recording and decoding the messages from Tianwen-1, the Mars probe launched by the Chinese National Space Administration on July 23rd. We don’t know exactly how magnets work, but know they do a great job of protecting your plasma cutter. You can’t beat the retro-chic look of a Commodore 64’s menu system, even if it’s tasked with something mundane like running a meat smoker. And take a walk with us down MP3’s memory lane.

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download (~65 MB)

Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:

• Google Play
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• RSS

Episode 078 Show Notes:

New This Week:

• Hands-On: The Pandemic DEF CON Badge Is An Audio Cassette
• DEF CON 28 Badge Hacking
• Stay At Home, HOPE And DEF CON Will Come To You
• Saturday: Vintage Computer Festival West

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• What Is The Tianwen-1 Probe Saying?
  • Space Packet Protocol (PDF)
  • Tracking Tianwen-1’s orbit to Mars: part II – Daniel Estévez
  • Chinese Mars probe Tianwen-1 successfully received by AMSAT-DL – AMSAT-Deutschland
  • UHF-Satcom
• ESP8266 Makes A Wireless Card Reader
• Simple Plasma Cutter Collision Detection System
  • Books You Should Read: Exact Constraint: Machine Design Using Kinematic Principles
  • Jubilee: A Toolchanging Homage To 3D Printer Hackers Everywhere
• Mechanical Seven-Segment Display Really Sticks Out From The Pack
• Smoking Meat With A Commodore 64
• This Four-Axis Stencil Printer Is The Ultimate In SMD Alignment Tools

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  • Trick From 1903 Makes An Old Monochrome TV Spit Some Colours
  • New Release Of FidoCadJ Draws Schematics Everywhere
  • The Swiss Army Knife Of Bench Tools
• Mike’s Picks:
  • USB-C Where It Was Never Intended To Be
  • Panic Button Is An Audio-Visual Parachute Out Of Zoom Calls
  • RadioGlobe Takes The World Of Internet Radio For A Spin

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• Falcon 9 Beats Shuttle’s Reflight Record, But Still Has A Long Way To Go
  • From Oldest to Youngest: The Average Fleet Age of the 10 Major U.S. Airlines
• MP3 Is 25 Years Old!

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/31/hackaday-podcast-078-happy-b-day-mp3-eavesdropping-on-a-mars-probe-shadowcasting-7-segments-and-a-spicy-commodore-64/

Everyone loves a good bubble machine. These oddly satisfying novelty items have brought children and adults mindless entertainment since their inception. [8BitsAndAByte] had the same thought, but wanted to give their bubble machine a taste of the IoT-age.

First, they modified an off-the-shelf bubble machine with a Raspberry Pi and relay module. The Pi can easily trigger the bubbling mechanism by controlling power to the machine using the relay. Seems simple enough. The part of this project that might be a bit more unfamiliar to you is controlling the robot over the internet using remo.tv.

Remo.tv is a robot controller platform that’s both free and open-source, and we’ve seen [8BitsAndAByte] take advantage of this web controller before. Seems like they’re really getting the hang of it. Their writeup links to a detailed setup guide for configuring the Pi, so hopefully, that’s not too much trouble.

Couple the IoT setup with a Pi camera and you’ve got a live stream that’s admittedly oddly satisfying to watch with or without the bubbles.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/31/the-internet-of-bubble-machines/

Twilio, the cloud provider for all things telecom, had an embarrassing security fail a couple weeks ago. The problem was the Amazon S3 bucket that Twilio was using to host part of their public facing content. The bucket was configured for public read-write access. Anyone could use the Amazon S3 API to make changes to the files stored there.

The files in question were protected behind Cloudflare’s CDN, but there’s a catch to Cloudflare’s service. If you know the details of the service behind Cloudflare, it can often be interacted with directly. In many cases, knowing the IP address of the server being protected is enough to totally bypass Cloudflare altogether. In this case, the service behind the CDN is Amazon’s S3. Any changes made to the files there are picked up by the CDN.

Someone discovered the insecure bucket, and modified a Javascript file that is distributed as part of the Twilio JS SDK. That modification was initially described as “non-malicious”, but in the official incident report, Twilio states that the injected code is part of an ongoing magecart campaign carried out against misconfigured S3 buckets.

IPTV

We received a story on the Hackaday tip line this week about a Swedish IPTV service, Pongo IPTV. This report is unsubstantiated, but there seems to be something going on. At the very least, pongotv.com is currently returning a Cloudflare error, “This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks.”

A pair of Youtube videos seem to show access to the Pongotv backend, with exposed customer records and all. At this point, I have to stress that this is unconfirmed report. Based on the details provided, it sounds like the tipster is actually pretty closely involved with this story, maybe even part of the group that is behind the attack.

Espressif

[Lukas Bachschwell] discovered a flaw in the Espressif SDK, tracked as CVE-2020-12638. The vulnerability affects devices running firmware built using the vulnerable SDK. In short, it allows a WiFi authentication downgrade attack. An attacker can inject WiFi traffic, and cause the device to connect to a network under the attacker’s control. For devices used for home automation and other similar applications, this could have serious consequences. Patches are available for most of the devices the SDK covers, and the rest are in progress.

D-Link Patches EOL Device

In response to a series of flaws discovered by researchers at Loginsoft, D-Link has released firmware for an End Of Life device, and strongly recommends taking other affected devices out of use. The devices in question are the DAP-1520, DAP-1522, and DIR-816L.

These aren’t sophisticated vulnerabilities, either. The first one, CVE-2020-15892, can be triggered as simply as sending 256 characters as the password when trying to log in. The login page limits this value to 15 characters, but that limit is imposed on the client side, so an attacker can easily manipulate the raw response to bypass that restriction. The longer than expected password overflows the buffer and crashes the device. A proper exploit would take it over instead.

Another rather trivial vulnerability, CVE-2020-15893, affects the DIR-816L. A shell command can be injected in a UPnP request, as simply as including a semicolon in the packet data. When the UPnP request is parsed, part of it is used as a command line option. Including a semicolon breaks out of that command, and allows executing arbitrary commands.

Sharepoint

CVE-2020-1147 is a vulnerability in Microsoft Sharepoint, found by multiple researchers independently. [Steven] at Source Insight wrote up an explainer on the bug, and concludes that at its heart it’s a deserialization issue. In this case, it seems that functions of a DataSet object, like parse() and Deserialize() can be overwritten by the data being deserialized.

The write-up includes a full PoC, so consider this vulnerability to fully weaponized already. Patches are available, so be sure to go take care of your Sharepoint servers. [Steven] also suggests that we’ll see this same bug show up in other .net applications, as the DataSet object has been considered safe for outside data.

Apple Research Device

Apple has announced the Security Research Device, a modified iPhone that is essentially rooted from the factory. The program is run in typical Apple fashion, as the device is only loaned out 12 months at a time, and comes with a list of do’s and don’ts. I have to wonder if this is a response to Google Project Zero’s debuggable iPhone work from last year. Either way, Project Zero’s [Ben Hawkes] has already issued a statement that the program is likely a non-starter for them, as their strict 90 day disclosure policy is incompatible with the sign-up agreement.

BootHole

And finally, a vulnerability in Grub2 was released this week, BootHole. This vulnerability is a rather simple buffer overflow bug that can be triggered by a malicious grub.cfg file. You might point out that if an attacker can modify grub.cfg, isn’t the system hopelessly compromised anyway? This is a fair question, and the answer is yes, usually. What makes BootHole novel is that taking control of Grub in this way can allow a Secure Boot bypass. This will obviously be more important in specific use cases where Secure Boot is a key part of security.

This vulnerability was found by [eclypsium], who privately disclosed the bug to the Grub developers and other upstream projects. Patches are available, so make sure to get those updates installed. If your curious about the in-depth details, the writeup and PDF on BootHole are quite detailed, go check them out.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/31/this-week-in-security-twilio-pogotv-and-boothole/

When [Erich Styger] recently got featured on Hackaday with his meta-clock project, he probably was not expecting to get featured again so soon, this time regarding a copyright claim on the ‘meta-clock’ design. This particular case ended with [Erich] removing the original blog article and associated PCB design files, leaving just the summaries, such as the original Hackaday article on the project.

Obviously, this raises the question of whether any of this is correct; if one sees a clock design, or other mechanisms that appeals and tries to replicate its looks and functioning in some fashion, is this automatically a breach of copyright? In the case of [Erich]’s project, one could argue that at first glance both devices look remarkably similar. One might also argue that this is rather unavoidable, considering the uncomplicated design of the original.

Not copyright, but patent law

An inherent property of copyright law in most jurisdictions is that the act of creating a work automatically grants one the copyright to that work. In most jurisdictions (e.g. the EU), signing away one’s copyright is even forbidden by law. Not so with patent law. Here we have two distinct forms, one being patents as we all know and love them, for the patenting of ideas and inventions. The other form concerns itself with what a product looks like: its design.

In the US this is referred to as a ‘design patent‘, while elsewhere it is referred to as a ‘registered design’, which effectively comes down to the same thing. It means that one can patent for example the shape of a Coca-Cola bottle, or in the case of the folk at Humans Since 1982 (‘HS1982’) the look of their meta-clocks, in not one, but two EU registered designs.

Comparative analysis

We can compare the two designs side by side to see how similar they are.

The top design is [Erich]’s, while the lower design is HS1982’s clock (black version). Both have the same 8×3 hole pattern, similar color scheme, and so on. That the HS1982’s version is in a mineral composite housing and [Erich]’s in a wooden enclosure is hereby not relevant as it does not change the design. To the casual observer it might indeed appear as if both follow the same design.

Since design registrations are meant to deter companies from for example selling their own soft drink in a bottle that looks exactly like a Coca-Cola one, down to the label design, it makes sense that HS1982 came down on [Erich] and others with similar clock designs like the proverbial sack of bricks.

Naturally, the next question which one should ask here is whether it makes any difference that this was a freely available, open project. Meaning that there was no intention to sell such clocks, or even provide all of the necessary information to assemble a clock from scratch, including the software.

Consistency is key

Although with patents and design registrations there is no need to actively pursue infringement cases to keep the patent as is the case with trademarks, it’s likely that to HS1982 there was no question of tolerating any form of infringement. Their audience appears to be those interested in exclusive art pieces, with the device described by them as ‘both a kinetic sculpture and a functioning clock’.

The manufacturing costs of a single ClockClock24 device is unlikely to be even half the asking price of $6,000 to $10,700, even taking into the account that each version is a limited edition. Yet this asking price remains only ‘legitimate’ if the product remains as exclusive as possible. This provides HS1982 with enough incentive to actively seek out and destroy any similar products. In the end we are talking about sculptures, i.e. art, here.

This isn’t just like one smartphone manufacturer accusing the other manufacturer of also making their smartphone into a black, rounded rectangular slab with glass covering. The ironic thing is probably that any number of small changes to [Erich]’s project could likely have made the registered design not apply, such as through the addition of a colon between the hours and minutes, adding seconds, making the box into an oval, or changing the number of rotating elements.

Not all is lost

As [Erich] also notes in his blog post, there are still certain ‘fair use’ provisions with registered designs. Nobody is going to bust down the doors of a kindergarten when one of the preschoolers clumsily draws a Coca-Cola bottle without explicit permission from Coca-Cola’s lawyers. Similarly, anyone can in theory make their own copy of HS1982’s ClockClock24 clock so long as they do not sell it or otherwise make it publicly available.

This knowledge should give anyone who sets out to copy a design which they saw somewhere and liked at least some idea of how far they can take it. Publishing the project on a blog and making the design files available is the part where things can get dicey. Even making small alterations to the original design are not guaranteed to keep one from getting harassed by a company’s irate lawyers.

While there is a small chance of victory if [Erich] or someone else were to take a case like this to court, to argue that small-fry open-hardware projects are unlikely to harm the profits or sales of a company like HS1982, it would essentially be asking the law makers to add a major exception to patent law that would no doubt come with its own set of headaches.

In the meantime it seems that we can do little but get a chuckle out of the ClockClock24 clones available on Chinese stores for peanuts.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/31/patent-law-and-the-legality-of-making-something-similar/

Making certain games run on systems which were never designed to run such games (or any games at all) is a favorite hobby of some, with [deater] being no exception. His latest creation involves porting Myst to the Apple II, or ‘demake’ in his own words. This means taking a game that was released in 1993 for MacOS and later for Windows 3.1 and the original PlayStation, and creating a version that works on an 8-bit system from 1977.

Obviously the graphical fidelity has been turned down some compared to the 1990s version, but at this stage much of the game’s levels have been implemented. For anyone who has ever played the game before, much of the visuals will be instantly recognizable. According to [deater], the game should run on any Apple II/II+/IIe, with at least 48 kB of RAM, but 64 kB needed for sound effects. If a Mockingboard sound card is installed, it will even play the intro theme.

On the project page the (currently) three floppy disks can be downloaded, with the source available on Github. While one is there, one can also check out [deater]’s ‘Another World’ port to the Apple II which we covered last year.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/30/myst-demake-for-the-apple-ii/

[8BitsAndAByte] are back, and this time they’re taking on the comments section with art. They wondered whether or not they can take something as dubious as the comments section and redeem it into something more appealing like art.

They started by using remo.tv, a tool they’ve used in other projects, to read comments from their video live feeds and extract random phrases. The phrases are then analyzed by text to speech, and a publicly available artificial intelligence algorithm that generates an image from a text description. They can then specify art styles like modern, abstract, cubism, etc to give their image a unique appeal. They then send the image back to the original commenter, crediting them for their comment, ensuring some level of transparency.

We were a bit surprised that the phrase dog with a funny hat generated an image of a cat, so I think it’s fair to say that their AI engine could use a bit of work. But really, we could probably say that about AI as a whole.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/30/art-generated-from-the-dubious-comments-section/

DIY Bluetooth speaker projects are always a staple here at Hackady. In our latest feature of DIY audio builds, we have [Patrick’s] vinyl cylindrical speaker.

He found a pretty inexpensive Bluetooth audio amplifier on AliExpress. However, the amplifier module oddly enough had a few missing components that were critical to its operation, so he had to do a little bit of re-work. Not something you generally expect to do when you purchase a pre-made module, but he was certainly up to the task.

He noticed the board amp module was missing a battery protection circuit even though there was space on the board laid out for those components (maybe an older board revision?). To remedy this problem, he added his own battery protection circuit to prevent any unwanted catastrophes. Secondly, he noticed a lot of distortion at high volumes and figured that some added capacitance on the power supply would help fix the distortion. Luckily, that did the trick.

Finally, and not quite a mistake on the manufacturer’s part this time, but an improvement [Patrick] needed for his own personal use. He wanted the amp module’s board-level LED indicator to be visible once the enclosure was fitted around the electronics. So, he used the built-in status trigger as a digital signal for a simple transistor circuit powering a much brighter ring LED that could be mounted onto the enclosure. That way, he could utilize the firmware for triggering the board-level status indicator for his own ring LED without any software modifications to the amp module.

Now, all that was left was to construct the enclosure he had 3D-printed and fit all the electronics in their place. We’ve gotten pretty used to the always impressive aesthetics of [Patrick’s] designs, having covered a project of his before, and this build is certainly no exception. Great job!

While you’re here, take a look at some other DIY Bluetooth speaker projects on Hackaday.

 

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/30/aesthetic-diy-bluetooth-speakers/

Many laptops eschew the numeric keypad to free up space, and some desktop keyboards have taken on the trend, too. If you want a specialised numeric entry device and have absolutely no interest in speed or ease of use, [jp3141] has just the build for you.

The idea is to use the rotary dial from an old telephone to enter numbers into a computer. It’s slow and cumbersome, but it’s also pretty entertaining. The build uses an old AT&T Trimline dialer, though we’re sure most rotary phones would work. The pulses produced by the dialer are counted by a Teensy microcontroller, which emulates a USB HID keyboard device and enters the relevant keystroke into the computer. There’s also a USB serial interface for debugging, and an LED which flashes along with the pulses from the dialer circuit.

While it’s not the most efficient data entry method, it’s a semi-useful way to repurpose an old phone, and an amusing piece to take along to your next LAN party. We’ve featured a few… alternative… keyboards before, too. If you’ve cooked up a truly convoluted input device for your computer, be sure to let us know.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/30/rotary-dialer-becomes-numeric-keypad/