After modding my headphones, I realized that the touch capacitance was not as sensitive as I required it to be. Because of the tight timing requirements to detect if a touch is present, small changes in the environment can result in large changes in the detected delay. It was hard to debug because Padauk does not have any debugging hardware on the IC itself, relying instead on emulation for programming and debugging. However, emulation means that it is unable to replicate the timing and chip performance perfectly, which adds another layer of delay and uncertainty when programming the threshold for detecting touch. ...

I have come a full circle back to IoT products and security testing. Since my original skills were in IoT engineering, I wondered what kind of security bugs could be found in devices. Security testing for IoT devices differs from normal web or cloud security testing because there is a big emphasis binary blobs. Even getting your hands on the firmware is also not guaranteed. More often than not, devices receive their last update before they exit the factory. ...

Having some experience last year, the going was easier this year as I knew that I was looking for and how the flag might be encrypted. The following are my solutions for the hardware category of the competition. Timed Transmission Downloading and running Logic Two from Saelae reveals the flag if the signal capture is rearranged from bottom to the top and you zoom out. It is certainly not a usual method of analysis but an interesting CTF variation nevertheless. One hint is that the signal is not varying in frequency and analysis with the serial decoder results in gibberish, so it is unlikely that any messages can be stored in the signal itself. ...

I own a second-hand OnePlus One and it is one of my favorite devices for Android development: ample RAM, a beautiful screen, light, and easy to grip. I use it as a testbed for Android and recently I had to flash Magisk on it. The phone worked well until it was time to run fastboot flash boot magisk... It reported <waiting for any device> and I realised that it wasn’t being detected correctly when in fastboot mode because fastboot device would not return any connected devices. adb worked, so it wasn’t an issue with my hardware. The solution is to point Windows 10/11 to the right driver and not: ...

How I upgraded my headphones to be fully wireless with a $2 board How it began While browsing AliExpress, I came across this rather impressive little board: A BLE audio board is not crazy by itself; there are a ton of Bluetooth speakers out there. The impressive thing about it is that it is $2. Wireless is hard. Audio is hard. Therefore wireless audio shouldn’t be cheap and sit on a tiny 30mm x 30mm board, but here we are. ...

The hardware challenge for the Cyber Apocalypse was pretty creative! I enjoyed solving the challenges and it had a wide variety of hardware related skills that tested my understanding of what I was seeing in front of me. There were four challenges in total for the hardware category and it was fun to solve them all eventually! Space Pulses In the description, there is this phrase: …our instruments are sensitive enough ...

My impressions of the Framework Laptop are shaped by my two most recently owned latops, the X1 Carbon and the Macbook Air M1. My refurbished X1 Carbon, while light and perfect for Windows tasks and general work, was starting to show its limitations when I started running multiple VMs on it. How to get a good computer for cheapHow to get a high-quality Windows development machine on the cheap. Or how I tricked out my Thinkpad from Ebay.West Side Electronics·Benjamen Lim For the Macbook Air M1 it checked all the boxes, except virtualisation was a PITA. My VMs crashed on me more than once, and the M1 got really hot when I was using the VMs. Since virtualisation is a big part of my day-to-day work, that ruled out the M1 for me. It also wasn’t compatible with a number of older software that I wanted to use. ...

On August 2022, I received an email from Offensive Security certifying that I had earned my Offensive Security Certified Professional certificate. [PEN-200] introduces penetration testing tools and techniques via hands-on experience. PEN-200 trains not only the skills, but also the mindset required to be a successful penetration tester. Students who complete the course and pass the exam earn the coveted Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP) certification. This was one of the most meaningful certificates I have earned to date, and I’m really proud to have earned it. I learned a lot throughout this journey, and I tried to consolidate my thoughts below in hopes it will be useful to others. I think I also offer the unique perspective of going through the course twice over a number of years. ...

I’ve posted about Scaleway multiple times raising their prices and big surprise they have done it again. Don’t be fooled by the drop in price of PAR3 as it provides the most expensive instances and is subject to special pricing. And Scaleway may remove the 50% discount in half a year. Bus App, ReduxWhat came from the cloud, goes back to the cloud. Migrating the bus app from the server back to the cloud!West Side Electronics·Benjamen Lim Multiple price increases (3!) over a period of a two years is unusual because it makes it hard to judge and prepare expenses. Companies don’t do this lightly because it sends the message that the price can be increased whenever they want, which creates nervous customers who may look for more stable pricing elsewhere. For things like infrastructure, that makes it even more pressing as migration is expensive and difficult. ...

The most salvagable part of A DC motor typically just spins when you apply voltage to it. But when you carefully control that voltage, and have access to an encoder attached to the motor, you can add some intelligence to the motor and do some very interesting things with it: like making it go to a precise position. Obstruction to show position control and not just a timer-based control And combining that with one of the cheapest microcontrollers in the world makes it a little more fun, because now you can add a digital interface to the motor that allows any other modern microcontroller to easily command the motor for the cost of a single piece of tissue paper. ...