skot9000

snow

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 16:46:40 -0700

snow

Brother P-touch PT-80

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 01:44:00 -0700

The Brother P-Touch PT-80 label maker is not good!!

This label maker sucks down batteries like there is no tomorrow. It runs off 4 AAA batteries and it does not come with a wall power adapter. I kid you not, with brand new fresh batteries, I was able to print only SIX labels. Fifty one letters, in six labels and then my batteries were toast. It’s not only me, there are 14 one-star reviews on Amazon.com that concur. Apparently the processor power management is so bad, that it will even kill your batteries while you don’t use it.

This might be forgivable if it included a wall adapter. If you want to use it on the go, out at the club or maybe label things while you are nature hiking, you can. If you want to use it at home like most everyone else, you can plug it in.

BUT NO! You are forced to be a battery slave. At first I thought maybe Brother was owned by Duracell or Energizer and this was a ploy to get you to buy more batteries. From what I can tell, however, Brother is not linked to any battery companies.

Luckily, the case is mostly empty inside and I had the parts around to add a wall power adapter!

Drilled a hole and super glued a barrel connector inside.

looks like it’s supposed to be there!

quickly wired LM317 voltage regulator, allows any DC power adapter from 8V to 37V to be used.

all done.

American Express Webkey Hack

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 03:42:00 -0700

Pete got this interesting junkmail from American Express a while back. It’s a piece of plastic that looks like a thick credit card, but has a small fold out section that fits into a USB port. When you plug it into your computer, it opens your browser and takes you to a website to sign up for an American Express credit card.

Seems like a lot of work to get you to their website, but it (sorta) worked on me. There is no way I would possibly open my browser and go to their annoying website on my own.. It was only the intrigue of some little USB device that got me there. Of course, once at the website, it was about as interesting as any other credit card offer, and I immediately left.

Pete was kind enough to let me take this marketing gimmick home to play with.

It’s not a USB flash drive. It’s a USB HID device that pretends to be an Apple Keyboard. Not just any keyboard, it specifically identifies as an Apple brand keyboard. I’m not sure what the benefit of this is… Once you plug it in, it starts sending key strokes. On my Mac, it opens the Apple menu and selects “Mac OS X Software…” which opens your default browser and takes you to some Apple page. However, before that site loads, it types out www.ppiamexzync.com which instantly redirects to https://www201.americanexpress.com/cards/RSVPServlet?rt=login&ct=87 once it loads you have the opportunity to apply for a Zync American Express card and get a credit card that is accepted almost nowhere.

Using an knife I pried the USB connector bit apart. It has a small dab of glue inside holding a tiny circuit board in place. If you are opening up one of these BE GENTLE!! In the process of separating the circuit board from the plastic, a small white component fell off the board. I think it’s a resonator. After a while with a magnifying glass and an extremely small soldering iron tip I was able to get it soldered back on. The circuit board has two surface mount capacitors, a black blob, an 8 pin IC and what I think is a (ceramic?) resonator.

The IC is a 24BC08 8k serial EEPROM. Here is the datasheet.

There is a four pin connector at the bottom, and the traces for the USB connection on the back. I imagine the four pin connector is for programming and/or communication with the black blob which I assume is a microcontroller. CJS1024 and WEB-126 is written below the black blob, but google didn’t find anything useful in english so I left it alone.

click on the photo for a larger version

It was easy to determine from the USB connector where the +5VDC and GND connections are; they are GND on the far left and +5V on the far right in the above picture. Using the 24BC08 datasheet pinout I connected some extra fine wire-wrap wire to the SCL and SDA pins of the EEPROM. All hooked up to my newly acquired, extra fancy DangerousPrototypes.com Bus Pirate I was easily able to dump the contents of the EEPROM

I changed the URL to an especially hilarious shock site involving skydiving and wrote the new data back to the EEPROM. Slightly worried that it might explode my Macbook, I cautiously stuck it in my USB port.. FAP FAP FLAPPP… “I believe I can fly…” glory! A little superglue stuck it back together and I returned the card to Pete.. I wish more junk mail was this fun.

There are a lot of malicious things a device like this could do.. by simply acting as a keyboard and/or mouse it could easily delete files, install software from the web, download copious amounts of porn and email it to your boss or install some Microsoft software on your computer.. Finding a USB device on the sidewalk, it would be tough to resist the temptation to plug it in..

Classic 6 color Apple logo iPhone boot screen. Install it with...

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 13:15:00 -0700

Classic 6 color Apple logo iPhone boot screen. Install it with PwnageTool.. or something else. When installed the logo is smaller and the black background fills the screen.

Photo

Fri, 21 May 2010 12:26:51 -0700

Programming PICs on the mac = cheap and easy!

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 03:15:59 -0800

I really like playing with Microchip PIC microcontrollers, and I really dislike using windows. You can imagine my excitement when I realized I could finally program PICs directly from my mac, without using windows.

Microchip sells the USB PicKit 2 ICSP programmer for $34.99 from the microchipDIRECT site. Order using your .edu email address and you will get 25% off. (there are other ways too, check this for more info.)

Once you have the PicKit2, download the OS X drivers (scroll down halfway to the downloads section). Follow the enclosed readme to easily install the drivers.

Next download the free Hi-Tech PICC C compilers. Installation is straightforward.

Now write your C code in any text editor (aquamacs emacs is my favorite) for your favorite Microchip part (PICC manual is included in download), compile using picc or picc18. See the documentation for your microcontroller for how to attach the PicKit2’s ICSP header. Now program your chip with pk2cmd and you are done!

sign boneyard

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:21:50 -0800

amazing las vegas sign collection; http://iconology.therndm.com/archive/neon-boneyard-pam-sattler/718

Pencil Lust

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:55:32 -0700

Do I need a new pencil? the Staedtler Regulator is looking mighty nice.. http://www.jetpens.com/product_info.php/cPath/340_869/products_id/4701

"The spectrum of thin lead drafting pencils runs from all metal rotrings to deep within the territory..."

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:52:05 -0700

“The spectrum of thin lead drafting pencils runs from all metal rotrings to deep within the territory of mega-mass-produced disposable shit clickers sold by the carload full for the use of faceless populations of office drones.”

- from the epic online drafting pencil museum; http://www.leadholder.com/ proud to be in the all-metal rotring category, the glorious 0.35mm Rotring 600

REAL assembly..

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 23:02:00 -0700

it hit me after writing this line;

andi $t0, $a1, 0x80000000

I am really doing assembly now!

psycode

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:58:57 -0700

just spawned a donkey!
just spawned a squirrel!
just spawned a squirrel!
just spawned a goblin!
just spawned a donkey!
just spawned a goblin!
just spawned a donkey!
just spawned a squirrel!
just spawned a donkey!
just spawned a squirrel!
just spawned a donkey!
just spawned a squirrel!
just spawned a squirrel!
just spawned a donkey!
just spawned a squirrel!
just spawned a donkey!
just spawned a goblin!
just spawned a goblin!
just spawned a goblin!
just spawned a goblin!

thanks to http://www.philosomatika.com I just had a glorious 6 hour session on my coding project for CS61C (my first Cal class)

xkcd - the unix 2038 problem

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:19:03 -0700

xkcd - the unix 2038 problem:

this is my life right now.

wednesday: what did you do today?

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:08:00 -0700

Today I finished HW2 for CS61C! A glorious 1D Cellular Automaton. Here is the output of 20 lines on Rule 30.

Re: friday: what did you do today?

Sat, 30 May 2009 05:26:32 -0700

I’m in Europe for a couple weeks! Blog; http://euro.bitnet.cx

it’s on! (Berkeley Fall ‘09)

Wed, 13 May 2009 09:16:56 -0700

it’s on! (Berkeley Fall ‘09)

OH NO!

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:18:34 -0700

OH NO!

more linistepper

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 22:09:22 -0700

joy! the linistepper stepper motor controller is working!

The schematic on the linistepper website is a bit confusing. It turns out that a number of the resistors on the circuit diagram are not supposed to be added. I guess they are there to illustrate that you can adjust them to adjust the microstepping current. The problem is that important point is buried deep in their poorly organized website. It has taken me weeks of frustration with this circuit before I realized it—and only because I looked over photographs of the assembled PC boards they are selling and noticed the resistors were missing.

And apparently they have made some upgrades to the kit they are selling that are not reflected in the schematic.

anyways, here is an updated schematic if you are going to build a linistepper from scratch;

Even after all that, I am satisfied with the linistepper and if I didn’t have access to the giant parts room at school, I would definitely order their kit.

microsoft

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:09:09 -0700

every time I am forced to use one of those awful microsoft programs like word or excel I am amazed by the fact that someone, somewhere, within the company actually approved that little paper clip animation thing. It isn’t just some unfortunate side effect or natural disaster — multiple people with decision making powers actually liked it.

the linistepper on 16f628

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 15:30:33 -0700

you know when you have a very specific question about a very specific project, and you do a google search and a page comes up that has the very specific answer? It’s amazing. Well I had one of those questions the other day, and unfortunately that very specific page could not be found. I had to search through some random forum postings to find the answer. Well that is about to change!

When you are programming your PIC16F628 for the linistepper linear stepper motor controller, it is important that you change the configuration in your PIC programmer software to the following settings;

Oscillator: HS
Watchdog Timer: Disabled
Power-up Timer: Disabled
MCLR Pin Function: Reset

The 16F628 is pin-compatible with the 16F84 and is a couple dollars cheaper. Make sure to change the directive in the asm file or grab the appropriate pre-compiled hex file from the linistepper website.

xkcd - A Webcomic - Powers of One

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 23:09:52 -0700

xkcd - A Webcomic - Powers of One:

I think everyone links to this comic because it’s genius, but they are right! it is genius!