Hardware

This post outlines a security assessment of the new Sena Wifi Adapter I performed last summer for fun. With the world on lock-down due to COVID-19, I spent a lot of time last summer escaping the city going on motorcycle rides through the mountains and forests surrounding the bay area. It’s the perfect social distance activity because if you get within 6ft of someone you are likely to crash. One of my favorite motorcycle accessories is my Sena headset. It allows me to listen to navigation or music from my phone over Bluetooth while riding, and talk to other riders in my group. ...

A while ago I received a bunch of bare ESP-WROOM-02 chips on tape, but could not find enough documentation to program them (partially out of laziness). With my recent interest in ESPhome, I decided to give them another try. This blog post contains the results of my research on how to program them. ESP-WROOM-02 The ESP-WROOM-02 is just a ESP8266 underneath. If you don’t have a breakout board like me, then you will need a UART adapter and make a few minimal solder connections to set the various boot modes to allow you to program the firmware. Once programed for the first time, you can use OTA updates to allow flashing firmware over WiFi and not need to mess with the wiring every time you want to reprogram it. ...

Sometime in the first half of 2018 there was an explosion of “Dockless e-scooters” appearing all over the Bay Area. These devices are electric scooters that anyone can rent for a one-way trip and find/leave then (at the time) anywhere you want. As one could guess this lead to lots of issues but they where convenient and I wanted one of my own so I did a little research onto how to acquire one for private use. ...

A while ago I came into possession of a few HID iClass readers. After collecting dust in my project drawer for a few months I decided to find a fun use for them, which ended up in the project I call Badgy. Background The back of the HID readers have 10 colored wires coming out of them. Luckily the readers also had a nice sticker telling me which wire was what. ...

Backstory A few years ago when the local Circuit City was going out of business I decided to stop by to see if there where any good deals. Unfortunately most of their inventory was at a very low discount (if at all). However they where getting rid of some of their CRM and sales equipment. I picked up a 3M touch-panel LCD monitor for $20 or so, sold “as-is”. When I got home I realized that the LCD panel was only 800x600px, and had a broken back-light. I tried to get the touch panel working but for some reason it was not receiving power and I could not find any drivers for it. Into storage it went. ...

A car inverter will take the 12 volts DC from your car; usually from your cigarette lighter and turn it into 110 volts AC, which is what you get out of your home power outlets. This allows you to plug household electronics into your car. the most common would probably be your laptop. Home UPS systems do the same thing, except instead of using a car outlet they use a 12 volt battery. I used a old home UPS system I had laying around that had a bad battery. (We don’t use the battery in this mod) ...

I recently got a HTC Incredible to replace my aging LG Chocolate. One feature of the Incredible was video out. Specifically the ability to output composite video to a TV. The cable was first demoed by WireFly here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJyt463AoOA And since then threads like these have started trying to hunt down the cable. And it looks like one day it may be sold here or here. But for the time being this cable is not being sold anywhere, and there is a rumor that it may never be commercially sold. ...

Here is How I added a AUX inputs to my Delco Radio/CD player and a nice mount for my N810. Part 1 - Adding The AUX Input First off This worked on my Delco radio. It may work on yours, it may not. On My radio there is a nice AUX button right under the CD button. This goes to a AUX connector on the back of the unit. This is Delco AUX plug. It was meant to to to a separate tape deck. Unfortunately this plug needs an intelligent device connected to it to enable itself. There is also a device you can buy that will plug into this AUX port and give you a normal RCA connection, but the idea of this is to spend as little money as possible and have the fun of doing it yourself ...

The Nokia N810 has an OTG or On-The-Go USB controller, it allows for the device to function is both client and host mode. By default it is is client mode so when you plug it into your computer it acts as a USB storage device. It can be put into host mode by feature running a program on the tablet that will put it into host mode or use the OTG trigger. The USB plug on the tablet has 5 pins rather than just the standers 4 USB uses. If the extra pin is grounded it will put the N810 into host mode. ...