Cyrozap's Tech Projects

Programming a Spartan-6 FPGA via JTAG

2015-05-31T17:30:00-04:00

Recently, I've been working on repurposing some FPGA-based devices. Since the devices in question can only be programmed via their JTAG interfaces, I needed an FPGA JTAG programmer. Unfortunately, loading FPGA bitstreams with OpenOCD using SEGGER J-Link turned out to be less than trivial. I'm sure others will run into this issue in the future so to avoid duplicate effort, I've written this post detailing my experiences.

Defining the Problem

The normal flow for Xilinx FPGA configuration over JTAG is very easy:

Generate the bitstream
Set up the boundary scan chain in Xilinx iMPACT
Generate an SVF file
Program the device using iMPACT and your Xilinx Platform Cable

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) for me, I did not have a Xilinx Platform Cable, so I could not perform Step 4. However, I did have a SEGGER J-Link JTAG cable and I'd read that OpenOCD could use it to play the SVF files iMPACT generates, so I thought I was good-to-go. Unfortunately again, weird things kept going wrong between OpenOCD's SVF player and its J-Link driver so I was still unable to program my FPGA. Seeking a potentially-easy solution, I turned to UrJTAG.

That was a mistake. While UrJTAG also has SVF playback support, its J-Link driver had not been touched in five years so, naturally, it did not work with my J-Link's new firmware.

For some reason, I decided that it would be easier to fix UrJTAG's J-Link driver than it would be to figure out why OpenOCD wasn't working (this was another mistake). To help get myself started, I asked some questions in the #openocd channel on Freenode. The people there were friendly and eager to help, but they correctly pointed out that I would get more help if I tried porting UrJTAG's features to OpenOCD. After wasting a day messing with UrJTAG, and after learning that OpenOCD had all of the capabilities I thought only UrJTAG had plus a TLC RPC server, I decided to try my hand at writing a Python-based Spartan-6 programmer. This would effectively bypass steps 2-4, which would have been nice, but I didn't have enough experience to do it properly. Putting that project aside, I decided to fix OpenOCD's SVF player.

Fixing OpenOCD

A person in the channel going by the handle "PaulFertser" helped me debug the issues I was having. As it turned out, the problem wasn't really in the SVF player, but in OpenOCD's J-Link driver. Specifically, it lacked support for the STABLECLOCKS command, which was causing OpenOCD to crash whenever it encountered an SVF RUNTEST command.

After reading the code in ftdi.c and jlink.c, I wrote a patch to add the necessary functionality to the J-Link driver. However, I wasn't done yet. After solving that problem, I ran into an issue with the way the J-Link driver handled command buffering. Basically, the driver only buffers commands up to the J-Link device's internal limit instead of buffering indefinitely and filling the J-Link's buffer as-needed. This problem was easily solved with a small hack, but that hack broke some of the SVF player's TDO-checking functionality. Thankfully, I didn't need that functionality, so I just left it at that.

Adding Support for the Digilent Analog Discovery

Since I wasn't really sure where to go from there, I decided to work on a related side-project involving the Digilent Analog Discovery MSO/AWG. Basically, I wanted to be able to program its FPGA using OpenOCD so work could begin on getting it supported in sigrok.

This turned out to be a lot easier than I thought since the OpenOCD FTDI driver is configured using TCL for each FTDI-based JTAG device. Fortunately, someone else had already done the hard work of getting it supported in UrJTAG, so I was able to take the relevant configuration parameters and use them to create another patch for Openocd.

Writing a Programmer in Python

With the previous issues settled and the knowledge I gained, I was able to move forward with my plans to cut iMPACT out of the programming process.

To start, I had to read up on how Spartan-6 configuration works. Thankfully, Xilinx has a user guide (UG380) with information on all of the configuration interfaces for Spartan-6 devices. From that guide, I was able to write some code to interact with OpenOCD and attempt to program my FPGA. However, due to my inexperience with JTAG, I didn't know that both the irscan and drscan commands shifted data into the chip LSB-first, so when I tried to send the configuration packets (which UG380 specified as needing to be sent MSB-first), nothing happened. It was only after I observed how the SVF file was sending commands that I realized that all of the configuration packets needed to be bit-flipped left-to-right (i.e., 0x2000 -> 0x0004). Despite making that change, my code still didn't work.

After doing a lot of reading on the JTAG state machine, I realized why I was still unable to program my FPGA: In each version of my code, I had been shifting the configuration packets into the device one-by-one, separating each packet with either a DRPAUSE state or the default RUN/TEST state. What I ended up learning, though, was that all the configuration packets needed to be shifted in continuously by using -endstate DRSHIFT between each drscan command. In hindsight, this explains the name of the bitstream (.bit) file since it literally contains a stream of bits that get sent to the FPGA over a single wire (TDI).

After some fiddling, my code started working, and after a few optimizations, I was able to get it to program my Spartan-6 FPGAs despite the 2 KiB limit of the J-Link's command buffer.

What I Learned

Don't always trust datasheets

While UG380 had nearly all the information I needed, it would have been nice for it to have some explanations as to why things needed to be done the way they were done instead of just presenting the instructions. I mention this because presenting instructions on how to do something without explaining the motivations behind each instruction leads to cargo cult programming, where no one really understands why certain things are done, only that trying to modify those voodoo-magic sequences doesn't work.

Observe what the vendor tools are doing

The vendor tools always need to work, so if you think you're following the vendor's instructions properly but not getting the expected results, try seeing what the vendor tools are doing differently and do that instead.

IRC is your friend

Typically, the kinds of projects I'm working on are not the kinds of things the people around me have any experience with, so the only way I can get help is to find like-minded people on the Internet to talk to. While web forums are great, nothing beats real-time communication, and IRC excels in that regard. If you ever find yourself in a position where you're walking seemingly-uncharted ground and you need help, it would be a really good idea to learn IRC if you haven't already done so.

I'd like to give a big thanks to everyone in the #openocd and ##fpga channels for attempting to answer all of my JTAG and FPGA questions, no matter how unusual they were. I'd also like to thank PaulFertser specifically for encouraging me to continue with the project despite the number of roadblocks I was encountering.

Results

I've uploaded my loader code here. It requires Python 3 and OpenOCD to work.

Configuring Nginx to use HSTS with an Automatic HTTPS Redirect

2015-05-03T16:46:00-04:00

Since implementing HSTS and an HTTPS redirect properly was trickier than I'd imagined, I decided to write my own guide on how to do it. I'll also explain how to configure Nginx to use OSCP Stapling and IPv6 since I worked on getting both of them working at around the same time as I got the proper HTTPS redirect working.

Preface

Very recently, I decided to move my blog from Rackspace Cloud Files to a VPS at DigitalOcean. While the pricing for Cloud Files was very agreeable, you really did only get what you pay for:

Extremely high latency (500-1500 ms)
No support for TLS (SSL) on custom domains
No way to have separate TTL and browser cache durations on objects

These might have been acceptable trade-offs if I were hosting a large, million-views-per-day website and only used Cloud Files for images, documents, and other static content, but I'm not, and these issues really started to bug me after a while.

Since I had about $100 of unused DigitalOcean credit, I decided to see how the blog would perform on their lowest-tier VPS running CentOS with Nginx. To my surprise, pages loaded much faster and with significantly less latency than on Cloud Files. I thought this was incredible and that the performance more than justified DigitalOcean's relatively-high pricing ($5/mo. for 512 MB RAM, 20 GB RAID 10 SSD, and 1 CPU core), so I decided then to stay with them until my credit runs out in 20 months.

Now that I was no longer on Cloud Files, I decided I'd finally implement HTTPS on my blog. On top of that, though, I wanted to implement HTTP Strict Transport Security since it's a really cool technology that helps prevent sslstrip-style man-in-the-middle attacks. Of course, while I don't believe anyone would ever consider my blog important enough to attack, there have been reported instances of Internet Service Providers injecting ads into plaintext-HTTP webpages and I want to ensure that the content my blog readers see is the content I posted on it.

HTTPS and HSTS on Nginx

To start, I used the Mozilla SSL Configuration Generator to create a nice base config file for Nginx. Because I want as many people to securely view my blog as possible, I chose to use the "Intermediate" list of ciphers. To generate my DH paramaters, I followed the steps on this page. To enable HSTS, I added add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000"; to each HTTPS server block in the config file (adding an HSTS header to plain HTTP responses violates the HSTS specification).

For my specific setup, I want people to automatically get redirected to the www subdomain if they try to go to http(s)://cyrozap.com and for them to get redirected to HTTPS if they try to go to http://www.cyrozap.com. Finally, an HSTS header should be added to https://cyrozap.com so the browser knows not to try the HTTP link in case that redirect gets intercepted by an SSL-stripper. To do all of that, I used these simple configuration blocks:

server{
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    server_name cyrozap.com www.cyrozap.com;
    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

The block above handles the HTTP->HTTPS redirect for both the main domain and the www subdomain. Essentially, all it does is listen for any connections to http://cyrozap.com or http://www.cyrozap.com and redirects them to https://cyrozap.com and https://www.cyrozap.com, respectively.

server{
    listen 443 ssl;
    listen [::]:443 ssl;
    server_name cyrozap.com;
    add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000";
    return 301 https://www.$host$request_uri;
}

This block only handles connections to https://cyrozap.com. Its purpose is to add an HSTS header to the root domain and then immediately redirect it to the www subdomain. If I skipped using this block, browsers that had only connected to http://cyrozap.com in the past would always try to connect to that first, making them vulnerable to an SSL-stripping MitM.

OCSP Stapling

OCSP Stapling turned out to be more difficult to enable HSTS. To do it in Nginx, you need to add something that looks like this to your main server config block:

ssl_stapling               on;
ssl_stapling_verify        on;
ssl_trusted_certificate    /etc/nginx/startssl.stapling.crt;

resolver 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4;
resolver_timeout 5s;

The tricky thing here is the ssl_trusted_certificate variable. You do not set that to your TLS certificate's CA certificate. Instead, you need to generate a certificate chain containing all the certificates leading up to the one that signs the OCSP response. Since I use the StartCom Class 1 CA, I tried using the certificate from this blog post, but it didn't work for me (I kept getting the kind of errors seen here). To fix it, I just tried different combinations of Root CA + Intermediate CA StartCom certs until I no longer got the OCSP verification failure messages. To make sure I don't somehow lose this certificate, I've reproduced it below:

IPv6 with TLS on Nginx

This final part was a little confusing, but I eventually figured it out. Since DigitalOcean supports IPv6 in the datacenter my VPS is in, I decided I'd take advantage of that feature and get my blog to work with it. After adding the necessary AAAA records to my domain, I needed to configure Nginx to listen on all IPv6 addresses (it doesn't by default). However, even after adding the listen [::]:443 ssl; and listen [::]:80; statements to the proper server configuration blocks, IPv6 still did not work properly. After some reading, it seems that the default listening ports need to be modified in the main Nginx config file as well (/etc/nginx/nginx.conf), not just the included config file for the specific site. In the only active server config block in that file, I modified the single listen 80; statement to look like this:

listen       80 default_server;
listen       [::]:80 ipv6only=on default_server;

After adding those lines, everything seemed to work as it should, even with multiple TLS and non-TLS virtual hosts.

Reversing the Symantec VIP Access Provisioning Protocol

2014-09-29T15:01:00-04:00

Two factor authentication (2FA) is an amazing invention. For one thing, it can significantly increase the security of your online accounts without significantly increasing the hassle of logging in. Additionally, the most popular 2FA algorithms are available in both free software and proprietary software implementations. This weekend, I reverse engineered Symantec's proprietary 2FA token solution with the goal of creating a free software alternative.

Motivation

Why did I do this? Well, like many people in the world, I use PayPal to send and receive money. To protect the security of my account, I use 2FA. Normally, when you use 2FA, the service provider presents a barcode to you that you can scan with any one of a number of applications (Authy, Duo Mobile, FreeOTP, Google Authenticator, etc.). However, PayPal uses the Symantec Validation and ID Protection Service (formerly Verisign Identity Protection) for their second factor. PayPal probably didn't want the overhead of managing a database of user tokens, so they went with Symantec's managed solution. My problem with this is that, while I can use Authy for all of my other accounts, I need to use the VIP Access app for PayPal only. So, I guess my reasoning here was:

Having multiple apps that do essentially the same thing seemed inefficient
The VIP Access app for iOS is pretty ugly (in my opinion)
I would prefer to have all of my tokens generated with one application/hardware device

Since it appeared as though no one else had done so, I decided to reverse engineer Symantec's VIP client myself.

Prior Work

I originally started working on this project around this time last year. I worked on it on and off for a few months, but I never made much progress. This was partially due to the fact I was attempting to de-obfuscate a heavily obfuscated Android application. I eventually got tired of that project and set it aside for a rainy day.

That "rainy day" came earlier this year when I saw this post, in which someone reversed their bank's obfuscated Android 2FA application in order to create a hardware token for it. Interestingly enough, the obfuscation used in that application was strikingly similar to the kind I found the VIP Access Android app using. Despite this newfound knowledge, I was still unable to deobfuscate many of the important portions of the application. At this point, I still thought that VIP Access used a proprietary algorithm to generate one time passwords.

Earlier this month, I found this script, in which I learned that VIP Access didn't use a proprietary algorithm to generate the tokens. I also learned that Symantec had released VIP Access applications for OS X and Windows. While this token extractor would have almost fit my needs, I really didn't want to have to rely on Symantec's proprietary client in order to generate these token keys. Plus, this script only works on OS X, so Linux and Windows users would be unable to extract their keys. So, eager to try out my recently-purchased disassembler (Hopper), I downloaded the VIP Access application and got to work.

The Process

Analysis of the Client-Server Communications

I started by opening the VIP Access application. The first window that appears indicates that the program is "Activating VIP Access". This would make sense if the program was calling out to some server to activate, so I fired up mitmproxy to watch the communications.

Here's an example of a provisioning request made by the application that would be POSTed to https://services.vip.symantec.com/prov:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><GetSharedSecret Id="1412030064" Version="2.0" xmlns="http://www.verisign.com/2006/08/vipservice" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"><TokenModel>VSST</TokenModel><ActivationCode></ActivationCode><OtpAlgorithm type="HMAC-SHA1-TRUNC-6DIGITS"/><SharedSecretDeliveryMethod>HTTPS</SharedSecretDeliveryMethod><DeviceId><Manufacturer>Apple Inc.
</Manufacturer><SerialNo>7QJR44Y54LK3
</SerialNo><Model>MacBookPro10,1
</Model></DeviceId><Extension extVersion="auth" xsi:type="vip:ProvisionInfoType" xmlns:vip="http://www.verisign.com/2006/08/vipservice"><AppHandle>iMac010200</AppHandle><ClientIDType>BOARDID</ClientIDType><ClientID>Mac-3E36319D3EA483BD
</ClientID><DistChannel>Symantec</DistChannel><ClientInfo><os>MacBookPro10,1
</os><platform>iMac</platform></ClientInfo><ClientTimestamp>1412030064</ClientTimestamp><Data>mxk5NtUnCwd36GEpQq6+Zmnh+rPKDePuS/XYci6/WD0=</Data></Extension></GetSharedSecret>

Because that request is really hard to read, I've run it through an XML beautifier:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<GetSharedSecret Id="1412030064" Version="2.0" xmlns="http://www.verisign.com/2006/08/vipservice" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <TokenModel>VSST</TokenModel>
    <ActivationCode></ActivationCode>
    <OtpAlgorithm type="HMAC-SHA1-TRUNC-6DIGITS" />
    <SharedSecretDeliveryMethod>HTTPS</SharedSecretDeliveryMethod>
    <DeviceId>
        <Manufacturer>Apple Inc.
    </Manufacturer>
        <SerialNo>7QJR44Y54LK3
    </SerialNo>
        <Model>MacBookPro10,1
    </Model>
    </DeviceId>
    <Extension extVersion="auth" xsi:type="vip:ProvisionInfoType" xmlns:vip="http://www.verisign.com/2006/08/vipservice">
        <AppHandle>iMac010200</AppHandle>
        <ClientIDType>BOARDID</ClientIDType>
        <ClientID>Mac-3E36319D3EA483BD
    </ClientID>
        <DistChannel>Symantec</DistChannel>
        <ClientInfo>
            <os>MacBookPro10,1
    </os>
            <platform>iMac</platform>
        </ClientInfo>
        <ClientTimestamp>1412030064</ClientTimestamp>
        <Data>mxk5NtUnCwd36GEpQq6+Zmnh+rPKDePuS/XYci6/WD0=</Data>
    </Extension>
</GetSharedSecret>

Notice how the values for Manufacturer, SerialNo, Model, ClientID, and os all have newline characters in the strings? This will be important later. For now, let's look at the response we get back.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<GetSharedSecretResponse RequestId="1412030064" Version="2.0" xmlns="http://www.verisign.com/2006/08/vipservice">
  <Status>
    <ReasonCode>0000</ReasonCode>
    <StatusMessage>Success</StatusMessage>
  </Status>
  <SharedSecretDeliveryMethod>HTTPS</SharedSecretDeliveryMethod>
  <SecretContainer Version="1.0">
    <EncryptionMethod>
      <PBESalt>u5lgf1Ek8WA0iiIwVkjy26j6pfk=</PBESalt>
      <PBEIterationCount>50</PBEIterationCount>
      <IV>Fsg1KafmAX80gUEDADijHw==</IV>
    </EncryptionMethod>
    <Device>
      <Secret type="HOTP" Id="VSST26070843">
        <Issuer>OU = ID Protection Center, O = VeriSign, Inc.</Issuer>
        <Usage otp="true">
          <AI type="HMAC-SHA1-TRUNC-6DIGITS"/>
          <TimeStep>30</TimeStep>
          <Time>0</Time>
          <ClockDrift>4</ClockDrift>
        </Usage>
        <FriendlyName>OU = ID Protection Center, O = VeriSign, Inc.</FriendlyName>
        <Data>
          <Cipher>ILBweOCEOoMBLJARzoeUIlu0+5m6b3khZljd5dozARk=</Cipher>
          <Digest algorithm="HMAC-SHA1">MoaidW7XDzeTZJqhfRQCZEieARM=</Digest>
        </Data>
        <Expiry>2017-09-25T23:36:22.056Z</Expiry>
      </Secret>
    </Device>
  </SecretContainer>
  <UTCTimestamp>1412030065</UTCTimestamp>
</GetSharedSecretResponse>

As you can see, these requests use XML and most of the fields are pretty self explanatory

To start reversing this protocol, I used HTTP Client¹ to send modified POST requests and note the responses. Interestingly enough, I could change most of the values and still get "valid" responses. I put "valid" in quotes because, as I would later learn, the value of Data would determine whether the credential would be activated or not. I didn't get very far by poking the provisioning server, so I moved on to a static analysis of the program.

Searching the Binary for Clues

Static Analysis

To start, I decided to look for some functions involved in parsing the response from the server. The decryptCipher method in ProvisioningController looked promising, so I took a look at the disassembled code. Lo and behold, one of the lines read:

eax = CCCrypt(0x1, 0x0, 0x0, STK29, 0x10, eax, edi, STK25, ecx, esi, edx);

From the CCCryptor man page:

CCCrypt(CCOperation op, CCAlgorithm alg, CCOptions options,
    const void *key, size_t keyLength, const void *iv,
    const void *dataIn, size_t dataInLength, void *dataOut,
    size_t dataOutAvailable, size_t *dataOutMoved);

From this, I could tell² that CCCrypt is performing a decrypt (op = 1 = kCCDecrypt) operation using AES-128 (alg = 0 = kCCAlgorithmAES128) with no padding and no ECB (options = 0) and a 16-byte keylength (keyLength = 0x10, to be expected with AES-128-CBC). I didn't try to find out the key and IV just yet, so I moved on to the next interesting method in ProvisioningController, prepareHmacInRequest:

...
CCHmac(0x2, esi, edi, STK29, eax, &var_44)
...

And from the CCHmac man page:

CCHmac(CCHmacAlgorithm algorithm, const void *key, size_t keyLength,
    const void *data, size_t dataLength, void *macOut);

This told me that the HMAC algorithm being used was SHA-256 (algorithm = 2 = kCCHmacAlgSHA256).

Unfortunately, static analysis could only go so far and while I did investigate other objects and their methods, most of them were dead ends. From there, I moved on to the dynamic analysis.

Dynamic Analysis

Debugging a program in Hopper is incredibly easy since you can set all the breakpoints in the GUI and read out the memory at arbitrary addresses with simple commands.³ Thankfully, VIP Access doesn't have any debugging protections, nor does it have any memory obfuscation, so finding the inputs to each of the important functions was trivial.

I started with CCCrypt, the function that decrypts the OTP token secret in the provisioning response. I set breakpoints where I saw the pointers to the key, iv, and dataIn variables were being set. From there, I followed those pointers to the areas in memory where those values were stored and dumped them.

First I dumped the key:

After dumping it, I decided to try it a few more times to make sure it wouldn't change—thankfully, it didn't, so I knew it was a static key. But if the key didn't change, what did? None other than the IV, of course! I set up a mitmproxy capture while performing my dynamic analysis to confirm that, yes, the IV used to decrypt dataIn was the same as the one in the provisioning response (base64-decoded). Similarly, dataIn ended up being the base64-decoded value of Cipher. From there, I wrote a small Python function to do the decryption myself. After removing the padding, I ran oathtool --totp with the hex-encoded OTP token secret to confirm that it was actually the correct secret. And it was! This was my first major victory, but there was a setback—when I tried playing back a valid captured request, I would get a proper response, but when I went to check the token online, Symantec said the credential ID was invalid. Even after updating the time in the request, the ID was still reported as invalid, so I knew that the value of Data in the request was significant in some way.

Looking back on the static analysis, the method I hadn't dynamically analyzed yet was prepareHmacInRequest in ProvisioningController. Again, by strategically setting breakpoints, I was able to determine both the HMAC key and the data used to generate it.

The 32-byte dump is the static HMAC key and the 56-byte dump is the data that is HMAC'd (the blacked out portion is the unique part of my board ID). Oh, and remember earlier when I noted that ClientID had a newline character in it? Well, you can see it in the data to be HMAC'd (0x0a), right at the end of the blacked out bytes. Apparently, when the program uses ioreg to retrieve the computer information (-[ProvisioningController getDeviceInfo:]), it doesn't strip the newline characters (which a simple tr -d '\n' would have fixed, but I digress). It doesn't matter, of course, since the VIP provisioning system will accept any values for those keys.

Writing a Free Client

With both the HMAC key and the token encryption key, I was able to write a Python program to automatically provision a VIP Access credential and generate both an otpauth URI and a QR code of that URI. You can find the code I wrote in its repository on GitHub.

All in all, it was pretty straightforward to write a client for this service since, at it's core, it's a simple HTTP POST with some hashing and decryption. The only obstacle I encountered was that the lxml.ElementMaker API wasn't properly generating the namespace attributes of the Extension tree, but I got around that by creating a "template" to plug the dictionary of values into. While it isn't the "correct" way to generate XML with Python, in this instance it was the only way. Oh, and I haven't yet figured out how the response digest HMAC is generated, but the program works without it.

In the future, I might add the capability to emulate the mobile version of VIP Access and I'll definitely add more error-checking to the code. Right now, all it does it check whether the OTP token actually functions by sending a separate request to Symantec to confirm that it does work. I might even turn it into a full Python module, complete with class definitions and all that fancy stuff.

Extras

There was some code in there that had to do with updating a token's details from the server (-[ProvisioningController updateNonACRequest:]), but I didn't really pay attention to it. I assume it's there to handle updating the token when it expires, but because the strings were xor-obfuscated and since reversing it wasn't necessary for my purposes, I left it alone. Why was that portion of the code obfuscated? Only the developers know. Speaking of which...

If you're curious, you can learn the names and usernames of some of the developers of this application by looking at the strings in the VIP Access binary and the .svn directory in the root of the VIP Access.app folder.

Conclusion

Hopefully, the work I've done will benefit the Internet community by facilitating the interoperability of computer programs and, more specifically, by allowing anyone on any operating system to use Symantec's VIP service.

Aside from the ugly iOS app, this experience has actually given me a lot of respect for the VIP service. It seems to to be a very robust system, capable of using any implemented OTP algorithm by simply changing some of the attributes in the protocol. Its inclusion of expiration dates for the tokens is also a good idea, and I'm sure token revocation is implemented on the backend. In other words, the people who built this system really knew what they were doing.

Lessons learned:

If you want to mess with an amateur software reverse engineer, add as many roadblocks as possible. i.e., obfuscate your code, obfuscate objects in memory, etc. This, of course, will not deter a professional in the field.
Don't leave testing code in the production version of any application you write. Doing so can potentially leak sensitive information (developer names could be used by someone to socially-engineer their way into a company, Kevin Mitnick style).
When you package an application, be absolutely sure to remove any hidden version control directories. If you don't, you can potentially leak sensitive information (developer usernames, among other things).

While curl would have worked just as well in this instance, a GUI can be faster for experimentation. ↩
When you want to know what constants are used in a function's arguments, try looking in the header files. ↩
Yes, I know gdb can do the same things, but having a GUI makes noticing patterns so much easier. Plus, I already spent the $89 for the program, so I might as well use it! ↩

On iPads and IMEI's

2014-09-21T14:52:00-04:00

Approximately three years ago, I posted instructions on how to get an iPad data plan without having to own an iPad. Just for fun, I decided to check if that method still works and, well, it does! It has been three years, though, and I'd like to offer some improvements to the process using knowledge I've gained since my original post.

IMEI Check Digit

First of all, in my original post, I said that "The IMEI should be in the form of 01222300******* or 01222400*******, where ******* is a random 7-digit number." This is not entirely accurate—the last digit of an IMEI is actually a check digit and not just any random digit. This would explain why some iPad IMEI's would work and some wouldn't. Thankfully, the algorithm to generate these digits is publicly available and there are plenty of websites that can calculate this number for you. If you would rather use some code to do this, the Python implementation on the Wikipedia Page is useful:

def luhn_checksum(card_number):
    def digits_of(n):
        return [int(d) for d in str(n)]
    digits = digits_of(card_number)
    odd_digits = digits[-1::-2]
    even_digits = digits[-2::-2]
    checksum = 0
    checksum += sum(odd_digits)
    for d in even_digits:
        checksum += sum(digits_of(d*2))
    return checksum % 10

def calculate_luhn(partial_card_number):
    check_digit = luhn_checksum(int(partial_card_number) * 10)
    return check_digit if check_digit == 0 else 10 - check_digit

So, the revised instructions should really be, "The IMEI should be in the form of 01222300******X or 01222400******X, where ****** is a random 6-digit number and "X" is the Luhn check digit." In code, this would be:

import random
def random_ipad_imei():
    num_digits = 6
    ipad_prefixes = [1222300, 1222400]
    random_digits = random.randint(0, 10**num_digits)
    partial_imei = random.choice(ipad_prefixes)*10**num_digits + random_digits
    check_digit = calculate_luhn(partial_imei)
    final_imei = partial_imei*10 + check_digit
    return str(final_imei).zfill(15)

print "Random IMEI: %s" % (random_ipad_imei())

Plans and prices

Surprisingly, prices haven't really changed that much (although you do get LTE now instead of just 3G). You can pay $15 for 250 MB, $30 for 3 GB, and $50 for 5 GB, but it would probably be better to just buy the $30 plan and spend the $10/GB in overage fees if you need more data. If you need more than that and are willing to sacrifice a little network coverage for better prices, T-Mobile offers 1 GB of mobile data for $20, with increases in 2 GB increments for $10 each, so if you want to use a lot of data, T-Mobile is definitely the best when it comes to price.

Pelican is Wonderful

2014-07-16T19:45:00-04:00

As I mentioned in my last post, Pelican is the tool I now use to generate all the static HTML files that make up this site. Pelican allows me to write posts using either Markdown or reStructuredText and can utilize a large variety of plugins written in Python. There are a number of blogging platform similar to Pelican like Octopress and Jekyll (upon which Octopress is based), but Pelican was the most fully-featured platform that is also written in a language I'm very comfortable with.

One of the benefits to writing posts as raw text files is that there is a plethora of utilities to edit text files on Linux/BSD/Darwin (and other *nix) platforms. For instance, I can use sed to do bulk replacements in posts, grep to search them, and I can use any combinantion of commands by combining them in a bash script. In fact, after importing my WordPress blog, I used this short script to organize the files in subdirectories based on their post date:

find ./posts -name "*.md" | xargs -n 1 \
python -c " \
import sys; \
path = sys.argv[1]; \
date_line = open(path,'r').read().split('\n')[1]; \
(year, month, day) = date_line.split()[1].split('-'); \
print 'mkdir -p ./posts/%s/%s; mv %s ./posts/%s/%s/%s' % \
(year, month, path, year, month, path.lstrip('./posts/'))" \
| sh

Ok, I guess it isn't that short and I probably could have done it all in Python, but it worked pretty well for me as a one-off command.

Pelican is very easily extensible. Right now, I'm using the pelican-octopress-theme as my blog theme. It's a nice theme, but I felt it was lacking some features. Thankfully, the template files are easy to modify so I was able to quickly change them to meet my needs. First, I changed how article URLs are generated on the Archives page. In the original version, the generated links were relative to the web path of the Archives page. With the default page "save as" and "URL" options, this is fine, but it doesn't work if you change them. To fix this, I prefixed the article.url variable with the SITEURL variable (among a few smaller changes). I also fixed the problem where the "Read On" button would display in the post index even if the article wasn't summarized. To do that, I just added a check to make sure the button was only displayed when the article.content didn't equal the article.summary. Finally, because I use FeedBurner, I added some FeedBurner integration. All I did was add an additional FEED_FEEDBURNER option to specify the FeedBurner URL and disable displaying the raw feed URLs on the page itself.

My changes were merged into the upstream pelican-octopress-theme repository as of commit bd5468f, so you can benefit from these new features, too!

The Blog is Back!

2014-07-12T15:35:00-04:00

After over a year of silence, I'm blogging again! A lot has happened in the time I've been away, the most notable of which is probably the new look of the website. As you can see, I've abandoned my self-hosted WordPress blog in favor of a static blog hosted on Rackspace's Cloud Files. I did this for a number of reasons:

Static HTML files load really fast over a CDN.
Cheap VPS services generally don't have the best uptimes.
The old WordPress blog had a 500 ms latency when loading it, probably because:
WordPress is really easy to fill up with junky plugins that slow it down.

I also made the switch because:

Dynamicly-generated sites are potentially less-secure than sites that are pre-generated and I don't want to have to keep a WordPress installation up to date.
It's easy to complicate the configuration of WordPress/LAMP server to the point where an update breaks something and it's been so long since you've edited the configuration you don't even know where to start fixing it.
I just don't like PHP.

On top of all those reasons, I wanted to simplify the posting process so I could focus more on writing content and less on formatting it and maintaining the blog's back-end. To do this, I started using Pelican, a static-site generator written in Python that many people use as a robust blogging platform (I'll write about it more in my next post). I then use some scripts included with Pelican to upload the content files to Cloud Files to serve it (I'll write more about this process later, too).

I'm still getting used to the new format and while I've spent many hours trying to ensure that old posts appear as they were meant to appear, the blog import process isn't perfect so you may still see some broken links here and there. For the most part, though, it works and I'm pretty happy with it.

Anyways, I hope you all enjoy the new look and functionality of this blog and I'm really excited to finally be posting again!

Mac SE Update

2013-03-14T17:44:00-04:00

I just realized that I haven't posted any updates on my Macintosh SE in over a year! I've made a few big strides since then and I'm really getting excited about it.

Remember that RAM Issue I was having? Well, the computer managed to work on 2.5MB, but I really wanted the maximum of 4MB so I bought 2 x 1 MB 30-pin 60ns SIMMs on ebay for $4. Now, the computer works great! Well, not really. The HDD is toast (it's been making the "click of death"), so there's no OS. Luckily it still has a floppy drive! Unfortunately, it only takes 800k floppies and is completely incompatible with modern 1.4M floppies.

After I discovered that I was't going to get an OS running on the Mac via a floppy, I started searching for alternative means. First, I looked into SCSI to IDE adapters. Unfortunately, they are EXTREMELY expensive (on the order of hundreds of dollars). Next, I tried finding 50-pin SCSI drives. I then realized that, even if I was able to buy a drive like that, I would still have no way of loading an OS onto it. Finally, I started researching floppy disk drive emulators. After a bit of research, I discovered that they are more plentiful than many would think. Sadly, they only support 1.4M floppies.

For a while, I thought I was out of luck. But then, I discovered the blog of a computer engineer who, among other things, managed to create a floppy disk emulator for 68k-based Macintoshes. I really liked the concept and the design was proven so I decided to build a few for myself!

After a few hiccups with setting the AVR's fuse bits properly, I managed to get both it and the CPLD programmed and working! I have successfully used it to boot disks from System 1.1 to System 6.0.8 and so far, it works flawlessly for disk reads. Disk writing is still a bit flaky (you need to have a class 10 SD card for writes to work), but I'm looking into how I can improve the code for that. Here are a few photos of the device working:

To install the floppy emulator, you simply need to plug one end of a 20 pin IDC cable into the Mac and the other end into the emulator. To use it, you need to have an SD card with the disk images you want to load on it (sample disk images can be found in the file bundle).

I've made a few extras, so if you want one, feel free to contact me! The price is $150 + shipping (USPS Priority mail) for each device (2 are available, price covers parts and labor). I accept both Bitcoin and Paypal for payment. If you use Bitcoin, you get $10 off the purchase price because I'm not fond of Paypal's policies. As always, no warranty is implied; I will test all devices and make sure they're working before I ship them, but you are buying the device "as-is". All sales are final. I'll respond to requests for assistance as best as I can.

The schematics, board layout, sample disk files, and source code for the Macintosh Floppy Emu can be found here.

bladeRF: a USB 3.0 Software Defined Radio

2013-02-08T21:57:00-05:00

I just backed this project! Why? Because for $400, I get one of the most flexible and inexpensive SDR's on the market. Not only do I get that, I also get in-depth documentation and guides on how to use it. I've been wanting a nice SDR for some time now, ever since I saw the OpenBTS demo using the Ettus Research USRP1. Unfortunately, the USRP1 is, to me, too limited to justify the price. Additionally, there is a very steep learning curve if you're a beginner like me. I'm still interested in cell phone networks, though, and with the pending release of the bladeRF, I will finally have a chance to play around with the technology.

Notice a Speed Increase?

2013-02-01T02:46:00-05:00

Well, I've finally done it—I've purchased a VPS and now I'm hosting this blog on it! I'm still using CloudFlare for caching, spam-filtering, and DDoS protection, but now I'm running the blog on a network that is about two orders of magnitude faster than my home upload speed of 180 KB/s. It is VERY nice and the transition went much smoother than I expected!

Basically, to transfer my blog, I installed all the necessary packages on the new server, rolled up all of the important directories from the old server (/etc/wordpress, /usr/share/wordpress, /var/www/wp-uploads, /etc/apache2, etc.) into a few archives, restored them onto the VPS, and transferred the Wordpress database by exporting it as SQL queries. I ran into a few hiccups with the time zone and some Apache misconfigurations, but those were mitigated quickly. For an entire blog migration, 5 hours is a pretty good time—and with minimal downtime, too!

If you were wondering, I got my VPS from BudgetVM. For $7 per month, I got a Xen-based VPS with 768 MB of RAM, 1.5 GB of swap space, 40 GB of Raid 10 storage, and 2500 GB of bandwidth. All-in-all, I think it's a great deal, seeing as I get to have full control over my virtual server for the same price as shared hosting at a site like Bluehost. I did a download speed test on the server and managed to get up to 85 MB/s (yes, megaBYTES). The upload speed from the server maxed out my download connection so I really can't say how fast the upload is other than it's really fast.

I'm actually so impressed with the quality of the service that I'm considering getting a second Xen VPS with more RAM for my Minecraft server. Unfortunately, it would cost me $20/month and I really can't justify the cost right now for what is just a game. I also don't want to charge my friends to use my server because it will take some or all of the fun out of the game. More importantly, it would mean that I wouldn't be able to mess with them in-game. ;)

P.S.: If anyone has or knows of better, cool-looking background and/or header images that I could use for the site under the Creative Commons license, that would be awesome. The theme has been feeling a bit rough on the eyes for a while now.

CloudFlare is Awesome!

2013-01-26T21:44:00-05:00

I've been trying out CloudFlare to try to speed up the site a bit and so far, it's working great! It's also handy because I can use it to bypass 1and1's 5 subdomain limit because I'm using CloudFlare's servers.

Unfortunately, this means I've had to reconfigure a bunch of stuff. I've already noticed that some things are breaking (https stuff) and I'm trying my best to fix them, but sometimes it's difficult to pinpoint the source of the problem.

My Current 3D-Printing Status

2012-11-27T17:52:00-05:00

Hardware upgrade: After wiring the 8-pin CPU power connector to go to the relay board and connecting my Cupcake's new PSU, the machine no longer skips steps in the Z-axis nor in the extruder and the heated build platform and extruder nozzle heat up in a more timely manner. My reasoning for wiring an 8-pin CPU power connector to the relay board was to ensure that the heater elements would have enough power and not take it from the steppers. I'm pretty sure this works because the CPU power is on a separate rail from the normal connectors, but it may also just be because everything isn't running off the same strand of connectors any more. It really is a nice power supply and I can really appreciate the engineering and industrial design work that went into it. Anyways, to finish up, I just need to cut a large hole or a series of holes in the bottom of the Cupcake's wooden "PSU shelf" so when I put it in, the power supply will have a way to draw in air for cooling. Then, I'll be able to close up my Cupcake for a while.

Software upgrade: I'm still on ReplicatorG 34 because it's what I'm familiar with and is the latest supported by my Gen3 electronics, but that doesn't mean I can't improve the slicing speed! Just today I managed to install PyPy, a really fast python interpreter that has been shown to make slicing go 4-5 times faster. For instance, Brainy Walt now slices in only 6 minutes on my Core i7 MacBook Pro where before it would take around 30-45 minutes. This is really great because now I can try out new settings without having to wait forever for Skeinforge to re-slice things.

Here's a tip for those of you trying to install PyPy and tkinter-pypy on OS X Mountain Lion (and possibly Lion): If you get any ld errors about missing tk8.4 or tcl8.4, just find the "setup.py" file in the tkinter directory you're installing from and change the versions to 8.5 for both of them. Also, if you get any errors similar to that regarding X11, first make sure you have XQuartz installed, then run ln -s /opt/X11/include/X11 /usr/local/include/X11 in a terminal to symlink the X11 includes so the setup.py script (or whatever else) can find them.

RepRap status: Now that I've pretty much fully repaired my Cupcake, I can work on my Prusa Mendel without any guilt. All I need to do with it is figure out some temporary wiring scheme to test out the electronics and steppers, then I'll fit the heated build to the Y-axis plate and start trying out Slic3r.

Python is Fun

2012-10-18T17:33:00-04:00

Usually, I don't do much programming because it's always taken a lot of work to do even the simplest of things. However, since I've discovered Python, I've been having a blast. Just yesterday, I wrote a command line tool to upload files to Box.com. While I could have used somebody else's libraries to do the heavy lifting, I wanted to roll my own code. I thought it would be both more fun and more educational that way, and it was. My initial purpose for writing this program was that I could use it in a cron job to perform server backups. Now, because server backup was my primary goal and I can encrypt the backup archives before uploading, security wasn't much of an issue. Because I wasn't very concerned with the security of the transfers, I didn't bother to do things like check for SSL/TLS certificate validity. Additionally, I put my API key right in the code, so I can't just distribute it and let people see that. If you want it, I've posted it below (with my API key removed, of course).

The license is Public Domain because it's so simple and I only spent around 6 hours writing it. Currently, it can upload multiple files in the same command, but it's not exactly elegant because it makes a new connection for each file. The "proper" way to do it is to use the multiple-file-upload part of the API, but that would have taken a significant rewrite of the upload function and, well, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" Oh, and it freaks out if you tell it to upload a folder, so don't do that.

#!/usr/bin/env python
# Box Upload
# This code accepts arguments to upload files.

# WARNING!
# This code does not check SSL certificate validity!
# TODO: Implement certificate validation.

# Get the API key by making a Box application here: http://box.com/developers/services/edit/
api_key = 'replace-with-api-key'

import os
import sys
import urllib
import urllib2
import MultipartPostHandler, cookielib # MultipartPostHandler can be found at: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/MultipartPostHandler2
from xml.dom import minidom

def authenticate(api_key):
    xml_ticket = minidom.parseString(urllib.urlopen('https://www.box.com/api/1.0/rest?action=get_ticket&api_key='+api_key).read()) # This grabs the XML authentication ticket that we'll be using to generate the auth_token.
    status = xml_ticket.firstChild.childNodes[0].firstChild.data # This gets the ticket status to make sure we actually retrieved a valid ticket.
    if status == 'get_ticket_ok': # Did we get a valid ticket? If so, continue. If not, the user needs to check their API key.
        ticket = xml_ticket.firstChild.childNodes[1].firstChild.data
        print 'Please go to https://www.box.com/api/1.0/auth/'+ticket+' and follow the instructions there. Then, press ENTER or RETURN to continue.'
        raw_input()
        xml_auth_token = minidom.parseString(urllib.urlopen('https://www.box.net/api/1.0/rest?action=get_auth_token&api_key='+api_key+'&ticket='+ticket).read()) # This is the auth token in XML format.
        auth_status = xml_auth_token.firstChild.childNodes[0].firstChild.data # Reads the authentication status into "auth_status"
        if auth_status == 'get_auth_token_ok':
            auth_token = xml_auth_token.firstChild.childNodes[1].firstChild.data
            token_path = os.path.expanduser('~/.box_auth_token')
            auth_token_file = open(token_path,'w')
            auth_token_file.write(auth_token)
            auth_token_file.close()
            print 'The authentication token has been saved in the file "'+token_path+'". If you remove this file, you will need to reauthenticate.'
            print ''
            print 'Please run "boxupload" again to initiate your upload.'
            return
        elif auth_status == 'not_logged_in':
            print "I'm sorry, but you haven't authorized me to connect to your account. Please run \"boxupload\" again to restart the authentication process."
        elif auth_status == 'get_auth_token_error':
            print "I'm sorry, but there was an error in retrieving your authentication token. Please run \"boxupload\" again to restart the authentication process."
        else:
            print "Error: "+auth_status+". Try reauthenticating."
    else:
        print 'Error retrieving ticket! Check your API key.'

def get_account_info(api_key,auth_token):
    xml_account_info = minidom.parseString(urllib.urlopen('https://www.box.net/api/1.0/rest?action=get_account_info&api_key='+api_key+'&auth_token='+auth_token).read())
    status = xml_account_info.firstChild.childNodes[0].firstChild.data
    if status == 'get_account_info_ok':
        login = str(xml_account_info.firstChild.childNodes[1].childNodes[0].firstChild.data)
        email = str(xml_account_info.firstChild.childNodes[1].childNodes[1].firstChild.data)
        access_id = int(xml_account_info.firstChild.childNodes[1].childNodes[2].firstChild.data)
        user_id = int(xml_account_info.firstChild.childNodes[1].childNodes[3].firstChild.data)
        space_amount = int(xml_account_info.firstChild.childNodes[1].childNodes[4].firstChild.data) # Total capacity of the account in bytes
        space_used = int(xml_account_info.firstChild.childNodes[1].childNodes[5].firstChild.data) # Data usage of the account in bytes
        max_upload_size = int(xml_account_info.firstChild.childNodes[1].childNodes[6].firstChild.data) # Maximum file upload size in bytes
        account_info = [login, email, access_id, user_id, space_amount, space_used, max_upload_size] # Turn the data into a list for easy access
        return account_info
    elif status == 'not_logged_in':
        print "I'm sorry, your authentication token is invalid. Try removing your \"auth_token\" file and reauthenticating."
    elif status == 'Wrong input':
        print "I'm sorry, the API key you are using is mistyped."

def upload(file,auth_token):
    if not os.path.exists(file):
        print 'ERROR: File \"'+file+'\" was not found!'
        return
    url = 'https://upload.box.net/api/1.0/upload/'+auth_token+'/0'
    cookies = cookielib.CookieJar()
    opener = urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.HTTPCookieProcessor(cookies), MultipartPostHandler.MultipartPostHandler)
    params = { "file" : open(file, "rb") }
    xml_response = minidom.parseString(opener.open(url, params).read())
    upload_status = xml_response.firstChild.childNodes[0].firstChild.data
    if upload_status == 'upload_ok':
        print "Upload successful!"
    else:
        print "Upload failure!"

try: # Check for and read auth_token file
    token_path = os.path.expanduser('~/.box_auth_token')
    auth_token_file = open(token_path,'r')
    auth_token = auth_token_file.read()
    pass
except IOError as e:
    authenticate(api_key) # If there's no auth_token, initiate authentication.
    sys.exit(1)

if len(sys.argv) < 2:
    print "usage: "+sys.argv[0]+" file_1 [file_2] [file_3] ... [file_n]"
    sys.exit(1)

# account_info = get_account_info(api_key,auth_token)

''' # Uncomment for debugging.
print 'Auth token: ' + auth_token
print 'Max upload size: ' + str((account_info[6])/1024.0/1024) + ' MB'
print 'Total capacity: ' + str((account_info[4])/1024.0/1024) + ' MB | Space used: ' + str((account_info[5])/1024.0/1024) + ' MB | Space remaining: ' + str((account_info[4]-account_info[5])/1024.0/1024) + ' MB | Percent free: ' + str(100.0*(account_info[4]-account_info[5])/account_info[4]) + '%'
'''

arguments = sys.argv
arguments.pop(0)

for argv in arguments:
    upload(argv,auth_token)

Upgrading the Kyocera KR2 With the CradlePoint MBR1000 Firmware

2012-10-15T19:38:00-04:00

This is the first post in my quest to get my Kyocera KR2 running some more modern firmware. For those of you who don't know, The CradlePoint MBR1000 3G/4G wireless router is essentially a rebranded Kyocera KR2 with different firmware and no PCMCIA slot. Internally, the hardware is exactly the same (except for the PCMCIA card slot). The MBR1000's firmware is more up-to-date than the KR2 firmware with support for more 3G and 4G cellular cards, so I wanted to see if I could upgrade the firmware. If I do eventually get this to work, I'll probably lose the PCMCIA card slot functionality, but it will be worth it.

Here's what I have so far:

The MBR1000 has two firmware files, both with the .bin extension. The second firmware file contains the modem drivers and is not relevant. The first firmware file, however, is much more interesting. Here's the output after I ran binwalk on the u_mbr_2012_04_16.bin file:

DECIMAL     HEX         DESCRIPTION
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0           0x0         Ubicom firmware header, checksum: 0x1C2EDFD2, image size: 1703936

It turns out that you can actually extract files from this archive (it's called an ARJ; I've never heard of that kind of archive before). So, using "The Archive Browser" on my Mac (it's a very good utility, by the way), I extracted a file called nightlies/mbrcore_2_0_0_Release_2012_04_16/build/bin/img.bin from it. This is what it's called when I extract it using The Archive Browser. When I use 7-Zip to extract it, instead of getting that directory structure in the file name, the directory structure is actually visible inside 7-Zip and you can browse through it. There aren't any additional files, though, so either way you get an image file out of it. Here's the binwalk output for that file:

DECIMAL     HEX         DESCRIPTION
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
97386       0x17C6A     JFFS2 filesystem (old) data big endian, JFFS node length: 53663
1552871     0x17B1E7    LZMA compressed data, properties: 0x84, dictionary size: 1393557504 bytes, uncompressed size: 606931776 bytes
1555019     0x17BA4B    LZMA compressed data, properties: 0xB8, dictionary size: 756023296 bytes, uncompressed size: 417925696 bytes
1557687     0x17C4B7    LZMA compressed data, properties: 0xE0, dictionary size: 403701760 bytes, uncompressed size: 680856384 bytes
1558159     0x17C68F    LZMA compressed data, properties: 0x84, dictionary size: 655360000 bytes, uncompressed size: 748555072 bytes
1990922     0x1E610A    PNG image, 16 x 16, 8-bit/color RGBA, non-interlaced
2019004     0x1ECEBC    TIFF image data, big-endian
2038803     0x1F1C13    GIF image data 8289 x 256
2044879     0x1F33CF    GIF image data, version 89a, 740 x 30

Wow! I wish I had this program a few years ago... Anyways, this is all very interesting stuff. The PNG (if you haven't already guessed from the size) is the favicon for the web interface; I have no idea what the TIFF is; after a little poking around, I found that the "8289 x 256" GIF is simply a spinning "loading" disk from here; and that last GIF is just some sort of simple footer image. All in all, nothing too special here. On to the Kyocera firmware!

The KR2 only uses one firmware image, the latest is called ZE1004.bin. Here's the binwalk output for it:

DECIMAL     HEX         DESCRIPTION
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0           0x0         Ubicom firmware header, checksum: 0x6953B032, image size: 1507328
978291      0xEED73     TIFF image data, big-endian
1362951     0x14CC07    GIF image data, version 89a, 4128 x 256
1369624     0x14E618    GIF image data, version 89a, 16 x 16
1382219     0x15174B    TIFF image data, big-endian

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to extract anything from ZE1004.bin. Oh, well.

Noting that ZE1004.bin and u_mbr_2012_04_16.bin both had Ubicom firmware headers, I decided to compare them using "Hex Fiend." From that hex comparison, I found that that the two files are remarkably similar. First of all, they are cllose to each other in filesize (1.7 and 1.5 MB). Second, for the first 1.5 kB, there are only 37 differences with many of them being simple byte replacements. After that, the files become very different for a little over a megabyte. After that difference, though, there's a bunch of "FF" bytes and these continue until the end of the file where there is a 4 byte value that varies by one byte between the two files and is certainly not a checksum. In the MBR1000 file, you could remove around 200 kB worth of "FF" after the main code block and make it the same size as the KR2 file. After looking through the two files, it seems as though the KR2 file has much more code than the MBR1000 file, but this can be explained by the fact that the KR2 firmware has its modem drivers built-in.

At this point, I believe that if I can change the MBR1000 firmware to look like the KR2 firmware a little, I'll be able to trick my Kyocera KR2 into upgrading from the MBR1000 firmware file.

Things are beginning to look good!

Power Supply Perils

2012-09-23T14:51:00-04:00

After 3 years of faithfully supplying power to my MakerBot Cupcake, the power supply has finally died. Every time I switched it on, it would turn right off. That's not bad for 3 years of use, especially considering that I probably started using too much power when I switched to a stepper extruder with power resistor heating with the MK6 upgrade. I've already found an amazing new power supply for it, but it has an air intake on one of its larger sides, so I'll have to cut a hole (or drill a bunch of tiny holes) in the MakerBot's bottom panel. This is in addition to the work I'll have to do on the back panel to get the power switch to fit.

The funny thing is, while I was thinking about power supplies, I decided to finally wire up my RepRap's $40 PSU that I got many months ago. Upon plugging it into the wall, I decided to feel how warm the case got with no load (as an initial precaution). What I got was something much more interesting. Instead of feeling heat, I felt a light tingle. Even more interesting was the fact that the tingling seemed to make my fingers move ever-so-slightly at a familiar 60 Hz. After pulling my hand away and mulling over the implications of what just happened, I decided to touch the PSU casing again. I guess that makes me a scientist. After my little science experiment, I cut power to the PSU to prevent further mishaps. I guess I'll be modding an ATX power supply and using that for now...

Update: Apparently I only imagined the whole "tingling" thing (it may also have been the result of a pinched nerve). I just tested the power supply again and I felt no tingling and the output voltage range seems fine. I highly recommend Lulzbot as a source of RepRap power supplies because they have top-notch customer service.

MakerBot is Growing Up

2012-09-19T19:55:00-04:00

Disclaimer: This is just, like, my opinion, man. Also, I won't be discussing whether MakerBot has done anything illegal or not; I'll only be explaining what I think is going on at the company.

Introduction:

Recently, the MakerBot Replicator 2 was announced as a closed-source device. This didn't really surprise me. In fact, I'm more surprised they didn't do this with the original Replicator. Yes, they're a company we've all come to know and love, but I've felt that for a while now that they've been becoming less and less relevant to the community of 3D printing tinkerers.

They Want to Change the World:

I feel that if MakerBot can make a very good 3D printer that requires almost no tuning or configuration for under $5000, they should go right ahead and do it—open source or not. I started 3D printing on a MakerBot, but that was with the Cupcake CNC, a completely experimental device. The end goal for me really wasn't to make little plastic objects; my goal was to build a really cool machine and to learn from the experience. I did learn a lot from the experience, but I don't think MakerBot is targeting people like me any more. I think they want to make a 3D printer that anyone can use, regardless of their tinkering ability. Is this a good thing? I think so! Why? Because it gets the technology into the hands of more people!

Business Reasons:

One of the biggest issues with the DIY 3D printer market now is that it is extremely price-sensitive. This is because there are many more choices for 3D printer kits available now than there were back when I was first starting out. I don't think it would even be possible for MakerBot to make a better product like they've done while still being able to compete because people looking for kits are looking to save money and/or tinker. Essentially, they've switched from making kits for tinkerers to making finished products for schools, small businesses, and individuals whose time is more valuable than money because the tinkerers no longer want MakerBot's products.

Open or Closed?:

Even though MakerBot has gone closed-source, I think it's for the best. Because they've made this amazing technology easier to use, they've been able to get it into the hands of more and more creative people. Making anything open source is never as simple as just "posting the files on the web somewhere." By not keeping it open source, MakerBot is able to focus more of its energy to improving the product because they no longer have to worry about documenting all their designs or supporting tinkerers. MakerBot, quite simply, no longer has any incentive to remain open source. Yes, they're pretty much becoming Apple, but I don't think that's a bad thing.

tl;dr: MakerBot would not be able to survive if it didn't change its target market and lose its open source nature in the process.

Detailed Economics Stuff:

The price elasticity of demand for 3D printer kits is a lot greater than 1 because there are so many equivalent substitutes. The opportunity cost for small businesses and schools to build and maintain their own 3D printers is a lot more than the price of a MakerBot Replicator 2 + support fees. MakerBot saw that there was a demand for an inexpensive, "zero-configuration" 3D printer for schools and SMBs and, seeing that the market they were currently competing in no longer desired enough of their products, they decided to switch markets to one that would pay more money for better quality.

Totally not a "tech project" post.

2012-06-18T23:18:00-04:00

For this blog post, I'm going to analyze Apple's success because I'm totally qualified to do that. Also, if you're an Apple hater, you might not like reading this.

I noticed something interesting I regarding the differences between Apple advertisements and advertisements from other smartphone and tablet manufacturers. Let's see if you can spot the differences, too:

Apple iPhone ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t-lsULa8ZM

Apple iPad ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RksyMaJiD8Y

Vs.

Motorola Droid Razr ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj9yisLa4ao

Motorola Droid Bionic ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-K71MpwCko

Microsoft Surface ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpzu3HM2CIo

See the differences? The Motorola and Microsoft ads are strangely devoid of human beings actually using the devices and are filled with hard, distorted, electronic sounds whereas the Apple ads include people interacting with the devices Apple is trying to sell. Oh, and the Apple ads have calming music, too.

I'm not saying the Motorola and Microsoft ads are bad and the Apple ads are good. What I see here are advertisements catering to different markets. The Motorola/Microsoft ads are obviously targeting the action movie-loving 13- to 28-year-old males. The Apple ads are targeting everyone else. In fact, these ads clearly show the differences in mindsets between Windows/Android fans and Apple fans. Windows/Android fans like having really powerful hardware because it's pretty cool and they prioritize this over factors like the physical design or UI of the device. Apple fans like Apple devices because they provide a friendly and intuitive user experience. Also, Apple devices look pretty.

I don't really like Android phones because their UIs looks ugly to me (too dark and too much flashiness), and the screens (usually) don't represent colors accurately or very well. The cameras on the phones are also not color-corrected (usually, there's a blue tint to the images).

I like Apple devices because they have nice, mostly color-accurate screens and cameras, a beautiful user interface/experience, and lots of built-in services and useful functionality like iCloud, Find My Apple Device, AppleCare, etc.

I also know that when Apple integrates a new technology into their devices, they do it right. Apple knows that its customers don't care about specs so much as excellent implementations of new technologies. Apple didn't add USB 3 to the Mac until they saw it was mature and going to last. Thunderbolt can be used with 3rd party adapters for anything Apple didn't include. Blu-Ray is a stupid Sony technology. Apple had DisplayPort before most other computers. The iPhone doesn't have 4G, but that means they're still perfecting the implementation. The iPhone had a retina display before any other device. The list goes on.

I'm too tired to finish my thoughts and bring them back to the original point of the different attitudes and then back to the original original point about the advertising and stuff. Ugh. Maybe later... I think my fellow Apple fans will understand what I'm trying to say.

Therefore, based on my completely anecdotal evidence, I believe this all shows how Apple sets itself apart from other companies and how various factors contribute to its continued success.

Almost there...

2012-05-28T15:00:00-04:00

All I have left is to wire up the power supply and attach the heated bed!

Debian Linux + ReplicatorG

2012-05-01T13:38:00-04:00

Recently, I have been trying to get rid of my MacBook Pro so I will be able to upgrade my iPhone in the Fall when the new one is supposed to come out. Up until now, my MacBook had been my MakerBot-controlling machine. Now that I have a nice, speedy Linux laptop with an average of 7 hours of battery life and become more proficient with Linux, I've been using the MacBook less and less. Today, I decided I was going to print more parts from the Mendel-Inspired Lowrider. To do this, I needed to install ReplicatorG. Well, I got it running fine, but it wasn't detecting my serial port (I plan on using the physical RS-232 port on my laptop instead of the USB-TTL convertor). As is the norm with Linux, I figured it was a permissions problem and, lo-and-behold, I was right! This article got me up and running rather quickly. Basically, I just had to sudo chmod a+rw /dev/ttyS0 and I was good to go.

An interesting thing I noticed: for some reason, Skeinforge works a lot faster on my Debian Laptop than my MacBook Pro even though they have the same processor (T7300) and RAM speed (DDR2 667 MHz).

The thought just occurred to me that maybe my Debian Laptop's Skeinforge is faster because the Debian Laptop has an SSD.

The Peeks have arrived!

2012-02-26T15:16:00-05:00

Update 5/27/21: It's been nine years since this article was posted, and a lot has changed since then. With the proliferation of inexpensive WiFi-, Bluetooth-, and even cellular-enabled microcontrollers, these devices are no longer as interesting as they used to be. However, I still have most of those 30 Peeks, and I'm a lot more skilled at bare-metal programming now than I used to be, so I intend to do something with them within the next year so they don't go to waste. I'll post any project updates in #peekdev on Libera IRC.

Update 3/29/12: Peek's OS has been open-sourced! The new dev site is here: PeekLinux.com

Well, I just received my casepack of 30 Peek devices (it was originally supposed to be 20...) and I have nothing to do with them. I'll be hanging out in ~~#peekdev (##peek is no longer used) on Freenode IRC~~ as cyrozap, so spread the word about the IRC channel and join in so we can collectively figure out how to make this awesome device better! Code to help get started has been posted to http://peekhack.posterous.com. http://elinux.org/Peek has some good info on how to flash the device.

Oh, and thanks to Sam Aarons for letting me know that Peeks were being given away! I still have no idea why that news hasn't reached Hack-a-Day yet...

Update 2/29/12: For those of you wondering, this is how you wire up a normal micro-USB cable to an FTDI cable for use with a Peek. Sorry for the poor photo quality; my iPhone's case has plastic covering the lens that likes to diffuse light. :|

From FTDI -> USB, the connections are: Black -> Black, Red -> Red, Orange -> Green, Yellow -> White

My Enhancement Request to Apple (and Verizon, AT&T, et al.)

2011-12-27T02:18:00-05:00

I just sent this Enhancement Request to Apple. I've reproduced it below:

Unlocked Verizon iPhone 4S To Work On U.S. GSM Carriers

This may be more of a problem with Verizon, but I really would love it if an unlocked Verizon iPhone 4S could be permitted to work on any GSM carrier in the world—including the United States. Currently, it only works on Verizon in the U.S. and GSM carriers internationally, but not AT&T, T-Mobile U.S., nor any other U.S. regional GSM carriers. I was going to buy an iPhone 4S, thinking that this was the dawn of the age of easy migration between wireless carriers, but upon learning about this crippling of the iPhone's enormous hardware potential, I have resolved to not purchase one. I also find it absurd that Verizon will not let an Apple-unlocked iPhone 4S be permitted on its network. This stifles innovation and reeks of monopolistic practices. If iPhone owners got fed up with AT&T's lack of expansive 3G coverage, they could switch to Verizon. If they got tired of Verizon's slow 3G data speeds, they could easily switch to AT&T or T-Mobile. If consumers were allowed to freely flow between carriers, the superior carrier would have more subscribers by nature and not by force. I'd prefer it if companies would bring about this change by themselves instead of legislation forcing the change. Either way, it must happen eventually. Apple has the power to protest these anti-competitive habits by allowing the activation of U.S. SIM cards in unlocked Verizon iPhone 4S's. I don't know if this request will actually do anything, but it makes me feel better to know that someone will see this and might even stop a moment to think, "What if..."

Go to http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html to send your own Enhancement Request.

Peek Linux With GSM Support

2011-12-05T17:52:00-05:00

The Peek is a mobile device that uses a GSM radio to get your email and display it. Basically, it's a single-purpose email device.

A month or two ago, I bought a Peek on eBay for $22. I thought it might be useful, but it ended up being useless without the Peek service. So far, I've managed to upgrade the firmware, but I still need the Peek service to get it to work. Peek customer support has been unresponsive to my request to activate my Peek, so I now want to install Linux on this thing to at least get SOME functionality out of it. Unfortunately, without the GSM radio drivers of the TI Locosto chip, this device is still useless (even on Linux). My new side project is to now get access to TI's Locosto dev info so I can make binary drivers for the chip for Linux. I would only be able to make binaries because of TI's NDA.

Any help with this would be appreciated!

Here's some info on the Peek's hardware: http://elinux.org/Peek

How To Get an iPad 3G Data Plan Without an iPad

2011-11-29T12:09:00-05:00

Because there aren't any up-to-date guides on how to do this, I decided to make my own.

All you need is an unactivated (never used) AT&T SIM card.

To start, go to http://www.att.com/ipad.

Scroll down to where it says "Need More Data?" Click on that link (or click here, but this direct link might not always work).

Click "Get Your Pass."

You will come to a "Device Information" screen. Here is where you will enter a fake iPad IMEI and your unactivated AT&T SIM number. The IMEI should be in the form of 01222300******* or 01222400*******, where ******* is a random 7-digit number. The SIM number should be right on your SIM card.

As an alternative to guessing IMEI numbers, you can also get the IMEI from an iPad Wi-Fi + 3G in your local Apple or AT&T store. Just go to Settings->General->About to see it. Taking a picture with your phone would probably look less suspicious than writing the number down, but either way YMMV.

Click "Next." If it doesn't work, try again with another fake iPad IMEI. I got my first number to work on my first try (what are the chances), but the second valid IMEI I hit took over 20 more tries to get, so keep trying till you get it!

Once you get past this screen, you're home free! All you need to do is enter your name, address, email, password for your new AT&T account, Credit Card info, agree to the terms, and you're set. Also, from now on, you'll be able to manage your account from the email and password you set up earlier.

Have fun with your new data plan!

Any Recommendations for Prusa Mendel Parts?

2011-11-25T15:16:00-05:00

Progress on the RepRap has slowed to a crawl and it's really bumming me out. Building from kits is SO much easier than sourcing the parts yourself. I've probably gotten the final cost estimate into the $600-$700 range by now.

Anyway, I need your help. I just need to print out the new X-carriage, get some M3x25mm bolts, buy some MDF for the Y-stage, and get a hot end. However, I don't really know what to get. What are the recommended dimensions for the Y-stage (LM8UU bearings)? What's the best hot-end for 3mm PLA that I can get in the U.S. for a Wades extruder?

Feel free to comment with your suggestions!

Stupid Circuit Prototype...

2011-11-23T15:01:00-05:00

Ok, I've built this thing TWICE on two different boards now and I still haven't managed to get it to work with the programmer!

AAAAAAUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHHDSASDGFKLHASKJGHKLJAGLK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you want to help me, see the post I made on the MakerBot Google Group.

RepRap Prusa Mendel 8mm Rods

2011-11-22T18:37:00-05:00

A week ago, I bought three 3' lengths of 8mm smooth rod for my Prusa Mendel because I wanted to use LM8UU bearings. After receiving the rod and cutting it, I've fond that they make a huge difference in reducing play between the linear bearings and the rods. With 5/16" rod, you could feel the bearings wiggle. Now there is no wiggle at all! If you're building a "United States customary units" Prusa Mendel and are ordering online and might use LM8UU bearings now or in the future, get 8mm rods. They're only a $1 more each on McMaster-Carr, so it's not a huge expense.

tl;dr: Get 8mm smooth rods. They're the best.

Vimeo Free Music Exploit

2011-11-06T12:55:00-05:00

Well, calling this an "exploit" is really stretching the truth a bit— all I did was poke around in Chrome's Developer Tools. Basically, to download any track for free, all you have to do is go to http://vimeo.com/musicstore/preview?id=###### and put the music track ID after the equals sign, where the pound signs are. The track ID is the ###### at the end of any http://vimeo.com/musicstore/track/###### link.

I was going to notify Vimeo of this huge security hole, but then, after test-downloading a track (it has since been deleted from my computer), I noticed that the bitrate of the file was 64kbps. 64kbps is good enough quality to give you a sense of the song but too poor quality to use in a video or listen to regularly. This way, they can give you a full preview of the song without worrying about piracy of the full-length song preview.

Clever Vimeo.

My Current MakerBot Setup

2011-11-03T21:45:00-04:00

I haven't added any good pictures or videos of my work area in a while so, a few days ago, I decided to take some with my Nikon D5100.

I also took an HD video.

Cool Stuff

2011-10-28T15:40:00-04:00

The parts for the Unicorn circuit board arrived! The circuit boards themselves sill aren't here, of course (cheap shipping from China is cheap and slow). Anyway, I went through the parts I received and, lo and behold, I got one wrong. Thankfully, it was only the switch—I had ordered a surface-mount version instead of a through-hole version. The good news is I can still use the switch. I have corrected the part number and price in the part list spreadsheet.

On a slightly related subject, I finally assembled the Magnetic Rotary Encoder board!

It's pretty cool. The surface-mount soldering, while not impossible, is still a pain in the butt. Also, getting the rosin flux off the board was fairly difficult, too. I feel like Hackaday did a how-to for using flux, but I can't find the post right now. If any of you has a good method or a link to a good method of removing rosin flux, leave a comment.

Unicorn Pen Plotter Circuit Component Cost

2011-10-26T15:53:00-04:00

Ok, so I'm a few days late with ordering the parts. No big deal, right? Anyway, I got them ordered today and it ended up costing around $16 (including shipping, from Digi-key). That parts cost reflects a full set of RoHS-compliant and lead-free parts, so it is possible to get the parts cheaper. Tentative BOM after the break.

I say that this BOM is "tentative" because I may have ordered some wrong parts.

Those LM8UU Bearings Sure Are Noisy!

2011-10-26T15:19:00-04:00

Well, the cheap-o linear bearings work! However, they are quite noisy (not unexpected). Unfortunately, I have to print a new set of parts that incorporate the LM8UU holder design to get them to work well with the machine.

Unicorn Pen Plotter Dedicated Controller Board

2011-10-23T23:49:00-04:00

I just ordered 10 of the Minimalist Unicorn Controller Boards that I designed. Total cost was around $34 from SeeedStudio, so that's about $3.40 per board. If you want, I can send you one for the cost of the board + shipping. I really only want one for my Unicorn (still haven't used it) so I kinda want to offset that cost a bit. I'll be ordering the components tomorrow so I'll let you know what the electronic bits cost then. Sorry about this post's grammar—it's late but I really wanted to get this out tonight.

Update: This is essentially just the extruder controller with all the unnecessary bits removed. The benefits of this board are that it is (theoretically) cheaper than the EC board and it's smaller than the EC board but it still has the plug-and-play RS485+Power port.

Update 2: Remember, this is just the PCB I'm selling, nothing else—no components. You all knew that, though. Right?

My New Old Macintosh SE

2011-10-18T22:24:00-04:00

Today, I got a free Macintosh SE! It's pretty awesome. Unfortunately, it's giving me a RAM error, so I'll have to swap out the modules. I'm going to try to fix it to the best of my ability because to gut a fixable machine would be to destroy a piece of Apple history. I'm thinking about replacing some of the components with more reliable modern equivalents, too. Now that I think of it, I might just go ahead and replace all the capacitors before they start leaking and ruin the board. If I can, I'll also replace the floppy drive with an SD card-based floppy drive emulator.

Cheap-o LM8UU Bearings on Ebay

2011-10-14T12:31:00-04:00

Today, I bought some linear bearings (against Spacexula's recommendation). I got the 12 el-cheapo LM8UU bearings on ebay for $18 because I figured they might work better than brass bushings. If they don't, $18 isn't a huge loss. I heard there are some small issues with the cheap bearings, but I think I'll be fine.

While I wait for the bearings to arrive, I will be cutting the threaded rods down to size and I'll begin assembling the machine.

It has begun...

2011-10-09T00:36:00-04:00

Well, I finally pulled the metaphorical trigger and bought the hardware for my SAE Prusa Mendel. It's so exciting! I probably overpaid ($73.88 + shipping), but it was nice to get everything all at once from McMaster-Carr (I don't have a hardware store near me that sells the rods or belts). Once I get the hardware (sometime next week) I'll start building the frame.

Things are getting interesting...

Prusa Mendel X-Carriage

2011-10-02T22:55:00-04:00

This is the day you will always remember as the day I FINALLY PRINTED THE PRUSA X-CARRIAGE!

If you can't tell, I'm really excited. It turns out that the missing ingredient to my MakerBotting success was some isopropyl alcohol (70%, a.k.a. rubbing alcohol) to clean oils off of the build platform. Once I cleaned the platform, prints started sticking like they did when I first upgraded to the HBP. It's AWESOME.

Now that I've gotten the x-carriage printed, the rest of the parts should be easy by comparison. Once I get them printed, I'll start buying the hardware for the new machine.

Sprint Airave Teardown

2011-09-28T22:54:00-04:00

Got my hands on a Sprint Airave (full model number SPDSC26UCS) in the hopes of being able to hack it, but the FPGA ended up being an Altera HardCopy II chip, which is basically an FPGA that is hard-coded to remove the FP (Field Programmable) functionality.

So, not wanting to waste a $40 investment, I decided to take pictures of the insides in the hopes that it will help someone figure out some hacks for it.

If you need more-detailed pictures, let me know and I'll be happy to take them for you. I hope to get some logic analyzing going at some point so I can spoof the GPS data.

No more ads! Yay! Sorta...

2011-09-20T19:06:00-04:00

Well, ads don't seem to be making me any money. Because of this, I figured that I might as well get rid of them.

In place of ads, I now have Flattr buttons! Yay!

Like a post? Flatter it! There are now Flattr buttons at the end of every post. I'm sure you won't mind.

Maker Faire NY 2011 Was Awesome

2011-09-19T23:00:00-04:00

Well, it was! I met some really cool people this year and it's always great to put faces to names.

I was amazed by Andrew Diehl's "Fablicator" and the double-tall Ultimaker—these things are game changers. I can see the Fablicator directly competing with 3D System's lowest-cost pre-assembled printers and MakerBot's pre-assembled Thing-O-Matic, and it's really an amazing deal considering the Fablicator is made out of aluminum and it includes a computer with all the software pre-installed.

A lot of people have been saying that I'm getting great quality for a batch 5 MakerBot with a DC extruder. I think so, too, but I would love it if it was better. I believe the majority of my printing problems are due to my use of the DC gearmotor. With a stepper extruder, I would be able to get much finer control over the flowrate, thus fixing a lot of my perimeter adhesion and excess infill problems.

I posted the pictures I took at the Faire on my Picasa Web Albums. Bonus feature: I geotagged most of the pictures using my DIY Nikon GPS.

MakerBot Controller iOS App

2011-09-03T17:34:00-04:00

I made an app that can hackishly control a MakerBot! Code is here. Clone via Git, open and compile with XCode 4.

I say "hackishly" because it only works on the X-axis right now and it only supports absolute coordinates. Eventually, I want this to become a full ReplicatorG implementation so you won't need a computer to control a MakerBot.

You need a Redpark serial cable and EITHER a provisioned iOS device and developer program membership OR a jailbroken iOS device and modified XCode. I have the latter.

If you want to help the development, feel free to fork the repository and do any dev work you want! This is a great resource to use. I really do need help with this because my coding skills are less than adequate.

Power is back!

2011-09-02T19:10:00-04:00

Awwww yeahhhhh!

Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpAcanUJX7s

Possible Downtime

2011-08-26T12:21:00-04:00

The server may be down for a week due to Hurricane Irene. Just letting you know in advance. If only I had my own fusion reactor...

Random Thought

2011-08-18T17:12:00-04:00

I wonder how much faster my server would be if I ran it off of a 64 GB SSD... It would only be a $115 upgrade. Though, site speed would still be limited by the 3 Mbps upload rate. I long for 25/25 FiOS...

DIY Nikon D5100 GPS

2011-08-13T21:44:00-04:00

Recently, I bought a Nikon D5100. It is the best camera I have ever owned. EVER. You have no idea how happy I am with my purchase of it (and I should be happy with it—at $840, it's nowhere near cheap). One of the awesome features it has is GPS input. It can take TTL serial GPS data and use it to geotag pictures. This is awesome, but it comes with a catch: Nikon's GPS is $250! It's also absurdly bulky. Wanting geotagging that I can easily disable (I don't want home pictures, etc. to be tagged), I built this simple GPS that will work in many of Nikon's newer cameras.

BoM:

Microsoft GPS-500 (or GPS-360, it has the same pinout)—I got mine on eBay for $20 (and it came with a TTL-USB cable AND Streets & Trips 2008 AND an MSN Direct Receiver)
Shutter connecting cord for Nikon D5100
Ethernet cable that you're willing to strip
Kapton tape
Some sort of strain relief for the wires at the camera connector
A steady hand

I got the pinout data for the GPS from here and the pinout data for the camera connector (with a lot of other useful info) here. Note: on the Flickr photo, read my comment for clarifying info and corrections.

My setup doesn't use any TTL voltage converters because the D5100 seems to be able to use the 3.3V TTL from the GPS. I may include a diode in the power line at some point to drop the voltage a little because the camera is feeding 6V to the GPS and its specs say it has a max power input of 5.5V, but it's working so far.

Basically, connect pin 5 on the GPS (the one to the right of the leftmost one when the gold contacts are facing up) to the power pin on the camera connector, pin 2 on the GPS to ground on the camera connector, and pin 3 on the GPS to TTL/Serial in on the camera connector.

EDIT: I added the diode; it dropped the voltage to about 5.0V-5.2V. I feel a bit better now.

Oh, by the way, don't connect Pin 1 (GPS Rx) to ground! I happened to do this by accident and it screwed up the serial output until I fixed the solder bridge.

This setup may work for other newish Nikon cameras, but they may not be 3.3V TTL tolerant, so YMMV.

Wordpress Admin Errors

2011-08-13T21:38:00-04:00

I was having EXACTLY the same errors as this guy—basically, none of the javascript elements in Wordpress were working, ex. Check All Checkboxes, multi-file uploader, text in the post editor was "invisible," etc.

How I fixed it:

Delete all the files & folders in your "wp-includes" folder.
Re-upload all the files & folders in the "wp-includes" folder.
If any of the files failed to transfer, put them back in the transfer queue and send them again.

SUCCESS!

Server Upgrade Finally Complete!

2011-08-06T17:29:00-04:00

I finally did it! The new server has all the parts that used to be in my old gaming machine, but it has the same HDDs as before (because I'm too lazy and cheap to get it a 1 TB SATA drive and image it from the old drives). For some reason, one of the NICs on the motherboard is present in the OS and activated in the BIOS but doesn't light up when a network cable is inserted. Oh, well; it has two, so it's no big deal. It also decided not to keep its network settings after a reboot, so I put the dhclient command in the /etc/init.d/rc.local file. Everything works now. There's a possibility that this will also be a TF2 server in the near future.

New-old server specs:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
ROG Crosshair II Formula Motherboard
2 GB DDR2 667 RAM
10 GB 5400rpm OS drive
80 GB 7200rpm Data Drive
430W Antec Earthwatts 80 Plus PSU

I'll definitely be posting to the blog a lot more now that the server won't hang every time I publish a post!

CD/Cassette/Radio Hack

2011-06-22T14:11:00-04:00

Today, I hacked a multi-function audio player (commonly known as a "boom box") to add an external audio input. This hack isn't really done yet (I still have to solder everything up, drill a hole, add the 1/8" jack, etc.), but I have pictures of what I've done.

Essentially, I started out by poking around the live circuit with my oscilloscope. I didn't get very far with that, so I decided to look up the datasheet for the identical DIP chips that looked like they were the amp chips. After reading the bits I needed, I saw that the chips were indeed amplifiers (with one for each channel). After tracing some circuit paths, I managed to find a good point to input the signal. I connected some wires to those points, found a point for ground, and connected it to an 1/8" jack in my iPhone.

I was able to play Derezzed REALLY loud before it started getting distorted.

Sorry there's no video, but the music player I was using also happens to be my video camera, phone, calendar, and video player (among other things). Also, my normal video camera wasn't available. Click "Continue Reading" to see the pictures.

Making a Prusa Mendel

2011-06-19T19:14:00-04:00

I've decided to print as many parts as I can to make a Prusa Mendel. Hopefully I can make enough parts so I can just ask some people to make the parts my CupCake can't make. Currently, every object I make has too much perimeter material—parts designed to interlock don't fit. I've tried to fix this in Skeinforge, but right now I'm adjusting my belt tension to see if that helps. My CupCake fails on large prints, so I'll need help on those.

The goal of getting my MakerBot was to get it to make a full set of working RepRap parts, but it never has. This has made me a bit sad. So, to remedy this, I'm going to calibrate my bot to the best of my ability (and maybe get some help from others in the 3D Printer Village) and print as many parts as I can. Wish me luck!

The TV-B-Gone app project is being revived!

2011-05-21T17:09:00-04:00

A major hurdle to the TV-B-Gone for iPhone project was getting a wav file with the remote data. Well, now I have one. I found it in a link posted in a comment on a Hackaday post. Cool! So, here's the link, I'll be adding the necessary code and the file to the Git repo soon.

As usual, feel free to help me in making this by forking the repo.

AT&T U-Verse Was Cool Before Usage Caps

2011-05-16T19:08:00-04:00

CAUTION: If you are easily offended, stop reading NOW. I'm about to go on a rant.

Sooooo... Apparently, AT&T is implementing 250 GB usage caps for all U-Verse subscribers. I'm mad. It's already $60/month for the highest speed Internet (around 24 Mbps). Why should I have a usage cap? Ironically, I have unlimited bandwidth on my Verizon iPhone...

Bandwidth caps are bad. Video streaming eats bandwidth. Downloading games on Steam eats bandwidth. Hosting a website eats bandwidth. Uploading photos eats bandwidth. The list goes on.

Now that there's a cap, what am I going to do? Use those services less.

Now, many people would say at this point, "get another ISP!" Ok, in my area, that's... Optimum? No, thanks. Slow Internet + no free DVR + bad support = Blergh. Those same people would say now, "cancel your internet plan/switch to the minimum!" Ok, cut myself off from the Internet entirely, that sounds good—I can go to the library for that! Yippee! We're going backwards!

Let's say you lease a car. You drive around 30,000 miles per month. The car lender, lacking funds, decides to add a new part to your lease that charges you $2000 if you drive over a limit of 50,000 miles and $2000 every extra 5,000 miles you drive over that. You may not be affected and think, "Well, I don't drive much, so I don't have to worry about that charge." But what if you want to take a road trip, touring the U.S.? Well, you can, but be prepared to pay $2000 or more purely because you drove a lot—and that's IN ADDITION to the money you'll spend on gas! Want to go on a road trip now? Now that you're not going on that road trip, the towns you were going to visit aren't going to get your money (or that of many others, for that matter). Eventually, those towns will become deserted and will die. Some would say at this point, "Why don't you take a plane?" Well, plane trips are expensive and there are often long delays, making them somewhat inconvenient.

To sum up that extended metaphor, the car lender is AT&T, the amount you drive in a month is your average bandwidth usage, the mile cap is the bandwidth cap, the towns you would visit are the Internet services you would use, and the plane is a box full of 50 DVDs—its capacity is almost 250GB (if you mailed it, you have effectively created a high-bandwidth, high-latency connection).

tl;dr:

I know it's fully within your right to do so, but really, AT&T, thanks for stifling innovation!

Flickr Support is AWESOME!

2011-05-10T11:59:00-04:00

It took a few months working on this on and off, but I finally severed my Flickr ID "cyrozap" from my Yahoo! account!

I can now log in with my Google account and keep my screen name (cyrozap) and my custom URL! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Speed Increase?

2011-04-28T00:29:00-04:00

Well, I've recently had my Internet connection upgraded to 24 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream from 3 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream. I love it. Can you see a 3X speed increase in the blog's loading time? No? It's the stupid slow server's fault. That will soon be remedied, however, because I almost have sufficient funds to upgrade the server. We so excited. ;D

P.S. Follow me on Twitter—I post there when what I'm posting is too short to justify a blog post. If you already are following me, you know about my fancy new old 60 Hz analog oscilloscope.

An actual technological endeavor!

2011-04-04T16:26:00-04:00

Yesterday, while dropping off my broken dishwasher at my local appliance outlet to be disposed of (the 10-year-old one broke and I was getting a new one there), I noticed an old RPTV next to all the old junk. Score! After getting permission, I brought it home, took out the useful bits (the fresnel lens, the three RGB lens assemblies, the giant mirror, two 10W speakers) and took the rest back to the appliance place. Here are some pictures of my little adventure:

Playing Wii Games On a PC Using Dolphin

2011-03-07T17:17:00-05:00

I recently discovered that the Dolphin emulator is a lot better than what it was back in the day. Now, it can play Wii games better than the Wii itself!

Over the weekend, I played 8-9 hours of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Only the UI was in HD, though—the 3D-rendering looked like it was only at 480p with no AA or AF. Super Smash Bros. Brawl worked fine at 1080p and actually rendered in HD.

WordPress For iOS Version 2.7 Beta

2011-03-03T22:44:00-05:00

Well, the 2.7 Beta of WordPress for iOS fixes a major problem I had with v2.6.6. How? Before, the app kept giving me grief over my self-signed SSL certificate. Today, I decided to install the beta by checking out the SVN trunk and compiling the app for my iPhone (and then self-signing that and installing it on my jailbroken device). FYI, this post was written in the now-usable WordPress for iOS app on my iPhone 4.

Expect the number of posts (and the number of posts with pictures) to increase dramatically. Hey, maybe I'll be able to surpass the number of posts MakerBlock averages monthly (if I ever upgrade my server)!

Verizon iPhone

2011-02-16T18:08:00-05:00

I love my new Verizon iPhone 4! It's so much faster than the 1st gen iPod touch! The extra RAM helps in addition to the 2.5X boost in CPU clock speed.

I also enjoy unlimited data ;D

So many features...

P.S.: I got it on the 7th.

My New PC Heatsink

2011-02-02T14:27:00-05:00

A few months ago, I bough a Noctua NH-D14 heatsink for my i7 computer. It's HUGE, but awesome. Here are some pics of the unboxing.

Here are the "before" and "after" pics:

i7-950 + Sabertooth X58 + AMD HD 5850 Hackintosh Guide

2011-01-27T11:00:00-05:00

UPDATE November 6, 2011: This guide is now obsolete. There is now an official, working DSDT you can get from tonymacx86.com. All you have to do is follow this guide and use the new DSDT (make sure you're on the latest BIOS, 1304). I have successfully followed that guide for my Sabertooth X58 with i7-950, 12 GB 1600 MHz RAM, AMD Radeon HD 5850, and 1304 BIOS. I will be keeping the guide posted here because I spent a lot of time making it and I don't just want to delete it and break a bunch of links. Also, it brings a bunch of traffic to the site. ;)

Note: Make sure you only have 2GB of RAM installed when you install OS X. After OS X is installed, you can put your RAM back.

Note 2: When I set this up, my BIOS was 0602.

Buy a Mac OS X Install Disk.
Get iBoot & MultiBeast
Get the DSDT.aml file. You need to be logged in to the tonymacx86 forums to do that. It's at the bottom of the linked post.
Boot the computer using iBoot.
Once iBoot is booted, eject the disk and insert the OS X disk, then press F5.
Select the Install disk.
The installer will run. Click Utilities->Disk Utility and format your HDD to Mac Journaled FS. Make sure to click options and set it to GPT.
Once that's done, quit Disk Utility and resume installation.
Finish the installation.
Reboot, again booting with iBoot.
This time, select your new OS X HDD.
It will boot.
Put the DSDT.aml file on the desktop.
Download and install the Mac OS X 10.6.8 Combo Update, but DO NOT REBOOT.
Use MultiBeast with these settings on your OS X HDD:
Remove the iBoot disk and reboot, this time booting from the OS X HDD.
Success!

What I Did Today

2011-01-26T22:34:00-05:00

I...

Started using Skeinforge 35 (with issues)
Fixed a 17" Dell LCD
Played TF2

Correction:
I also made the Whistlehookopener. (Thanks, MakerBlock, I almost forgot!)

Updated Sabertooth X58 Files

2011-01-19T15:49:00-05:00

I updated the files to what I'm using now. You can use the same link to the modified files as in the previous post. For the updated files.

If these files don't work, you can always use the ones made by other people. There are a few more DSDT's for this board floating around now.

DSDT files for Sabertooth X58 have been uploaded at tonymacx86.com

2011-01-06T22:41:00-05:00

I extract the DSDT data from the latest Sabertooth X58 BIOS. You're welcome. For the unmodified files. For the modified files.

Surveys seem popular in the DIY 3D-printing community...

2011-01-05T19:34:00-05:00

What I've Been Doing Since Christmas

2010-12-29T14:19:00-05:00

If you've noticed that I haven't been posting much recently, it's because of all the cool stuff I got for Christmas. First, I got an Apple TV (2010). This, as you may or may not already know, runs iOS 4 and is most electrically smilar to the iPad. For a $99 device, it sure packs quite a punch. It has a 1GHz Apple A4 processor, 8GB of flash storage, and 1080p hardware decoding and output, not to mention that it's running iOS 4 (yes, I already said that, but it's important). I'm still waiting for an untethered 4.2.1 AppleTV jailbreak, but once that's available, I want to see what I can do with it. Hey, since it's an iPad on the inside, maybe it can use USB keyboards... Hmm...

Among other things, of note were the ASUS Sabertooth X58 motherboard and the Corsair 6 GB 1600MHz DDR3 Triple Channel Memory Kit. The RAM is great (and fast!) and the motherboard is really easy to use to overclock. The Intel Core i7 950 I bought is great and I got it at a great price, too. Normally, it sells for over $300. Online, it usually sells under that. At Micro Center, it was listed at $229.99, but on Boxing Day in the store, it was $199.99. Of course, it was a long drive in the snow to get there, but for the price it was more than worth it.

I already posted about my heatsink problem (emphasis on "my" and "problem").

Team Fortress 2 runs quite nicely on my upgraded computer (which I'm using with a 380W "80 Plus" PSU, further proof that no one needs more than a 500W PSU unless they're using two CPUs) even with all the settings turned on max. I even have "Wait for Vertical Sync" turned on, which means I get a max of 60 fps, but because of my awesome setup, I get 60 fps consistently and there's no "tearing" of the image.

As usual, my server is slow. I still have the parts that I took out of my computer from when I upgraded it, but they won't fit in the highy-proprietary Dell case that my current server resides in. I would love to buy the Thermaltake A60 Computer Case for my i7 parts and hand down my current case to my server, but I have other purchasing priorities at the moment. If anyone wants to buy that case for me, let me know ;D

Hopefully, once I start using the new server parts, I'll be able to simultaneously run a Team Fortress 2 server and the webserver.

Righty-tighty, Lefty-loosey.

2010-12-27T17:03:00-05:00

It's a good idea to remember this when installing Intel's stock heatsink for LGA1366 Core i7 processors. First turn the pegs to the left, then push down on a peg and then turn it to the right. Repeat for the other pegs.

I only figured this out AFTER my i7-950 was idling at 55C and maxing out at 99C (it's supposed to idle between 40 and 50C and max out between 80 and 90C). It's always good to check if your heatsink is seated all the way BEFORE you start using your computer.

I do enjoy my new rig, though.

Intel Core i7-950 Processor
ASUS Sabertooth X58 Motherboard
Corsair 3 x 2GB Triple-channel DDR3 1600MHz RAM

What an excellent day!

2010-12-14T21:25:00-05:00

Apparently, I won a Unicorn. The pen plotter, that is. Of course, I couldn't stop thinking of...

THIS.

In other news, I received my Crosshair II Formula motherboard today (I RMA'd my M2N32-SLI Deluxe at the beginning of November, right before its 3 year warranty ran out; of course, they weren't able to repair it nor were they able to replace it, so they gave me a slightly better model). If you want to know why the Crosshair II Formula is so nice, Google it. I really like that I'm able to overclock my AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ from 2.21 GHz to 2.54 GHz, raising my Windows Experience index (in the CPU category) from 4.9 to a 5.8.

Also, I got Eyefinity working on my two 1080p 23" monitors.

Time to go play Team Fortress 2!

Early Christmas Gifts Are Awesome

2010-12-12T14:34:00-05:00

My dad got me a MK5 kit for Christmas after my MK4 broke for the 3rd time in a few months (PTFE insulators are annoying—I think my thermistor table was wrong). I have since put it together and am currently printing out the Holiday Prusa Mendel on Thingiverse with it. Talk about the gift that keeps on giving! :)

However, there were some problems I noticed:
- Thermistor read wrong temps—ABS now likes to melt at 200C
- Solder joints on power resistors melt partially when running at 200C
- The online instructions for putting it together didn't account for certain changes in the kit; for instance, it comes with two crimp connectors that are never explained.

I did make some improvements, however:
- Added thermal paste between power resistors and aluminum block
- Epoxy used to glue together base-plates to the legs of the extruder holder

My current grievances:
- I don't like that the solder joints are melting and cooling—I don't want to have the risk of breathing in those bad fumes.
- Teflon on nozzle is coming off tip

Final thoughts:
- If it doesn't work flawlessly, at least it works a lot more reliably than the MK4!

Interesting things I noticed today while writing this:
- The server is running quite quickly...
- The 5.1MP Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P93 I used to take the picture in this post (I got it for free from a friend of my dad) has hardly any image sensor noise. This is amazing compared to the amount of sensor noise in my 5.0MP Canon PowerShot S2 IS (consumer-grade DSLR).

I'm selling an iPhone/iPod/iPad stand design!

2010-12-05T16:35:00-05:00

I recently received a copy of Alibre Design Expert 2011 (it's an early Christmas gift from my mom). It's the Educational version, so instead of $1400 it was $200. That's not bad for a CAD package with a license I can use on 3 PCs without needing it to renew it every few years.

So, trying to find a use for this, I decided to make an iPhone/iPod/iPad stand using the sheet metal designing tool (only available in the Expert version, I think).

Since I haven't found a way to export my design as a DXF, I have been unable to make this out of metal (or wood—I'll probably prototype it in wood or on my Makerbot). So, lacking this functionality, I exported it as an STL, scaled it up, and posted it on Ponoko for $1.99 (I think it's a fair price for a few hours work and a nicely-designed stand). You can buy it and then print it on a MakerBot or other 3D-printer. However, it's around 12cm tall, so this will push your machine. If you're outrageously wealthy, you can have Ponoko make it for you, but I dont think it's worth it.

At some point I'll get Alibre to output to DXF so I can allow people to make this out of sheet metal, wood, sheet plastic, and other flat-but-bendable materials. That would be better worth the $1.99.

Don't give me grief on the license—it's more than likely I'll change it to something more open. Right now, I'm just playing it safe.

An interesting idea I had...

2010-12-01T20:27:00-05:00

So I recently saw the smartlcd project and immediately thought of the Mac SE/ARM DIY USB GPU. If you could modify and run the GPU firmware on the smartlcd, you could have a bunch of tiny, inexpensive, USB screens. I would do this, but I have neither the time nor the programming skill.

Hack a Day Classifieds really work!

2010-11-28T15:40:00-05:00

Well, the DIY-intosh sold! I bet you're all rejoicing that I won't be trying to pawn off my stuff on you for a while. It's really amazing how it sold within a few days of listing it.

In other news, I fixed up a 19" 4:3 aspect ratio VGA monitor with composite, coax TV, and SCART inputs (it's some Samsung 910-something). It only needed 6 capacitors replaced, totaling $3.40 + $2 shipping (or something like that). Seeing as I bought the thing for $17, this makes it a steal. It also only has one grey pixel! This is why I work with hardware!

Sorry about the server downtime! That was rather embarrassing...

Updates on the MakerBot and an Interesting New Service from Hack a Day

2010-11-18T22:16:00-05:00

Well, if you haven't already noticed, Hack a Day just started its classified ads service over at classifieds.hackaday.com. Essentially, it's Craigslist, but for the hackers, modders, and makers of things. I, understanding the full magnitude of the number of daily visitors to Hack a Day, seized the opportunity to advertise my DIY-intosh (my ebay auction recently ended). Why?

It needs to be sold and ebay isn't working.
I don't want tech support calls from the people I'm selling it to.
People like me are comfortable with electronics that aren't fully enclosed.
Hack a Day's huge traffic and the fact that this service was just created means that there would be a large number of visitors to the new part of the site in a small amount of time.
Because of the current lack of items for sale there, my DIY-intosh would stand out and be noticed.
People that would be more willing to buy my DIY-intosh would be going there (your average ebayer isn't going to want to buy a computer built from laptop parts without tech support).

tl;dr:

This is perfect for my DIY-intosh.

In other news, my MakerBot's plastruder has broken yet again and I'm seriously considering buying the MK5 extruder (possibly with the funds from the sale of the DIY-intosh).

DIY-intosh for Sale on Ebay... Again...

2010-11-04T17:42:00-04:00

http://item.ebay.com/120643162568

WorkBench Update + New 3D-Prints!

2010-11-03T17:36:00-04:00

Workbench Update

2010-10-29T09:08:00-04:00

Interesting data...

2010-10-22T00:30:00-04:00

According to the Feedburner data, people really like it when I talk about and/or share pictures of my workbench. Well, get ready.

The DIY-intosh is now on ebay!

2010-10-20T22:59:00-04:00

http://item.ebay.com/120636704512

Well, it's there now.

New Workbench/MakerBot Setup

2010-10-20T15:13:00-04:00

Well, I got a new workbench. Now that my thermal barrier has arrived, I can get to work repairing my extruder—at my new workbench! Then I can start printing cool stuff again!

Hooray!

2010-10-19T20:38:00-04:00

My new thermal barrier will arrive tomorrow. Then, I'll be able to start experimenting with support structures. Yay!

Video from World Maker Faire NYC 2010

2010-10-10T15:40:00-04:00

Well, I took a bunch of video and, using my newly purchased 15.4" Late-2006 MacBook Pro and iMovie, I took all the clips from my DV camcorder and made this:

Want some laptop RAM?

2010-10-04T22:28:00-04:00

I'm selling a stick of 1 GB DDR2 PC2-5300 (667MHz) RAM here.

A Bunch of Updates

2010-10-01T16:30:00-04:00

World Maker Faire NYC was awesome! I took a ton of video, but I still need to edit out all the boring stuff.

I've also now listed my refurbished & unlocked Blackberry on ebay ($150 + shipping), though the ebay fees are really high, so I'd prefer it if you'd buy it on SellSimply. In fact, I've dropped the price on the SellSimply one to $130 with Free USPS Priority Mail Flat-rate shipping (I only ship free to the US, though).

I'll be selling some CRT monitors soon (one of them is a 21" one with VGA, BNC, and RS232 connectors) and I'll let you all know when I'm selling them.

If you're interested in a cool-looking 23" ASUS LCD screen, let me know.

If you're wondering why I'm selling all this stuff, it's because I recently bought a late-2006 15" MacBook Pro to replace my DIY-intosh and I need the money. I really like how well Macs control my Makerbot (a lot better than my current Linux computers) and I also like how they run so much better/smoothly in general.

The DIY-intosh is now up for sale!

2010-09-27T10:46:00-04:00

Well, it's now on sale on SellSimply at http://sellsimp.ly/ae.

World Maker Faire NYC

2010-09-24T22:24:00-04:00

Yes, I'm going, but I won't be presenting. I'll probably be hanging out around the MakerBot/3D-Printer Village areas.

Well it's about time... "Future of MakerBot" Meeting Recap

2010-09-20T22:12:00-04:00

Two weeks ago, on Wednesday, there was the "Future of MakerBot" meeting. It was fun, I got to meet some other operators, and we all got to provide our input into the future of the MakerBot. Essentially, we toured around MBI, went through some introductions, and talked about what we wanted and didn't want in the future for MakerBots.

To all those that were there, I'm sorry I talked so much! I can go on and on about things sometimes...

Here are some pictures:

Anyone interested in buying the DIY-intosh?

2010-09-18T11:02:00-04:00

Well, I kinda want to buy a more portable Mac (an older 17" MacBook Pro), so I'm going to be selling this for $400. Why $400? Well, I actually built it for just over $300 and similar Macs are over that price. It's really great at running a MakerBot, and it's good for iPhone development, too.

Specs:

2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo Processor
2 GB of DDR2 667 MHz RAM
Bluetooth
Wireless N networking
100 GB 7200 RPM SATA HDD
2 USB ports
1 Firewire 400 port
1 Mini-DVI port
Mic In and Audio Out ports
10/100 Ethernet port
Magsafe power connector
OS X Snow Leopard pre-installed

What it will come with in the box:

DIY-intosh
A 60W MagSafe PSU
OS X Snow Leopard Disk
A Mini-DVI to DVI Adapter
A Mini-DVI to HDMI Adapter (video only)

Note #1: The DIY-intosh does not have a DVD drive. You can, however purchase a USB DVD drive if you need that capability. You can also enable Remote Disk on the DIY-intosh (search Google for the terminal commands). I suggest that once you have recieved the DIY-intosh that you enable Remote Disk and make a DMG of the install DVD. Then, you can restore that DMG to an 8 GB USB drive. In the event you need to install OS X again, you can just boot off of that USB drive.

Note #2: I don't ship overseas. It's just too expensive.

Email me ASAP if you're interested (click on the "Contact Me" page to see my email address). If many people email me with serious interest, I'll put it on ebay, otherwise I'll just use SellSimply. I must recieve at least one email with serious interest before I put it on either site.

Selling the Refurbushed Black GSM Unlocked BlackBerry 8320 on SellSimply

2010-09-14T22:33:00-04:00

Well, you can see/buy it at SellSimp.ly/9f. More pictures of it and the blackberry innards to follow.

I want a cool logo, too!

2010-09-04T19:43:00-04:00

I just saw this and I'm really jealous. I wish I worked for MakerBot so I could be "posterized" by Bre! I'm no artist and I really need a good logo (the current one is just "meh").

At least I live a 5 minute walk and a train ride away from Brooklyn (as opposed to living in California)!

This reminds me that I should visit the BotCave some time. Eventually. If Bre says it's ok.

Selling a Self-Refurbished and Unlocked Blackberry (Soon)

2010-09-04T16:28:00-04:00

Well, I recently unlocked a Blackberry that's a bit beat up and once I get the replacement housing for it I'll fix it up and sell it. It's a black Blackberry Curve 8320, permanently unlocked. I have no use for it as I'm on Verizon and it needs a valid SIM card inserted for it to allow apps to use data features (even on WiFi). So, if you're looking to upgrade your GSM phone, I'll probably be selling this for around $125-$150. No, I won't ship international because it's prohibitively expensive. I'll start out by selling this on SellSimply, but if I don't get any buyers, I'll sell it on Ebay.

Just to gage interest, email me if you might buy it. Feel free to email me with any questions.

RepRap Motherboard Idea

2010-08-31T17:43:00-04:00

I just thought of an amazing alternative to the RepRap motherboard that doesn't need a computer to drive it: the BeagleBoard! This way, you could have it interpret the G-code directly and quickly (as opposed to MakerBot's way of doing that work on the computer and then sending different, simpler commands over the serial lines, keeping the heavy-lifting off of the µController). In my hypothetical setup, the stepper drivers would be run directly from the computer, like how most CNC machines are run (over the parallel port). This also, in the case of the MakerBot, could allow the BeagleBoard to be integrated into the MakerBot with the BeagleTouch screen from Liquidware. This way, you could download, Skein, and print an object all from the MakerBot. Mmmmmm... Standalone MakerBot. Of course, with the RepRap motherboard at $59.00, the BeagleBoard at $149.00, and the BeagleTouch at $258.33, this becomes a bit unfeasible.

Maker Faire RI Pictures!

2010-08-28T19:52:00-04:00

Here they are:

Also, to all those curious, I will be at Maker Faire NYC, but I will not be exhibiting there. There is a chance that I'll bring my MakerBot, but it's slim.

Maker Faire RI

2010-08-26T10:27:00-04:00

Just so you know, I'll be exhibiting at Maker Faire RI in Providence on Saturday, so if you're in the area, I'll be at the tabe with the DIY-intosh, the Eee PC 1000HE, and the MakerBot.

Why am I bringing my DIY-intosh? Well, because it's just so much more impressive in person. That and the fact that its 2GHz Core Duo leaves my netbook's 1.66GHz Atom in the dust when it comes to Skeinforging something.

Helping the world, one document at a time.

2010-08-20T23:36:00-04:00

My pinout data was approved!

Birthday Gear

2010-08-20T12:11:00-04:00

As you may or may not know, my birthday was on the 16th (I feel like everyone is blogging about their August birthdays and what they got now—MakerBlock, Spacexula). Because few in my family actually understand what I do, they all just give me money. So, with those birthday funds, I bought myself a Sapphire 100282-TXSR, a Vapor-X ATI Radeon HD 5850 Toxic Edition graphics card that performs as good as, if not better than, an HD 5870. This is the first $340 step I've taken in my $1200 quest to upgrade my computer.

I also bought an RS232 serial 20x2 character VFD that can be used with a computer just by wiring it up with a serial port and can be used with TTL level logic by using a few extra components. $30 on ebay. I plan on either using this with my webserver to show load or with my MakerBot to... Do... Something?

Last, but not least, I bought a wireless-N usb stick for $17 on ebay. Why did I do this? Well, when I installed the broadcom Crystal HD card in my netbook, I had to remove the WiFi card. I like having wifi in my netbook, so while it was open, I found USB D+ and D- on the second mini pci-e port (that lacks a connector) and +5V from the VGA port and GND from other USB ports and I soldered wires to them. Now, all I have to do is solder those wires to the USB WiFi adapter (after I remove its case) and I'll once again have internal wireless-N. Of course, I'll have to put the adapter in a place where the antenna will have good reception...

As a side note, MakerBot must really love MakerBlock to have given him those extras as a birthday present! I wish MakerBot loved me, too... I have a Batch 5 MakerBot, MakerBlock's is Batch 9—shouldn't I get something special for being an early adopter? ;D

Nah, I don't really care; I just want my MakerBot to work as good as some other peoples' MakerBots!

MacBook Core Duo Logic Board Keyboard Connector Pinout

2010-08-18T22:17:00-04:00

Well, I did some testing, and I found out that the connector for the Core Duo MacBook keyboard connector is really just a USB port. Also, after pouring over a datasheet, I found that the two PSoC's on the keyboard's board are connected over an I2C bus and then the one labeled "B" is the one with the USB connection to the logic board. The one labeled "A" is the keyboard controller.

With this newfound information, in theory, I could make that internal USB port external, giving my DIY-intosh an extra USB port to work with. In practice, those leads are just too small to solder.

Also using this information, I attempted to turn a MacBook keyboard and trackpad into a USB keyboard and trackpad, but as I soldered the D+ and D- connections to the test points, the stress on one of the points broke it off. I also lost one of the SMT resistors after I tried to solder to it (after I broke off the test point). I can plug it in to a computer, but it is not recognized. I haven't tried plugging it into a Mac yet, so it may just be a driver issue.

Please use and expand on this information! I've already reduced by $10 the value of a $25 keyboard assembly (I <3 ebay), I want to know if I can make an external MacBook keyboard + trackpad before I drop $50 on another one!

~~I sent this info to http://pinouts.ru/ so that others can benefit from this.~~

Edit (4/17/2013): Pinouts.ru seems to be defunct/compromised, but I found a link to another pinouts website that seems to have mirrored the pinouts.ru page. http://pinoutsguide.com/Inputs/apple_macbook_keyboard_pinout.shtml

PHP Script to Convert Normal Links Into Amazon Affiliate Links

2010-08-14T16:21:00-04:00

I like to give my friends and family recommendations on products. I like to give them Amazon Affiliate links. The problem? Whenever I want to do that, there's an annoying process I have to go to to do that, and only I can use that process. If anyone wants to buy something and they want to credit me, they can't make affiliate links and have to ask me to make a link for them. So, to remedy this, I took 2 hours out of my day to make a PHP script that anyone can use to make Affiliate links from normal Amazon product links. How does it work? Well, it's quite simple, really. The user enters their Amazon product link, then my script takes that link, strips the product ID from it, and adds that product ID to my pre-formatted link, which is then displayed to the user to click on. It's under ~~a CC-BY-SA 3.0 License~~ the Apache License 2.0, so feel free to distribute (and modify) it as long as you credit me for the original.

Here it is:

<head>
    <title>Cyrozap&#039;s Amazon Affiliate Link Generator</title>
</head>
<h2>Enter the Amazon link you want to convert, then click the "Make Affiliate Link" button.</h2>
<form action="<?= $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] ?>" method="get">
    <p>
        <input type="text" name="link">
        <input type="submit" value="Make Affiliate Link!">
    </p>
</form>
<?php
$affiliate = "?ie=UTF8&tag=cyrstecpro-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN="; // This is what is in all of my Amazon Affiliate links. To get yours, make an affiliate link, then look for where it has a "?" then copy all the characters from the "?" to the "=" including those two signs.
$link = htmlspecialchars($_GET['link']); // This is the original Amazon link that is entered by the user.
if (isset($_GET['link'])) {
    $pid = substr(strstr($link,"p/"),2,10);
    echo "<h4>Here's your new Amazon Affiliate link: </h4>";
    //echo "http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/", $pid, $affiliate, $pid; // Uncomment this line to just make a text link.
    echo "<h4><a href=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/", $pid, $affiliate, $pid, ">http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/", $pid, $affiliate, $pid, "</a></h4>"; // This line makes a "clickable" link.
}
?>
<br>
<p>
    License: <a rel="license" href="http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0">Apache License, Version 2.0</a>
    <br>Original script by <a href="http://cyrozap.com/">cyrozap</a>
</p>

MakerBot Fixes and Upgrades

2010-07-07T12:25:00-04:00

Well, I just bought some new parts for my Makerbot. First, because my build platform broke, I bought the MakerBot Heated Build Platform Kit. I decided that, since I was switching back to ABS, I should be using a heated platform. I also didn't want to pay for a normal build platform now and pay for a heated build platform later when I'll really want it. Second, I bought the Magnetic Rotary Encoder PCB. I got 3 samples of the chip a while ago, so I just bought this because it may come in handy in the future. Also, I wanted to practice soldering SMT parts by hand. Finally, I bought the MK5 Drive Gear Upgrade Kit because it's just so much better than the current one.

Selling Half-Set Reprap Mendel Parts on Sell Simply

2010-06-29T21:42:00-04:00

This set of parts is a little over half of all the parts needed to build a RepRap Mendel. If I don't get any offers for the complete half-set, I will start offering parts individually. If you want individual parts, please contact me at cyrozap AT gmail DOT com.

Make offers on it at http://sellsimp.ly/6s.

Selling Creative Sound Blaster MP3+ External Sound Card!

2010-06-27T20:20:00-04:00

See it at http://item.ebay.com/120596951037

Selling Genuine Apple Firewire iPod Charger on ebay!

2010-06-27T18:33:00-04:00

See it at http://item.ebay.com/120596950987

It outputs 12V at 1.0A over the Firewire port.

SellSimply shop is up!

2010-06-27T14:33:00-04:00

Go to http://sellsimp.ly/5z to see the Mendel Mini parts that I posted! It's a half-set, so if you're having trouble printing some of the parts for the Mendel Mini, or want to get a head start on printing your own set, this is the set for you! If I don't get any offers for the complete half-set, I'll start offering parts individually. Email me if you're interested in individual parts.

I fixed the blog!

2010-06-26T19:13:00-04:00

Yay me! I downloaded the entire database as a .sql file, opened it up in gedit, did a Find/Replace for cyrozap.blogdns.com to cyrozap.com, restored the database with that file, and I was done! I'm sure I could have done a similar thing from the command line, but I don't know MySQL very well.

Mission accomplished! ;D

Strange happenings with the blog...

2010-06-24T20:23:00-04:00

For some reason, it only works in Google Chrome—all other browsers that I've tried (Firefox, IE, Safari) don't show the theme. I've changed the theme, repaired the database, but nothing works. Maybe if I didn't change the domain and upgrade Wordpress at the same time, this would have been easier to debug...

Why You Shouldn't Leave Your MakerBot Running Overnight When Using a Weak PC

2010-06-24T18:27:00-04:00

Yup. It ran until it had run out of plastic. When I looked at the computer, the screen was flashing random patterns. Yeah, it was that bad.

Then, this happened:

AND THIS IS WHY YOU MUST NEVER EVER FOREVER NEVER EVER EVER NEVER RUN YOUR MAKERBOT/REPRAP OVERNIGHT!

But I know you'll do it anyways. ;D

Domain name change!

2010-06-22T14:38:00-04:00

Woohoo! I successfully switched the domain name from cyrozap.blogdns.com (DynDNS) to cyrozap.com! I got a really good deal with 1and1.com ($8.99/year or something like that with the first year free—that's $.25 per month), and if you click on an individual post, you'll see that below the "Submit" button for comments, I switched the ad from Amazon to 1and1.com's affiliate program ad.

Well, now I can have subdomains, like store.cyrozap.com!

I also got the DynDNS name to redirect to the new domain name, so all the old links work.

Selling Mendel and Mendel Mini Parts Individually or as Half-Sets

2010-06-20T20:28:00-04:00

I posted this on the RepRap Forum here.

If you don't want to follow the link, you can read what I wrote here:

I printed half a set of Mendel Parts, and because it's been difficult for me to finish them, I'll be selling them either individually or as a set.

The half set includes 14 build plates (I'm pretty sure) of this set of parts. Here are some pictures of the parts (click the images to see them full size):

I also have a less than half-completed set of Mendel Mini parts that is also for sale.

Please contact me at cyrozap AT gmail DOT com if you're interested, and please specify whether you're interested in a few parts or the entire half set. This is not a commitment to buy, I'm just using this to gage interest.
Happy Making!

Parallax serial RFID reader for sale (again)(again)!

2010-06-19T23:43:00-04:00

It didn't sell the first or second time I listed it, so I'm now selling it starting at $9.99 + $4.90 shipping to the continental U.S. only. It's a good deal as it originally was over $40.

I bought two of them cheap and I'm selling one here. It's a 125 kHz reader that comes with 2 tags. It outputs the tag ID on a 5V TTL serial line at 2400 baud. It's perfect for projects that require contact-less identification, like an RFID-unlocked door.

Dell 2000FP 20.1" 1600 x 1200 pixel monitor for sale!

2010-06-18T22:58:00-04:00

I'm selling my DIY-intosh's monitor on ebay to help pay for my new monitor! The bidding is starting at $49.99 and can be bought immediately for $80. Here's the auction.

$300 Mac Mod How-to Now in Instructable Form!

2010-06-11T23:43:00-04:00

Well, I finally made it: my $300 Mac Instructable! It's now easier to follow, thanks to it's new format in Instructables.

Fixed HP LCD Monitor

2010-06-06T00:25:00-04:00

On Sunday, I repaired an HP LCD screen. For some reason, it wasn't powering on, so I looked online for solutions to power supply troubles in LCDs. Eventually, I came across an Instructable to fix this very problem! It was for a slightly different model (the vs19e, I have the vs19d), but it helped me get the case off and, after seeing the three popped capacitors and replacing them with capacitors from an old-ish conference desk phone and a capacitor from Parallax's "What's a Microcontroller" kit (all were 10V 1000uF), I had a working monitor again. Well, that was a really free fix, and I'm glad I didn't have to buy anything from Radioshack as I usually do. I've nothing against Radioshack, I just think they're a tad over-priced for a lot of what they're selling, even though they add convenience.

Parallax serial RFID reader for sale (again)!

2010-06-04T19:16:00-04:00

It didn't sell the first time I listed it, so I'm now selling it starting at $20 + $4.90 shipping to the continental U.S. only. It's a good deal as it originally was over $40.

Parallax serial RFID reader for sale!

2010-05-30T18:31:00-04:00

Mendel Mini Parts to be Made and Sold!

2010-05-29T16:32:00-04:00

Currently, my MakerBot is producing the parts needed to build a Mendel Mini. I will not be making them for myself—these will be sold on ebay. I'll be posting a link here and on the RepRap forums when they're available. These parts will cost about half as much as a set of Mendel full-size parts at around $250.

Is there a noticeable speed difference?

2010-05-16T15:40:00-04:00

I just installed the WP Super Cache plugin to prepare my site in the event that something I do actually becomes popular on Hack a Day, Digg, etc.

I was just wondering: do you see a speed difference? My server is a bit underpowered, so I was wondering if there was a noticeable speed difference when the page is loaded.

Let me know in the comments (I also want to see if commenting automatically updates the cache).

5% off MakerBot Industries Cupcake CNC 3D Printer

2010-05-13T19:25:00-04:00

I just got an email from MakerBot because I entered in the Thingiverse contest (which wasn't a very smart idea—see this post):

As a small thank you, if you'd like to get a MakerBot Industries Cupcake CNC 3D Printer, you can use the code M4K3R to get 5% off until the end of the month.

This offer is valid on any item in the MakerBot store.

TVKiller: An iPhone App to Act as a TV-B-Gone

2010-05-08T23:38:00-04:00

I am currently making this app as a TV-B-Gone-like device: all you do is push the button and all the TVs you're facing turn off. The concept is simple: push the button, it maxes out the volume and plays a recorded file of all the TV off-codes, the IR LEDs transmit the signal from the audio port, and all the TVs go off.

Feel free to fork the Git repository to debug it (at the time of this post it has 10 errors and 6 warnings). As I'm new to Objective-C, I need all the help I can get. The project is under the GNU GPL, currently. I'll figure out the licensing stuff later when the project actually contains the recorded codes from a TV-B-Gone; the current "codes.mp3" is just a 440 Hz square wave for testing. That will be replaced by the real "codes.mp3" when it becomes available.

If you have a TV-B-Gone, the means to record its codes as a WAV or MP3 file, and want to help with the project, I'd appreciate it if you'd record its codes and then send them my way so they can be integrated into the project (whoever does so will be credited properly).

Blog Feedback

2010-05-05T23:22:00-04:00

Do any of you have any feedback for the blog? What am I doing wrong? What am I doing right? All suggestions are welcome, just post them in the comments.

Also, if you want me to post something, i.e., take HD pics of some electronic pieces, just let me know in the comments.

Magellan Maestro 4040 Bootloader?

2010-04-30T21:48:00-04:00

Can anyone tell me what this is? It seems to be some sort of bootloader. I looked it up, and it seems as though you can update the WinCE image by using WinCE update. If I can get a backup Magellan Maestro 4040 WinCEimg.bin, I'll see if I can upgrade the OS to a normal WinCE environment, complete with desktop. Maybe in the future I'll be able to get Linux on it. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Power button is select, reset button is a down arrow. Here's the Menu breakdown:

Venus3 UT R08

0=WINCE Upgrade
- 0=WINCE by SD/MMC (Format)
- 1=WINCE by SD/MMC
- 2=WINCE by USB (Format)
- 3=WINCE by USB
- 4=EXIT

1=GPS Tools
- 0=Gps Updating
- 1=Gps Test
- 2=Exit

2=BT Tools
- 0=BT Test Mode
- 1=Write BT MAC
- 2=Exit

3=UBOOT Upgrade
- 0=UBOOT by USB
- 1=UBOOT by SD/MAC
- 2=Exit

4=Memory Tools
- 0=ROM CheckSum
- 1=Memory Test
- 2=Exit

5=Other Tools
- 0=CPLD Upgrade by SD/MMC
- 1=CPLD Upgrade by USB
- 2=Read CPLD user code
- 3=Download & Run
- 4=Nand Tools
- 5=Nand Bad Block Check
- 6=Nand Ecc Check
- 7=Format
- 8=Exit

Mini-Mendel Production Files

2010-04-26T22:08:00-04:00

If you've wanted to make a mini-Mendel with your MakerBot, I made a set of production files to do just that.

How-to: Build Your Own DIY-intosh

2010-04-22T18:40:00-04:00

Well, I think it's about time that I made more of a how-to to build a DIY-intosh.

There are plenty of how-to's to make Hackintoshes, but those are teetering on the edge of legality, are difficult to get as stable as a store-bought Mac, and OS updates can't always be installed without any mods. Macs are supposed to be reliably stable—that's one of their main selling points; when you remove that stability, you remove a major component of the Mac. The only reasons you would want to build a Hackintosh is to have a really powerful Mac Pro at a really good cost, to have an OS X netbook, or to have a really inexpensive Mac Mini.

The DIY-intosh can be built as a really inexpensive (mine was around $300) yet still Apple-reliable Mac. Here's how to make one of your own:

Step 1: Gather Materials

MacBook logic board
SATA 2.5" HDD
MacBook HDD cable
MacBook logic board fan and heat sink with temp sensors
MacBook sleep switch/battery connector
MacBook DC-DC port (the power connector)
MacBook power block
MacBook keyboard cable
MacBook Bluetooth card
MacBook Bluetooth card cable
MacBook WiFi card
WiFi antennas
2GB DDR2 667 MHz laptop RAM (2 x 1GB or 1 x 2GB)
Generic magnet to keep the sleep switch activated
Thermal paste for heat sink
LED
Resistor for LED to bring the 5V to 2.5-3V (220 Ohm)
Case to put everything in

Step 2: Make Sure the Parts Fit In the Case

Make sure they all fit when put together, otherwise you'll have serious problems later on. If they don't fit, find a case that will let them fit. I used an old cable modem enclosure.

Step 3: Modify the Case as Needed

This means you just need to drill holes for cooling, a power button, ports, etc.

Step 4: Secure the Logic Board to the Case

You can use either screws or glue. I used hot glue because it's easy, moderately strong, it has insulating properties, and I can remove it if necessary.

Step 5: Attach and Secure Other Parts

Attach and secure electrical components to the logic board and to the case, if needed. This includes the power switch, the DC-DC adapter, the Wi-Fi antennas, and the HDD. After you insert the sleep switch into the logic board, you can glue the magnet to the top of the switch. Make sure the magnet doesn't cause any shorts. For wiring the power switch to the keyboard cable, see what this guy posted.

Step 6: Close It Up

Close, but don't yet seal, the case.

Step 7: Install OS X

See this post for this step.

Step 8: Brag to Your Friends Celebrate the Completion of Your New Mac!

Many thanks to Tyler of Phantom Dev, who inspired me to do this project and who gave me the link to another mod that has a little more detail on wiring the power button. I also thank ebay for being there to host the auctions and I thank the people I bought parts from for having such awesome prices. I thank Hammerhead Technology for selling me the logic board and Apple's designers and engineers for making such a great piece of hardware and software.

DIY-intosh is Working!

2010-04-03T11:00:00-04:00

UPDATE (8/19/2010): You could probably do this a lot easier/quicker by just making an OS X USB drive by making a DMG of the OS X install disk and then restoring that image onto an 8 GB or larger USB drive, but this post is just about how I did it.

Well, that sleep switch certainly did the trick! It turns out that Macs w/o an OS can't do anything until OS X is installed. This means that boot keys like "T" for Target Disk Mode and "C" for Boot from CD won't work until the OS is installed. The good news is, using this info that I learned myself, I was able to install OS X on my DIY-intosh. This is what you need (or, rather, what I used):

1 DIY-intosh w/ newly attached sleep switch and magnet and w/ pre-formatted HDD
1 Mac with a firewire port
2 power cables
1 firewire cable (If the non-DIY Mac has a firewire 800 port you need this cable, if it has a firewire 400 port, then you just need this cable.
1 mini-DVI to whatever cable (I used a mini-DVI to DVI cable)
1 USB keyboard
1 USB mouse
1 display
1 Mac OS X 10.6 DVD
lots of patience

How to install OS X on the DIY-intosh:

1.) Connect everything logically. Connect the Macs via firewire cable, plug Macs into wall power, connect DIY-intosh to monitor, connect USB keyboard and mouse to DIY-intosh, etc.

2.) Boot and log-in to MacBook.

3.) Insert OS X Install DVD.

4.) Go to Sysprefs->Boot Devices (or something like that).

5.) Select the DVD and select restart now.

6.) While the MacBook is rebooting, hold "T" to enter Firewire Target Disk Mode.

7.) Boot DIY-intosh.

8.) Wait a long time.

9.) If you see the install screen, success! If not, figure out what's wrong and fix it.

10.) If you haven't already done so, format the HDD to a Mac Journaled file system by selecting it from the Utilities menu at the top of the screen.

11.) Proceed through the installation. Make sure that when you select a drive to install to, pick your DIY-intosh one and NOT your MacBook one. Just a word of warning.

12.) Wait a long time (1.5-2 hours) for it to install. Disregard the "30 minutes remaining" and read a book or watch a movie because from this point until the install finishes there's no user intervention required.

13.) When your DIY-intosh reboots, turn off the MacBook, for it is no longer necessary. Unplug the firewire cable for the same reason.

14.) Enjoy the welcome animation and your new DIY-intosh.

I swapped the Marvel MC85 card that I was using for the AzureWave card from my Eee PC 1000HE and now WiFi works fine on both my netbook and my DIY-intosh. I needed to use ndiswrapper to get the WiFi working on my netbook, but I figured a hack on my Linux community-supported netbook would be better supported than a hack on my OS X DIY-intosh.

Fun With Git, iPod touches, and Cellular Modules

2010-03-31T16:38:00-04:00

See my iPod touch Cellular Upgrade to see what I mean. This pretty much turns any iPod touch into an unlocked GSM phone. There's also potential for making it have a cellular dial-up modem, but that is a bit beyond my coding capabilities. At least the hardware would be capable of it so someone who can get it to be used as a cellular modem can just fork my project. I <3 Git.

Aluminum Idler Wheel

2010-03-28T19:13:00-04:00

Well, I'd just about had it with my MakerBot's Idler Wheel; It keept ruining prints by separating from the bearing and letting the filament slip to the side, away from the extruder's drive wheel, so I decided to upgrade. I bought an aluminum idler wheel on ebay for $15 + $1.50 shipping (search for "reprap"). It has a groove cut in the side to keep the filament from slipping oast the wheel, and it has the bearing press-fit into the idler wheel, so the idler wheel will never slip off the bearing and slip past the filament! It's been running well during the prints I've been using it, and has made changing my skeinforge settings easier by making the MakerBot's extruder much less dynamic and much more reliable. I have also recently switched to skeinforge 7 from skeinforge 5 so I could use the new raftless plugin with PLA.

Fixing Mendel Production Files

2010-03-21T21:07:00-04:00

Go to http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2035 to get my fixes for steps 3 and 6 (and any future problem steps I encounter) of Spacexula's Mendel Production Files. Step 3 had a few mesh holes, and in step 6, the triangular piece was slightly above the ground, causing it to be printed in midair.

High-Resolution Pictures of the Macbook Sleep Switch/Battery Connector

2010-03-18T19:43:00-04:00

I tried figuring it out, but I couldn't get the sleep switch pinout (Apple goes to a lot of trouble to obscure the traces with the silkscreen and both my multimeters are wonky—they don't like displaying correct values). Now it's in the DIY-intosh and it still doesn't default to outputting to the external screen. I can only hope that it doesn't work for the same reason that Firewire Target Disk Mode doesn't work; OS X hasn't been installed yet.

As always, click on the pictures to see the hi-res versions.

Swapping FTDI USB to Serial Cable for Hardware Serial Works Nicely

2010-03-18T13:37:00-04:00

Well, I was getting tired of having to load my prints onto an SD card by formatting, loading the file, and inserting into the MakerBot because when a print fails, I have to repeat the process. So, I finally decided to swap the FTDI USB to Serial cable for hardware serial cable. Now, I can print from the computer directly without worrying about slowdowns. It's faster because instead of relying on a driver to convert the data and push it over the USB where it is then converted into serial, it just uses the hardware serial controller, which uses a whole lot less processing power than USB does.

Here's a video showing my MakerBot workstation:

I also have it on YouTube, but YouTube makes my videos all jittery when it transcodes them. I only really use YouTube when I need to use the annotations.

My Apologies and Cellular Internet

2010-03-16T11:57:00-04:00

Sorry about the downtime! That storm we just had (in the northeast US) knocked out our power for a few days, but it's back now and the server is fine.

During that time without internet at home, I went to the library to figure out how to tether my phone (use my phone's cellular modem to connect to the internet) to my computer. There, I found out how to enable the dial-up modem on my phone (Google it), which is an LG enV2. Then, I found a free dial-up provider based out of southern California called myfreewirelessisp.com. I signed up with them and, on my computer, set the number to dial as 619-364-3734 (instead of Verizon's number, #777) and entered my username and password for my account that I had just signed up for. I connected (using my computer) and I then had a wireless dial-up connection to the internet. What's great about this is that instead of using Verizon's connection and having to pay a ton of money ON TOP of my minutes usage, I just use this number and I only use up minutes. The even better part is that on nights and weekends, calls are free, and as this is just another call, my mobile internet is free on nights and weekends. The only downside? It's dial-up, which means it's extra-slow. But, it's better than nothing.

So, now I can have internet wherever in the US I bring my phone and netbook and there is cellular coverage that won't cost me an arm and a leg.

Eventually, I'll see if I can get an ASUS WL-520gU, install OpenWRT, connect my phone to it over usb, and make it a mobile WiFi Internet hotspot that I can connect to batteries and put in my backpack.

Oh! I forgot to mention that I increased the baud rate on my phone from 38400 to 115200 so that sped up the internet a bit. Google it if you want to find out how.

More IM-ME info

2010-03-12T20:27:00-05:00

Ok, I don't think I'm going to do anything with this, but to all those who've seen my previous posts and want to hack a GirlTech IM-ME, I give you this.

Confessions

2010-03-10T21:54:00-05:00

Ok, in the last post about the DIY-intosh, I said that it was complete. Well, it wasn't. I really did think it was, but I was unable to install OS X. The reason? It doesn't actually think that its non-existent lid is closed. I thought the sleep switch was built into the board, but it is in fact built into the battery connector. So, after trying to emulate the switch by shorting out pins and not succeeding, I decided to take the easy way out and just buy the battery connector. $8.50 in a Best Offer on eBay; search for "Macbook battery connector." When I get the item, I'll run tests on it to find the real pinouts and I'll take a bunch of high-resolution photos of it because there are no high-res photos of the battery connector online that I could find. I think it's a hall-effect sensor and not a reed switch, and that might make things a bit more difficult, but I'll try. I'll look for a chip number. Even if I don't succeed, I'll still have some great photos so others can figure out something without needing the actual sensor/assembly.

And I'm still under my $300 goal ($293.29) :D

Edit: Oh, and it looks like PuSH wasn't working before, but there was an update for it and it's working now. Instant updates FTW.

PuSH

2010-03-03T20:05:00-05:00

I just installed the PuSHPress plugin for Wordpress.org. It should increase the speed at which feed readers are notified of new posts from the blog. This post is pretty much testing the plugin.

YES! Mendel Production Acceleration!

2010-02-23T20:17:00-05:00

Great news! There are now Mendel parts split into 24 MakerBot-printable plates! This is great for me, considering I'm going to try to mass-produce Mendel parts. This is great because it drastically reduces the number of times you need to Skeinforge and print a new object from 80+ to 24. I'm really excited about this!

The DIY-intosh is finally complete!

2010-02-18T15:13:00-05:00

I finshed it! Many thanks to Tyler of Phantom Dev, who inspired me to do this project and who gave me the link to another mod that has a little more detail on wiring the power button. I also thank ebay for being there to host the auctions and I thank the people I bought parts from for having such awesome prices. I thank Hammerhead Technology for selling me the logic board and Apple's designers and engineers for making such a great piece of hardware and software.

Total cost of the project: $284.79

I made my goal! I got a few things as gifts and had some of the stuff on hand already, so if I included those, it would be a little more money and would have gone over my budget of $300.

Tech Specs/Features:
- 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo
- 2GB RAM (667 MHz)
- 100 GB hard drive (7200 RPM)
- 802.11 b/g/n wifi
- Bluetooth
- Looks totally rad

And here are some pictures of it:

Note: There's a magnet inside, but it's not doing anything. Why? There's no lid sensor/battery connector. Whoops! It has been fixed.

As always, you can click on the pictures to see them full-size.

I'll post more info later.

DIY-intosh Works!

2010-02-15T15:37:00-05:00

The blinking folder icon just means that the EFI bootloader can't find a hard drive with an OS installed on it. This is fine, considering that there is no hard drive attached! All I need now is a good SATA laptop HDD and I'll be all set.

Reverse-engineering a VCR Knob/Jog-wheel

2010-02-13T23:52:00-05:00

Here's a video I made showing that it outputs in a pseudo-digital way:

From the video description:

This is a simple test I did to see how to decode the output from a VCR knob. First, I used a multimeter while I moved the knob to find out which pins went where inside the device. Then, upon finding that it's a sort of pseudo-digital output, I wired it up to some LEDs and started turning it. I didn't get any output when I turned it right, but I'll figure that out eventually.

By the way, my digital camcorder has a REALLY nice macro mode built in (if you haven't already noticed from the video). One time, I held the camera up to my netbook's screen while it was set to macro mode and I could see the individual pixels INSANELY crisply; so crisply, in fact, that I could see the individual RGB bars.

Expect a post about the DIY-intosh tomorrow. Right now, I have to get some sleep.

Problems with Netbook Multitasking and MakerBots

2010-02-07T15:30:00-05:00

XYZ stopped, but the extruder kept going. Lovely.

This is what happens when you VNC into your MakerBot-controlling netbook while it's printing something. It destroyed my extruder barrel by coating it in PLA and pushing up the ceramic tape. There goes $20 for a replacement. I don't think I'll be remotely managing my MakerBot ever again. Well, I'm now going to be using a Pentium 4 3.00 GHz 512 MB RAM machine that I got for free to control my MakerBot. Hopefully that will solve some of the problems I've had in the past. At least it'll Skeinforge faster.

Storage upgrade!

2010-02-04T21:25:00-05:00

I just installed an 80 GB HDD into this server. It's mounted to wp-uploads on boot, so whenever I upload a file to the server, it goes directly onto the 80 GB HDD. I think it's 7200 RPM but I don't know for sure. It's also not from the 90s (like the 10 GB HDD that contains the rest of the filesystem). Accessing files on it seems faster than from the 10 GB HDD. This also means that I have 80 GB more storage space than before, so I don't have to upload everything to Picasa and then embed it. I'm really excited, considering that I got the HDD for free.

MakerBot #000117 Picasa Web Photo Album

2010-01-22T21:48:00-05:00

If you didn't know already, many of the pictures of my MakerBot can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/cyrozap/MakerBot000117Spartan.

It's PLA time!

2010-01-21T20:55:00-05:00

This is the Hack-a-Day badge I printed from the file they put on Thingiverse. It was printed in PLA sans-raft. There was no warping. At all. :D

Here's where to get the file.

PLA!

2010-01-10T15:54:00-05:00

A few days ago, I ordered some PLA (from UltiMachine, at $47.50) so I could print out larger objects without warping. It's arrived, and now I have to figure out how to modify my MakerBot to use it. I found this thread helpful.

Just so you know, MakerBot Industries is also selling PLA, but it is 4032D, and is currently on sale at $60 (and will rise to $80 on Monday). Supposedly, 4032D is better because it has a more ABS-like melting point so it can be used in a MakerBot more easily, but I've heard 4042D works fine.

MAKE: Money and DIY-intosh

2009-12-29T14:58:00-05:00

I signed up for MAKE Magazine's Make: Money program. With it, I can sell MAKE Magazine subscriptions to people and have %50 of the money go to this blog! It's a really cool system, and now, people that can view this blog can order online using this link. When you click on the link, you are taken to MAKE Magazine's web order form. All you have to do is fill out the required information and pay for the subscription. Half of the money is automatically sent to the blog and you get subscribed to an awesome magazine. I'm speaking from experience; I subscribe to MAKE, too, and it's great. There are a TON of great projects, articles, product reviews, and more. So why wait? Order now!

Ok, the sales pitch is over. If you haven't already noticed, I've renamed the DIY Mac project to DIY-intosh. The current status is good; I have most of the parts already and the rest are on their way. The reason why this has taken so long is because I accidentally bought the wrong CPU fan and had to send it back. Also, I had to wait until monday to deposit the money I got for Christmas. The good news is that I have or have ordered all of the parts to make a functioning Mac. The next post about the DIY-intosh will have a bunch of pictures. This is going to be awesome.

Oh, and I probably won't be posting any more fund-raising posts.

DIY Mac Part II

2009-12-10T06:13:00-05:00

The parts have been bought; all except the MacBook keyboard and the thermal compound. So it begins.

Please donate; I really need money for this project!

^ That must have sounded reeeeally desperate.

Failures and Succeses

2009-12-06T16:46:00-05:00

This post summarizes the events of the past few days:

MakerBot randomly stops during large print (Mendel extruder), causing blob; blob makes print fail epicly.
Happens again; no idea what's going wrong.
I tighten the X/Y belts.
Happens AGAIN!
I sleep on the thought.
I tighten down the extruder.
I take a trip online to the MakerBot Google group; find out what I have to do.
I fix it.
I happily print out Mendel parts.
:D

Extruder working better than EVER!

2009-12-04T20:03:00-05:00

I printed a dodecahedron today. It printed fine, but plastic was building up on the nozzle.

Why was this? Because the extruder was extruding faster than the build base was moving.

Why is this good? Before, the settings I used worked with my extruder just fine. Now, because plastic is building up, it means that the extruder's motor speed is faster than it was before, meaning that it has become more efficient. This is probably because of the modifications I made to it (especially the filing job I did on the pinch wheel). I modified the Skeinforge settings and am going to print out another dodecahedron momentarily.

I'm so excited!

From MakerBot #000117 'Spartan'

Build your own fully-functional, non-hackintosh Mac!

2009-12-03T22:46:00-05:00

As a side project, I have decided to build a Mac for under $300 that uses genuine Mac parts so that I may develop apps for the iPhone and iPod touch legally. Links: For Pics, For Details

The Girly, Pink Chatpad of Awesomeness

2009-11-30T23:39:00-05:00

As this is a technology modding blog, when I happened upon this little nugget of info I immediately decided to put the Girl Tech IM ME toy on my Amazon wish list. I'm totally going to try to write a Linux driver for it. I do not understand how the DMCA prevents Hunter from releasing his driver to the public, but as I am not a lawyer nor do I want to consult one, I will not release my driver (if I do end up making one).

In Other News: Fixing the "Fixed" Extruder

2009-11-30T21:30:00-05:00

I believe that the repairs I just performed on the extruder are going to work this time! I tried building a test dodecahedron recently and my extruder just stalled on me. This has happened before, but I think I have found the problem. The pinch wheel was allowing the filament to slip next to it during extrusion, causing it to lose contact with the idler wheel and stop extruding to fix this, I simply filed down the pinch wheel. If this works, great! If not, I'll file down the pinch wheel more until it is impossible for the filament to slip. Actually, I think I'll just file it down anyways to prevent making ANOTHER cracked idler wheel.

Rebuilt Extruder Creates More Problems

2009-11-27T20:42:00-05:00

As I said in the last update for this, I rebuilt the extruder. Yay!

But there is a slight problem: the extruder, for some reason, extruded for a while, but then just stopped. I think I just need to tighten it down better (I did it by hand first). Ugh. This run-it-for-a-bit-and-then-it-breaks-and-I-have-to-fix-it routine is really getting on my nerves.

Missing Picture

2009-11-27T20:39:00-05:00

Ok, here's the picture of the Wii Nunchuck with the LED inside:

Extruder rebuilt!

2009-11-25T20:56:00-05:00

Self-explanatory title is self-explanatory.

Long story short, I rebuilt the extruder for my MakerBot and will be testing it tomorrow. Then I will be able to see how well having less ceramic tape on the heater barrel works.

Priorities

2009-11-22T22:04:00-05:00

Ok, here goes:
I recieved the parts for the extruder on Monday, but didn't even touch them until Wednesday and I haven't yet attached the nichrome wire, thermistor, and ceramic tape to the heater barrel nor replaced the Idler Wheel yet due to time constraints. It's not that I don't have enough time—in fact I have plenty of time—but I don't have enough contiguous time. I need a good, constant 3-5 hours of total zen/focus while working toward the goal, otherwise, things could go horribly wrong. I need total concentration when I work.

Why do I need 3-5 hours to work?
Well, I first need to fix the hardware issues, then I need to figure out optimal skeinforge settings so this same problem doesn't happen again. Namely what I need to do is adjust the temperature settings to accomodate the lesser amount of ceramic tape I will be putting on the extruder. I'll probably keep the speed and infill density stuff the same as before I got the new skeinforge. I may want to print out a few dodecahedrons with the default settings first, then with my own, then I will compare the two and pick the better settings set.

I hope to be working on it over Thanksgiving weekend.

This site is now using Google FeedBurner!

2009-11-20T22:56:00-05:00

I figured out how to use FeedBurner! You can subscribe by clicking the FeedBurner badge on the right-hand side of the page or by clicking the RSS icon in the address bar of your browser.

WordPress 2.0 for iPhone is here!

2009-11-17T15:25:00-05:00

Ok, so I just got the WordPress 2.0 app for my iPod touch. It's awesome. I'm actually posting from it right now! I was surprised that it could work with self-hosted WP, but it's true. I'm glad. :)

MakerBot Extruder Woes

2009-11-11T16:54:00-05:00

So I decide to finally fix the extruder. In doing so, I found more problems than I thought existed.

Problems:

Idler Wheel has cracked
Insulator Retainer has cracked
Nichrome wire insulation has turned to powder
Overheating caused kapton tape and ceramic tape to burn
The barrel and nozzle are full of ~~eels~~ ABS.

I have ordered replacement parts.

Wii Nunchuck LED Mod

2009-10-29T18:19:00-04:00

I basically just followed this Instructable. Pictures coming soon!

More Fixed!

2009-10-24T22:42:00-04:00

Pretty permalinks now work! I'm so excited!

This is the thread I started to solve my problem.

Fixed!

2009-10-10T22:53:00-04:00

Ok, so I finally fixed my Wordpress.org server. At first, uploaded content wasn't displaying and only the home page was accessible. The uploaded content wasn't displayed because it couldn't be found, and it couldn't be found because it was storing the content in a different folder that the one it was looking in for the content. Only the home page was visible because the permalinks didn't change even after I changed the setting, so I changed it back to the default. They aren't in a very user-friendly format, but they do work. Oh, and the server still can't update itself, which is annoying, but I can do that manually, so it's ok.

Technical Difficulties

2009-10-10T13:09:00-04:00

Ok, so when I tried importing the posts and other content from my old blog, it didn't work out too well. None of the posts below this one can be linked to, and none of the pictures show up. All the original content, however is still on the old blog at http://mytechprojects.wordpress.com.

My new Etsy Shop!

2009-10-05T17:20:00-04:00

I now have an Etsy Shop where I will be selling 3D-printed objects! I'll even do custom jobs! Right now the shop is down because I really need a weekend to set it up. Check back on Monday of next week!

MakerBot pictures!

2009-09-21T20:01:00-04:00

Ok, I finally got around to getting some pictures organized, so here they are:

MakerBot is complete and fully operational!

2009-09-06T11:23:00-04:00

Ok, so I haven't posted here in a while (not that anyone reads this O_o), and I'm sorry to whoever does read this. I've completed my MakerBot and have gotten it working really well. I'll post pictures later.

Change in plans! Imma gunna builda MakerBot!

2009-07-04T22:15:00-04:00

Yup, I've changed my mind again: I'm going to purchase the Cupcake CNC Basic Kit tommorrow ($750 makerbot.com), and they are going to ship it August 10th. This is a pretty good deal, considering the electronics are coming preassembled (no SMT soldering! Yay!)

RepRap v2 Mendel

2009-06-02T07:57:00-04:00

After recieving a response from Adrian Bowyer on my request for the printed parts for a RepRap, I've decided to build the version 2 of RepRap called "Mendel." I will need to do cost estimates once the designs are completed.

RepRap Darwin

2009-05-25T09:55:00-04:00

I'm going to be making a RepRap Darwin. Here are some cost estimates that I made:

My Game Boy Color disassembly pictures.

2009-02-08T21:04:00-05:00

These are some pictures I took a while back of my Game Boy Color during disassembly. I really haven't done anything with it yet, though. My slideshow on instructables is here.