Open Hardware: Arduino and More
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Devever ☛ I hacked a train toilet
Of course, there is a reason for the separation of the closing and locking functions, but not the opening and unlocking functions: it avoids a Denial of Service attack where someone can just press “close” and then jump out before the door closes. If the interior “close” button automatically locked the door, this would result in the toilet becoming permanently inaccessible.
The problem with this design is that most people don't understand state machines, and this design confused a lot of people who were unable to lock the door correctly, or believed they'd locked the door when they hadn't.
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Ken Shirriff ☛ Reverse engineering CMOS, illustrated with a vintage Soviet counter chip
I recently came across an interesting die photo of a Soviet chip, probably designed in the 1970s. This article provides an introductory guide to reverse-engineering CMOS circuits, using this chip as an example. Although the chip looks like a tangle of lines at first, its large features and simple layout make it possible to understand its circuits. I'll first explain how to recognize the individual transistors. Groups of transistors are connected in standard patterns to form CMOS gates, multiplexers, flip-flops, and other circuits. Once these building blocks are understood, reverse-engineering the full chip becomes practical. The chip turned out to be a 4-bit CMOS counter, a copy of the Motorola MC14516B.
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Arduino ☛ Off-grid remote generator starter helps avoid trekking outside in bad weather
After finding a bypass cable with one pair of leads for enabling the generator and another pair for powering on the starter motor, Clark got a couple relays that could bridge their contacts together programmatically. In order to communicate the current output of the generator, solar panels, battery, and if the motor should run, a pair of Arduino Nano 33 IoT boards were chosen for both the house and generator sides of the project. They send data through Wi-Fi and MQTT to stay in consistent synchronization while either one is also connected to a few seven-segment display modules and MAX7221 LED drivers for showing the most recent data.
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Linux Gizmos ☛ DFRobot Coin-Sized ESP32-C6 Board with RISC-V Core, Priced at $4.90
The Beetle ESP32-C6 is a compact and versatile IoT development board by DFRobot, designed for Arduino enthusiasts and developers looking to explore low-power IoT solutions. This tiny gizmo offers up to 16x I/Os and an array of communication protocols including Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5, Zigbee 3.0, and Thread 1.3.
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Hackaday ☛ Building Nanoleaf-Inspired Wall Panels That Look Great
Nanoleaf is well-known as being that company that makes those lovely glowing tiles that you can hang on your wall. The only thing is, they’re not cheap. So if you want a really cool layout, you have to spend a great amount of money. [Projects with Red] was inspired by the basic concept, though, and whipped up their own gem-shaped wall tiles along similar lines.