Hack Correlation

I will probably have to split this article into several parts, as I move along. In the initial article (see  http://hackcorrelation.blogspot.de/2017/01/ionik-cloud-hub.html ) I took a look at the hardware and started doing some basic hacking. However, I quickly ran into limitations and decided to try and port OpenWRT for the platform. There are quite a few steps and preparations needed to do this, however, this is for documentary purposes only. You don't need to do any of the stuff below (except backup), you can just flash my OpenWRT firmware and be none the wiser. However it might be useful if you want to port it to a new device, I could not find any tutorial about this. Step 0 - BACKUP In case everything blows up you will want to be able to restore everything to the factory condition. I first reset the root password to 'admin' by going to this link: http://10.10.10.254:8000/goform/SystemCommand?command=%2Fsbin%2Fchpasswd.sh+root+admin&SystemCommandSubmit=App...

I wanted to see the limits of the current method so I set out hunting a board template for that.

Completed prototype board For today I've planned some easy-reading and low-tech tutorial. The bane of a lot of software guys is moving up from the ubiquitous breadboard to a self-made PCB. The other common fear is switching from through-hole parts to surface-mount technology.

This is one of those projects that just takes forever to finish, I must've started this 6 months ago. This part will describe all the hardware and various techniques used to figure out which signal goes where. Why do this? It's an improvement on the original firmware and an exercise in consumer product design. My goals will be listed in the second part of this post.

In the previous post I touched upon the fact that simulating hardware input events was very slow and not really suited for fast, repeated actions. The second approach is based on MonkeyRunner, a free library included with the Android SDK. It is able to talk to the Android device using a Python-like language. Part 1:  http://hackcorellation.blogspot.de/2013/07/android-game-automation-part-1.html

I've gotten two DVR MPEG4 recorders for free because they were labeled as "unfixable". Both of them were diagnosed with "no video" or "video problems".  Ever since I've had them I had suspected the 2.5V supply to be at fault but had no oscilloscope nor variable PSU at hand, so they have been sitting in my drawer for a few months. It was a 10 minute job: - probe the 2.5V output and see it oscillating between 2.4 and 4.2V - probe the PAL/AV output and see the scope could not get a lock even though it looked almost ok - bypass the supply and feed 2.5V from a variable PSU - probe and do a quick run to see everything is stable. I wish I could do a burn test but my trusty variable PSU is a linear one, getting quite hot at this voltage drop.

This experiment was done about a year ago so I don't have all the details at hand. I wanted to see if a car USB charger can be modified to run on 1-3V. The car charger is based MC34063 chip which can function in both buck and boost configurations.

I've had a car charger break down on me and haven't been able to fix it. It has a sturdy metallic case and the transformer is still fine. The idea is to use some existing PSU modules I have laying around and fit those into the case, providing a readout on the display. Since it has to have a microcontroller (overpowered if I might add) it can also do some basic logging, over-voltage and over-current protection. I really hate designing my own supplies since there are so many ready-made around which are much better than I could ever accomplish.

Bluetooth Thanks to Moritz I was able to connect to txtr via the Bluetooth SPP profile. To do this you need to disable the txtr app that is installed on your phone and install any app that does Bluetooth serial debugging. I used "Bluetooth SPP", available freely on the Play Store. UPDATE : Andreas Schier has written an open-source java toolchain for Beagle:  https://github.com/schierla/jbeagle My own version:  https://github.com/ligius-/jbeagle UPDATE : Florian Echtler has built two Python scripts, one emulating the server and another one for the client. The server allows you to send images to your reader: http://floe.butterbrot.org/matrix/hacking/txtr/ Part 1:  http://hackcorrelation.blogspot.de/2013/07/txtr-beagle-teardown-part-1.html Part 2:  http://hackcorrelation.blogspot.de/2013/07/txtr-beagle-part-two-software.html Part 3:  http://hackcorrelation.blogspot.de/2013/07/txtr-beagle-part-3-storage-and-transfer.html Part 4:  http://hack...