Archive for August 2017

Solderless breadboards

Solderless breadboards are one of the most fundamental pieces when learning how to build circuits and prototyping simple circuits. A breadboard is a construction base for prototyping of electronics. Breadboard are the ideal way to check out small bits of circuitry that you’re not sure about. Originally it was literally a bread board, a polished

Secret chips in replacement parts can completely hijack your phone’s security | Ars Technica

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/08/a-repair-shop-could-completely-hack-your-phone-and-you-wouldnt-know-it/ Booby-trapped touchscreens can log passwords, install malicious apps, and more. People with cracked touch screens or similar smartphone maladies have a new headache to consider: the possibility the replacement parts installed by repair shops contain secret hardware that completely hijacks the security of the device. The research, in a paper presented this week at the 2017 Usenix

Web-Based Universal Remote for Under $4 (Probably) – Hackster.io

https://www.hackster.io/user70641842/web-based-universal-remote-for-under-4-probably-e9e929?ref=explore&ref_id=trending___&offset=4 Don’t buy a universal remote, make one. It’s cheaper, funner, universal-er, kind of, and you get to learn the ESP8266, kind of. You will need the Arduino IDE with whatever OS. Alternatively Linux and some C skills for the official Espressif stuff, but that’s unnecessarily challenging for this application. To get IR control codes

Morgan Stanley Predicts Market For Grid Storage Will Explode In Next 3 Years | CleanTechnica

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/08/16/morgan-stanley-predicts-market-grid-storage-will-explode-next-3-years/ A new report authored by Stephen Byrd, a utility and cleantech analyst at Morgan Stanley, and Adam Jonas, its auto analyst, shows that they are bullish on the market for grid storage products. “Demand for energy storage from the utility sector will grow more than the market anticipates by 2019–2020,” the pair says. They predict

Visual Development with XOD

https://hackaday.com/2017/08/13/visual-development-with-xod/ This looks interesting:  If you program microcontrollers like the Arduino, you should check out XOD and see how you like visually creating software. The software is open source and currently, can target the Arduino or Raspberry Pi. Some alternative visual programming tools: – LabVIEW RT or Matlab Simulink – both very powerful, very stable, closed source

GNOME at 20

https://opensource.com/article/17/8/gnome-20-anniversary?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY The GNOME desktop for Linux turned 20 today on August 15. The 20th anniversary is definitely something to celebrate!  In the 20 years its initial release, GNOME has continued to innovate and improve.

Sapcorda Plans Centimeter-scale GPS for Europe – IEEE Spectrum

http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/aerospace/satellites/fourway-japaneurope-joint-venture-aims-to-establish-industry-open-standard-for-precision-global-navigation-satellite-system-services Germany’s Bosch and Geo++, u-blox of Switzerland, and Japan’s Mitsubishi Electric announced the establishment of Sapcorda Services, a joint-venture that plans to provide global navigation satellite system (GNSS) positioning services of centimeter-level accuracy via satellite transmission, mobile cellular technology, and the Internet. The U.S.-operated Global Positioning System (GPS) is only accurate to about 10 meters, while Europe’s corresponding Galileo system