Just came home from NYC Maker Faire at the NY Hall of Science. Some highlights…
MakerBots were in full force – they were everywhere, not just at the MakerBot Industries booth (seen here) but at the booths of many designers.
Bamboo bikes by Bamboo Bike Studio. Only metal parts are forks, rear drops, bottom bracket, seat, and head tubes. All else is bamboo, epoxy, and carbon fiber tape.
Ultimaker (web pic – mine from Faire were too blurry!)
Though Makerbot (MB) obviously had the most presence at the Faire, I was impressed by the Ultimaker, made by a Dutch team. Elegant design (no electronics hanging off the sides) and a nice large bed over 64 sq in. Unfortunately it costs more than the MB (€1200 ) and they have to ship from the Netherlands. Curious to see where this thing goes.
Since purchasing the Bridgeport mill this year, I’ve been trying to learn as much as possible about more refined techniques of metalworking and machining. As we all know, YouTube videos are a wonderful resource for learning anything, and metalwork is no exception (I’ve been recently been watching videos by tubelcain (mrpete222)). The author of MachinistBlog has recently put together a new site called MachinistVideos.com which aims to be a pool for all the best in machining videos. I’m planning to spend a good amount of time over there.
Just saw this scope over at Make. Don’t know much about the specifics and so I will definitely wait until someone does some tests with it. But $300 for a full functioned dual-channel scope? Incredible. Check it out here.
After years of searching for a good deal, last month I bought a beautiful used Bridgeport milling machine for the shop. Awesome!
I bought it in Bridgeport, CT from a guy selling a lot of equipment from a mold making shop that closed. Originally interested in a small M-head Bridgeport with a small work surface, I saw this variable speed beauty and couldn’t resist.
I got a great deal with all this, and was able to throw in all kinds of extras! A vise in good shape, a rotary table, a high-quality drill bit chuck, a box of misc. mills and a bunch of collets! Here it is at the warehouse with all the good stuff:
And transporting wasn’t as much a problem as I thought. I drove a Penske truck up to the warehouse in Bridgeport, popped the head off (with much friendly help from the forklift operator) and they loaded the beast onto the truck with a pallet. Strapped that sucker down & good to go:
Off-loading was not TOO bad. It would have been a bit easier if I had (a) borrowed a forklift, or (b) asked for any help whatsoever. But amazingly I did get it off the truck and into my shop with nothing more than a pallet jack. The tricky part was compensating for the fact that the truck was too low for the loading dock at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I had to back the truck up on ramps I made from some 2 x 10 boards lying around. Then I had to work the pallet slowly toward the back of the truck (since I was working against a bit of a slope). This took some time, moving forward a few inches at a time, and screwing a board to the floor of the truck to keep everything from sliding back again. Anyway, it all worked out. Here it is safely on the loading dock:
Once in the shop, I borrowed a friend’s chain hoist & popped the head back on:
Moved everything in place with the pallet jack, and all was done!
Posted: July 12th, 2011 | Author:Marshall Wilson | Filed under:Blog | Tags:security | Comments Off on Deciphering Stuxnet
Most viruses try to do stuff like steal passwords, credit card numbers, or secret information. Very few try to actually affect our physical world. The Stuxnet virus, on the other hand, was developed for one purpose: to surreptitiously and gradually destroy centrifuges at a specific nuclear facility in Iran. It was deployed via usb sticks, expoited four zero-day weaknesses in Windows, and executed subtle but damaging changes in centrifuge speeds in very specific machines. There’s a great article over at Wired about how computer security analysts (in particular Liam O Murchu at Symantec) analyzed & eventually determined the purpose of this unique malware.
Posted: July 12th, 2011 | Author:Marshall Wilson | Filed under:Blog | Tags:favorites, nyc | Comments Off on Canal Rubber Mug
Canal Rubber is one of those indispensable supply stores here in nyc, one of the last remaining useful resources in lower Manhattan. I was just picking up some rubber sheeting today (a quick – but hot – bike ride away) and spotted this beauty behind the counter. They’ve faithfully reproduced the storefront sign on a coffee mug! They just got their first batch of them made and I think its gorgeous.
Posted: June 27th, 2011 | Author:Marshall Wilson | Filed under:Blog | Tags:Hacking, security | Comments Off on Don’t accept Mice from Strangers…
I think we’ve all been reading about the increasing onslaught of hacker penetration that has been going on lately. In a new angle on possible techniques, This piece in the Register describes how computer penetration testing firm Netragard successfully gained access into one of their clients’ PCs. They were forced into a unique solution by their client’s demand that they try to gain access without using the more common network-related intrusion methods (social media, telephony, etc). They also couldn’t break in & use the computers either, so an unobtrusive hardware solution was arrived at. In the photo above you’ll see their method in the underside of a common Logitech mouse. Inside is a Teensy USB development board (such as I have posted about before) along with a USB flash drive. Since the Teensy can be seen by your PC as a keyboard device they were able to program the device to execute keyboard commands that installed nasty intrusion software into the PC hard drive which within a few days remotely connected to Netragard’s servers through the internet.
To get the hardware into the company, they packaged the mouse with fake promotional documents and sent it to an employee, who of course tried it out.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security ran a test this year to see how hard it was for hackers to corrupt workers and gain access to computer systems. Not very, it turned out.
Staff secretly dropped computer discs and USB thumb drives in the parking lots of government buildings and private contractors. Of those who picked them up, 60 percent plugged the devices into office computers, curious to see what they contained. If the drive or CD case had an official logo, 90 percent were installed.
Adafruit industries is quickly becoming one of my favorite resources for electronics and in particular for electronics related knowledge.
They also make stuff. Like these nifty LED cufflinks – iCufflinks – that they’ve just released. The LED inside pulses just like your mac’s sleep indicator, which they say is “reverse engineered.” I admire anybody who admits to reverse engineering Apple tech without worrying about Steve Jobs’ long arm of the lawyer…
Anyway they’re the first tasteful example of wearable electronics. Period.
I’ve been away from the blog for a bit – been doing some nifty stuff which I’ll relate when I can. In the meantime this is one thing I did over the weekend:
Sometimes I even make things for my own home. I’ve been slowly renovating our new apartment in Brooklyn, including making all the kitchen cabinetry. In a small kitchen its a challenge to design for best space use, and the question “what to do with all those friggin corner cabinets?” always comes up. After long debate I put a lazy susan in one and a slide-out trashcan in the other. See how fancy that drawer is? Yes there will be a front finish panel over it (maybe white – or a shade of red…)
For some reason we got a trash can that has an infrared lid opener. This was partly because it fit PERFECTLY and partly because a friend has one and after thinking it a bit silly we decided it was kind of nifty. So we ordered one from Amazon – a Nine Stars DZT-42-1. (as an aside I would like to mention how expensive simple trash cans can be if you need very particular dimensions to fit in cabinets – so I didn’t feel bad with the price of this one)
Trash can worked right out of the box fine & dandy – wave your hand in front and the lid opens smartly (inside is an IR distance sensor with circuitry). Only problem was (and I have to say I anticipated this) that when it is put in the drawer and slid closed, the electronics senses the cabinet closing around it and tries to open the lid. Well, nothing is easy so out comes my Arduino and assorted electronics gear to try to fix this. Its really a simple problem so I was able to come up with several working ideas which are not worth going into but my basic premise is as it always is when I do a project:
Find the simplest solution that will look awesome.
So first of all, it has to be all contained in the lid of the trash can. No wires coming out, nothing to get caught or broken when changing trash bags. Also – it has to work from the 6V battery pack in the trash unit. And of course power consumption should be kept to a minimum and it should look seamless.
The more I thought about it the more I was over-designing with the Arduino. Why use 600,000 – 1 MILLION transistors to do the job that ONE transistor can do? So I threw it away (not really!) and turned to a good old analog circuit. The most basic thing straight out of a Forrest Mims electronics workbook from my childhood: a simple light sensitive switch with a few resistors, a diode, a photoresistor and an NPN Transistor. Pull out the drawer, light hits the can and turns on the hand sensor with a relay. Bada bing:
See the photoresistor to the left of the interface. There is also a hole in the side to adjust a trim pot for light/dark sensitivity.
I’d be very happy if I was doing this for a client, simple solution and seamless integration.
