Posted Dec 14th 2007 10:47PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: cellphones hacks, ipod hacks
The boys over at
engadget put this up while I was working it over, but I'm still gonna hit it. [Curt] sent in the
iPhone GPS he put together. He's using a micro-controller to send the ground toggle handshake we mentioned in the iPhone serial tutorial, along with a small NMEA serial GPS module. After the handshake is completed, the controller hands over the serial port to the GPS output. (Since the handshake only needs the ground toggle, I'd guess that the module is connected to the TX/RX lines all the time.) By the way, the GPS looks like this SiRF II board sold by
spark fun electronics.
Posted Dec 11th 2007 11:15PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: cellphones hacks
[TheRain] sent in
his tutorial on using the iPhone's serial port. Apparently there's a hardware trick required to enable two way communication. Whatever device is attached to the iPhone needs a secret handshake to get things talking both ways. Once the serial ground has been strobed high to low in the proper order, things will work like normal.
Posted Nov 26th 2007 11:29PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: cellphones hacks, misc hacks, robots hacks
[Benjamin] sent in
his efforts to use Python to provide a web interface for his Aurdino. Python is usually pretty easy to manipulate, so it might be just the thing for someone looking to add a web control to a project with an open serial interface.
If you've got a hack you want to share, use the
tips line.
Posted Nov 8th 2007 8:22PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: cellphones hacks, how-to
At some point, just about everyone manages to mess up their precious electronics. In this case, someone (not me) somehow managed to totally demolish the mini USB port in their new Motorola cell phone. Surface mount repairs can be challenging without some serious tools, but it's possible to replace parts without a re-work station. (Guess what I'm getting for Christmas this year.) Today I'll show you that's it's possible to repair a surface mount part with some fairly inexpensive tools.
Continue reading How-To: Replace a mini USB port (on your cellphone)
Posted Nov 3rd 2007 8:57PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: cellphones hacks
[Mr G] in London sent in
his pin sentry hack. He wasn't pleased that the device looks like an old calculator, so he rigged up a SMS board to send him his pin on demand. He multiplexed the output of the display driver to the SMS board. When he authenticates from his phone, the board sends a message with the latest code.
Posted Oct 23rd 2007 10:52PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: cellphones hacks
I'm not going to reccomend it, but [cameron]
modded his Sony Ericsson k800i to tase people as well as take pictures. Apparently, the k800i has a xenon flash - meaning that it's got a high voltage potential available to drive the flash. He added a pair of 16uf caps and scored a good 300 volts to share with the unlucky.
Posted Sep 29th 2007 11:39AM by Fabienne Serriere
Filed under: cellphones hacks, handhelds hacks, misc hacks, wireless hacks
Figuring out the JTAG pinout on a device turns out to be the most time consuming hardware portion of many hacks. [hunz] started a project called
JTAG Finder to automatically detect the JTAG pinouts on arbitrary devices using an 8bit AVR ATmega16/32L microcontroller. Check out the
slides (PDF) from the talk as they break down how one finds JTAG ports on an arbitrary device, with or without a pinout detection tool. [hunz] is looking for people to pick up the project where he left off.
Once you determine the correct pinout, you will need a JTAG cable: there are two main types, buffered and unbuffered, both of which I have soldered up and tested from
these circuit diagrams (image of completed buffered cable
here). The software most hardware people use today are the
openwince JTAG Tools. To get the JTAG Tools to compile, grab the latest source directly from
their CVS repository.
The last time we featured JTAG was
with regards to Linksys devices, but the tools listed above can be applied to any device with JTAG.
Posted Aug 28th 2007 10:45PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: cellphones hacks, misc hacks
Fresh from the tips line, [Pedro] sent in his
GSM alarm. He combined a GSM phone, a motion sensor and
BasicX24 controller board. If the detector trips during a set time period, the alarm sends SMS messages to the
terminator, er whoever you want. He was kind enough to release the code, but I'd like to see this with a smaller micro-controller board to keep the cost/size down.
Posted Aug 11th 2007 1:02PM by Eliot Phillips
Filed under: cellphones hacks
Steve Schear and David Hulton gave a presentation on A5 cracking. A5 is the encryption employed on GSM cellphone networks between the handset and the tower (nowhere else in the network). To sniff the GSM band, they use the GNU radio
USRP.
GNU radio is a software defined radio project, which given some effort you should be able to both receive and transmit in any RF band. You could use it to broadcast digital television, track radio tags, or even mess with garage door openers. For their initial investigation they used a Nokia 3310 in trace mode to dump the initial frames. Using a box with at least 27 FPGA's they plan on constructing a 6+ terabyte rainbow table (it'll take a couple months). Once complete, any GSM conversation can be cracked in less than 5 minutes using a single FPGA. The Hackers Choice has more info on the
USRP based GSM analyzer and
what they did to crack A5.
Posted Jul 15th 2007 10:31PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: cellphones hacks, gps hacks
[Alex] sent in some of his
latest work. He interfaced some not so cheap components to give an AVR GPS and GSM I/O. For now it can read the GPS position and send text messages. Thanks to the GPS/GSM module, the schematic is pretty simple - anyone with basic soldering skills and a desire to put a dent in their credit card can probably build this. (Programming the AVR is probably the most difficult task)
Posted Mar 22nd 2007 11:47PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: cellphones hacks, laptops hacks
I was poking around and ran across
this interesting mod in progress. It's mostly a study in customizing an old laptop, but embedding a Nokia LCD in the palm rest is an interesting little hack. The LCD was taken from a Nokia 3310 and modded to connect to the parallel port. (Probably with a circuit like
this one)
Posted Dec 25th 2006 12:40AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: cellphones hacks, gps hacks, handhelds hacks, wireless hacks
Hack-A-Day friend [
Limor] AKA [ladyada] has been promising a portable RF jammer for a while. guess what
she sent me for Christmas? The Wave-bubble is a self tuning RF jammer - good for around 20 feet of RF enforced peace. (It outputs .1-.3 watts) With a pair of less efficient antennas, it even fits inside a pack of cigarettes. She'll never sell these because the FCC would come-a-knockin, but if you've got some major skills, you might be able to build one. (I'm going to believe her take on this, I've seen her work in person and it's some damn fine stuff)
Merry Christmas! Get your
Design Challenge entries in today!
Posted Oct 14th 2006 9:08AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: cellphones hacks
This one is more case mod than real hack - [computerguru365] whacked a female mini-b USB port
into his Samsung [thx rsilvawashington] to avoid buying the overpriced Nokia cable(Reminds me of the infamous $65 startac serial cable) I like it, internal cell phone hardware hacks don't come along very often, and he found a use for one of those useless demo phones.
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