hack News - Page 6 of 14 - CNX Software

January 17, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Cracking Open a Self-Powered Shower Temperature Display

A month ago, I wrote about a $10 self-powered thermometer display that connects to your shower header and can display the water temperature near real-time to help with mixing hot and cold water tap to achieve the perfect temperature. It’s not really useful where I live, but I was hoping somebody would buy one, and crack it open to find out how it works. It turns out MickMake has done just that even bringing an oscilloscope in the shower… If you just want to use the thing, the good news is that it appears to work well, and temperature is displayed within less than one second after turning the tap, and goes up as hot/warm water goes through it. Now for the teardown… It does not seem that easy to open it, but he managed, and found a 470 uF capacitor, LS164 8-bit shift register for the LCD display, ABS6 […]

November 24, 2017November 24, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Cheap Evil Tech – WiFi Deauther V2.0 Board and Autonomous Mini Killer Drones

Most technological advances usually improve life of people, and with the costs coming down dramatically over the years, available to more people. But technology can be used for bad, for example by governments and some hackers. Today, I’ve come across two cheap hardware devices that could be considered evil. The first one is actually pretty harmless and can be use for education, but disconnects you from your WiFi, which may bring severe physiological trauma to some people, but should not be life threatening, while the other is downright scary with cheap targeted killing machines. WiFi Deauther V2.0 board Specifications for this naughty little board: Wireless Module based on ESP8266 WiSoC USB – 1x Micro USB type changed, more stable. Expansion – 17-pin header with 1x ADC, 10x GPIOs, power pins Misc – 1x power switch, battery status LEDs Power Supply 5 to 12V via micro USB port Support for 18650 […]

November 14, 2017November 14, 2017 by Karl Johnson - 4 Comments

Tronxy X3S 3D Printer Review – Part 3: Upgrades to Fix Bed Leveling Issues (Permanently)

Karl here. I have had the Tronxy X3S 3D printer for a while now. It prints well but as I mentioned in previous articles I had to level for every print. Actually near the end I would just overpower the stepper motors while the skirt was printing and level. Leveling front to back was not affected. Only the z height. So this worked but it was frustrating. Before that I tried several different things to mitigate. I thought maybe the endstop for Z homing was inconsistent and replaced it. I tried heating the bed for extended period of time thinking that maybe some thermal expansion. Didn’t help. I finally did a major change to the X carriage with success. I even moved the printer to our local library and the bed stayed leveled for a demo. I call this a success, and will show how I did it. Inspiration for […]

October 25, 2017November 14, 2017 by Karl Johnson - 7 Comments

Tronxy X3S 3D Printer Review – Part 2: Upgraded Heatbed and RAMPS Board

Karl here. So the bed I mentioned in the first part of Tronxy X3S review is not very good. It took about 10-11 minutes to heat up to 60 deg Celsius. I also mentioned I was going to upgrade the board to a RAMPS board. Today we are going to look at both these upgrades. New Heated Bed I can take no credit for this one but I wanted to pass this along. Folger tech sells a 12v 280w heated bed stick on pad. I picked this up for $20, but is now $22. In order to do this upgrade you will need a MOSFET, 12V/30A power supply, and of course the pad above. Super easy installation. Remove the bed and stick on the self adhesive pad centered. Replace the power supply with new one. Should be self explanatory. In order to power this bed a MOSFET is needed. A […]

October 3, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

$99 101Hero PYLON is a Poor 3D Printer, But Could Prove Useful to Learning 3D Printing Technology

Anet A8 was one of the first sub $200 3D printer I found last last year, reviews were surprisingly positive. It is now sold for around $150 shipped (with A8PRINT coupon), and experienced reviewers often recommend it to people wanting to get started with 3D printing on a budget. But last week, as I browsed products on Banggood, I found something even cheaper with 101Hero PYLON 3D printer going for $107.99 shipped with coupon 349da5, and further research lead me to the official website where they sell it for $99 excluding shipping, and provide documentation and video tutorials. 101Hero PYLON 3D printer specifications: Printing technology – FDM (Fused deposition modeling) Host Material – Steel + ABS XYZ Bearings – Steel Print Size – 100 x 100mm Layer thickness – 0.1mm Nozzle diameter – 0.4mm Printing material – PLA Material Diameter – 1.75mm Power Supply – 20W Dimensions – 260 x […]

September 25, 2017September 26, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

ESPurna Firmware Now Supports Power Meters “Augmented” with ESP8266 Modules/Boards

Sonoff-Tasmota and ESPurna are the two main open source firmware used in home automation devices, such as Sonoff wireless switches, based on Espressif ESP8266 WiSoC. Xose Pérez – aka Tinkerman – has recently purchased “dumb” power meters / kill-a-watt meters, added WiFi to them with ESP-01 module and Wemos D1 mini board, and implemented support in ESPurna firmware leveraging earlier reverse-engineering work by Karl Hagström. The power meter above looks exactly like the one I’ve been using for review for over two years, and has been more more reliable than other models, such as Broadlink SP2 (with built-in WiFi) that gave up on me after a few months. Xose actually noticed that old and newer models of the power meters were based on different solutions. Karl’s meter relied on ECH1560, while Xose’s new meter was instead based on Vango V9261F, which has a public datasheet, and was already being worked on by […]

September 18, 2017September 17, 2017 by Karl Johnson - 6 Comments

Designing a 3D Printed Jig to Flash Firmware to ESP8266 based Light Bulbs

Karl here. I have to say that my favorite part of 3D printing is designing things from scratch. Recently a reader was asking about a way to flash a lot of Ai Lights on a project he was working on. I suggested 3D printing a jig that pressure fits pins. He didn’t have a printer, and we exchanged contact information and he sent me one of the lights and some pogo pins from Amazon. Design in Fusion 360 I started by taking a picture of the light to get my pin placement. I set a scale by measuring a known distance then printed and tested. It took about 3 iterations to get them to line up in real life. Keep in mind camera lenses distort reality and knew It would take a couple times. I would just let a few layers print then stop and line everything up. I had […]

August 15, 2017August 19, 2017 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 2 Comments

ECDREAM A9 Apollo Lake HDMI “TV Stick” Review with Windows 10 and Ubuntu 17.04

The ECDREAM A9 is arguably the first Intel Apollo Lake ‘PC stick’ available for purchase. However, in reality it is surprisingly large, and when compared to earlier Intel Atom ‘sticks’ and mini PC ‘boxes’ it lies somewhere in between. Measuring 2.3 inches (58 mm) wide and 0.6 inches (16 mm) thick it feels almost double in size of the original Intel Compute Stick (1.5 in/38 mm by 0.5 in/12 mm) and like nearly half of a mini PC (Beelink’s AP34 is 4.7 in/119 mm by 0.8 / 20 mm). Given that you only get two USB ports, an micro SD card slot and the obligatory HDMI and power port, the large size would be better justified if an Ethernet port had also been included given other smaller ‘sticks’ have shown this is possible. However the reason for its size is due to the oversized fan and heatsink… and that […]