Archives: Robots and lab projects pre-2016

A selection of things I've made over the past several years. Pretty photos, lots of mistakes and a few miscellaneous parts.

Free Stuff, May–December 2015

The Great Scott Gadgets team has been hard at work sorting through all the Free Stuff requests for 2015, and now we are finally ready to announce the winners for May through December. We've had many interesting submissions, and we've enjoyed learning about all the ideas you have had for open source projects and education. After much discussion and some tough decisions, we've chosen the following seven individuals and groups to receive free hardware from Great Scott Gadgets.

Richard Doell wrote to us requesting a HackRF One for a project idea he is working on. We were intrigued by the project,...

Diodes part 1: Homemade copper diodes

My method and my results. Zener-like diodes made with a candle and water-drop technique.

Ausstellung angemeldet: Spectrum Profi Club (SPC)

Wir nutzen überwiegend die Varianten des "ZX Spectrum" der britischen Firma Clive Sinclair Research (1980-87) mit Interfaces und Geräten, die auch von Drittfirmen und Privatpersonen dafür entwickelt wurden. Ursprünglich wurde der ZX Spectrum an TV über Kanal 36 angeschlossen und ein normaler Kassettenrekorder als Massenspeicher benutzt. Die neueste Variante zur Bildausgabe geht über RGB an SCART-TV oder VGA-Monitore. Als Massenspeicher kommen 3,5"-Disketten, USB-Sticks, CF- und SD-Karten über verschiedene Interfaces zur Anwendung. Die Nutzung von Druckern und Internet sind auch möglich.
Ingo Truppel und Norbert Opitz

Реверс-инжиниринг лазерного датчика расстояния

Однажды ко мне попал нерабочий лазерный датчик расстояния Keyence LK-G407. Мало того, что он был нерабочий, так его еще и нельзя было использовать без специального управляющего блока. Но ведь у датчика такие интересные характеристики: измерение расстояния с точностью до единиц микрон, и скорость работы — 50 килоизмерений/с. Так что, чтобы запустить его, придется заметно поковыряться в самом датчике, заодно и ценный опыт получить.
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Moving away from Arch Linux Part 2: Looking at alternative distros

Trying out new distros: gentoo and Void. First impressions of their live environments, package management and websites.

February element14 haul

I buy electronics on the cheap. Looking around sometimes pays off -- in this case by a factor of a thousand.

Defeating Spread Spectrum Communication with Software Defined Radio, ToorCon 2013

https://archive.org/embed/toorcon-2013-ossmann-spread-spectrum

Fortunately in this video you can't hear the jackhammers at work in the hotel lobby while I gave this presentation at the ToorCon San Diego seminars in October, 2013. Apart from having to talk over the construction noise, it was great to share SDR techniques that can be used to point out flaws in security claims made about spread spectrum communication technologies.

One of the things I showed in the talk was how Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) communications can be reverse engineered. I used SPOT Connect, a device operating on the GlobalStar satellite network as an example. A couple years later, Colby Moore did a...

Free Stuff, April 2015

My, how time flies! The Great Scott Gadgets team has been busy, but we haven't forgotten all of your requests for FREE STUFF! We are working towards getting caught up, so please bear with us as we sort it all out. April had a lot of good submissions, and we are excited to reward several of you with free open source hardware. And to make up for being so behind, we even awarded a YARD Stick One this time, and we shipped it when it was brand new! Read on to learn about April's winning Free Stuff submissions.

Damon Wascom wrote to us...

Meta: Site fixes and various reflections

Atom feed dates and duplication, thumnails and post summaries. A few thoughts on the present and future. Soon to be released init system.