Switching to a better firmware

Of the many cheap and not so cheap buys that crowd my drawers I really forgot this RC remote controllable switch. I thought it could be useful in a project I was working on so I spent $5 for it just to solve my problem another way even before the parcel arrived. The device is...

Refurbishing a servo tester

Since when I discovered them, I really love servo testers. They are cheap, small and do exactly one thing quite well. I said quite for one reason. The range of the generated PWM duty cycle is limited from 1ms to 2ms. This generally allows you to move a servo in a 90 degrees range. But...

Reverse engineering a LED strip RF remote controller

LEDs are an irresistible attraction for me. Even more LED strips. But, oh, addressable RGB LED strips! I own more than I will ever use for sure and I'm still buying them on occasion. Some of them came with a remote and a receiver capable of whatever color effect. We are talking of WS2812B LED...

0x0BD2

Yes, the title is a joke but no, the content is damn serious. The problem: keeping a car (my car) parked for longer than a month without having the battery totally depleted. The solution (I hope): being curious. First things first. I don't need to explain you why I stopped driving my car every other...

Pontius Pilatus

A few days ago while reading Hackaday like every other day in my recent years (10 at least) I stumbled upon this interesting link to a handwashing timer project. Cool! I always admire those who have technical skills to interface whatever sensor to any MCU. I also found quite a number of similar projects on...

My take on bristlebots

  These are boring times indeed, but a (bad) maker has always plenty of non finished projects to work on. So what's better than dust off a few cheap buys I made in the last months years to build a middle sized bristlebot? There is not that much to say on the build except for...

Don’t steal my car!

Almost two years have passed since i wrote my last post regarding my reverse engineering efforts on the Omnismart lock. I feel a bit guilty since I did not tell you the end of the story. But here I am to repair my misdeeds. After my first successful attempts at reverse engineering the MCU IOs...

I don’t steal bikes – Part 2

After a couple hours watching videos and reading articles I knew what i wanted. OpenOCD was the solution and maybe Radare in case i can get access to the firmware, something quite unlikely since MCUs have usually a lock feature that blocks you from reading the internal flash memory. I was a bit scared at...

I don’t steal bikes

A couple of weeks ago I was asked from a friend if i was interested in an electronic bike lock. The lock was part of a bike sharing unit that was being dismissed. Actually a few hundreds of them were being dismissed as the operator was leaving our town due to massive vandalization they were...