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January 22 2012

Video: Bill Ward’s Simple Serial Display

At a recent meeting I had a chance to sit down and check out Bill’s “Simple serial display” which, true to it’s name, is simple, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting one badly! Watch the vid to see it in action, and check out Bill’s earlier post for more info!

Music: Eric Skiff, Resistor Anthems – HHavoc Intro

Tags: NYCResistor

Laser cut letterpress

On the press
Did you know that you can cut letter press relief or intaglio plates on the NYCR laser cutter? The laser cut acrylic holds a decent edge and is far less expensive than copper plate. Here is a short guide to how to do make engraved invitations using the intaglio process:


Laser cutting the plate
First the plates need to be cut. Using inkscape with a thin font like Zapfino, layout the text and vector art. Briar Press is a great source for EPS that can be converted to PDF to import into inkscape. For intaglio process the etched or cut pieces will be black; relief process is the opposite and will be another post.

For best results the text should be solid black and raster cut at 80% power, 20% speed, while the artwork with fine lines should be vector cut at 5% power, 10% speed. The cuts do not need to be very deep (unless you want to emboss without any ink), so the low speed is to ensure that the laser cutter’s steppers make smooth lines.

The first rule of making printing plates is to be sure to flip the entire page. Otherwise your prints will be backwards!

The second rule of making plates is to include registration marks on the outside border. The paper will be larger than the final size since it is very difficult to align while placing it on the plate. These registration marks can be used once the paper is dry to ensure that all the pieces have consistent centering.

The third rule of is that the piece of acrylic plate should be much larger than the resulting paper. It is easier to handle if it has extra space and produces better results if the paper is able to lay flat without being bent across the edge.


Ink
Scrub the plate after it is cut to remove any acrylic residue and dry it well. Then apply a small dollop of etching ink, such as Speedball Printmaster, to the plate. You don’t need very much, but there isn’t any harm in over applying. With practice you can figure out how much is necessary so that you don’t waste ink.


Spreading the ink
Using tarlatan cloth (or rough paper towels), wipe the ink into the etchings with circular motion until the entire plate is covered. A soft spatula can be used to help spread the ink, but metal ones can scratch the acrylic and leave unsightly marks on the resulting prints.


Wiping the plate clean
Using a clean piece of tarlatan, wipe the plate clean with the same sort of circular motion. Occasionally refold the cloth to get a clean corner and keep wiping until it is spotless. The ink in the grooves won’t be picked up by the cloth, so keep scrubbing.


Press pressure settings
Adjust the pressure setting on the press. This will require adjustments based on the thickness of the plate, the paper and the amount of padding. Be sure that both sides of the press have the same value! Expect to adjust many times during the setup until the best value is found.


Paper
Put the plate on the press with the ink side up and a slightly damp piece of paper cut slightly oversized over the etched area. To dampen the paper I’ve found that placing it between two damp paper towels for a few minutes while I ink the plate has the best results. Expect to make a few dozen test prints before figuring out the right level of dampness. To prevent the damp paper from sticking to the sacrificial newsprint, I like to use a layer of aluminum foil above the paper.


Turn the press
Smoothly cover the plate and paper with the newsprint and felt, then crank the press’ wheel. Intaglio needs lots of pressure, so it will be difficult to push the plate through the roller. If the gear train skips, adjust the pressure a few mm and try again.

Only run the plate through once. If it is backed through the roller a second time there is a chance that the paper will skip and a second impression will be made.


Final print
Carefully lift the felt and newsprint to reveal the printed paper. If all goes well, it will have transfered everything to the paper with no missed spots or water bleed.


Too dry, just right, too damp
But, for your first few plates it probably won’t be perfect. The one on the left was too dry and the paper was not pushed far enough into the etched grooves to pickup the ink. The one on the right was too wet and caused the water soluble ink to bleed. The one in the middle was just right.

If you realize that you’ve made a mistake in the artwork or text, rinse of all the ink, turn the plate over and use the laser to etch the other side. 3mm acrylic is strong enough that the etchings on the reverse side will not be transfered through, so you can reuse the piece.


Lasercut intaglio press
Some inks aren’t right for etching. This Caligo Carbon Black formed “threads” when the paper was removed from the plate — the engraved ink should be smooth and shiny as it dries. Some inks don’t contain drying agents, so they will still rub off several weeks later. Also, for ease of clean up, you should only use water soluble inks.


Happy new year!
Stay tuned for another blog post on relief printing, coming sometime soon.

January 20 2012

New in NYCR vending: Teensy 2.0

New in NYCR
New in the NYCR vending machines are Teensy 2.0 boards. They have ATMega32U4 chips, which have the built in USB drivers and, via LUFA, can appear as any USB device, not just a serial communications device. Want to make a MIDI device show up as a USB keyboard? Or a core memory as a mass storage device? You can do that! The USB doesn’t consume a UART, so there is still a serial port available for interfacing with GPS or other external RS232 devices.

PJRC makes the Teensyduino plugin for the Arduino IDE and a set of compatible libraries so that you can use it with your Arduino sketches. Or you can drop into straight C and take full advantage of all of the AVR pins.

Update: They are very popular! Three were bought during Craftnight tonight.

January 16 2012

IBM 129 Card Data Recorder

IBM 129 Card Data Recorder
This weekend PMF and I cleaned an IBM 129 Card Data Recorder and were able to fairly reliably punch cards once we were done. When we started it would frequently jam during feeding, mis-feed during the punch, and not cleanly stack the cards in the output bin.
Card Release
Most of the problem was thirty years of dust, card fiber and grime built up in the mechanisms. The output hopper was full of it and needed a good cleaning to reliably pick up cards into the output stack:
Output handler gunkOutput handler clean

The card punch and keyboard only appear to be seated on the table. They are just the tip of the iceberg — much of the power and computerized bits fill the space underneath the desk. The bottom of the keyboard is in a cut-out in the desk surface and has a traditional typewriter mechanism that closes reed switches when each key is pressed, except for the special keys like “FEED”, “REL” and “REG” that directly actuate lever switches.
Underside of keyboard

Luckily the “monolithic memory” was still fully functional. Debugging the logic part of the system would be an immense task — it is implemented with a wire-wrapped backplane and fills the bottom portion of the desk. Hidden behind it was a bookshelf with full schematics and a “Maintenance Theory” manual that described the interaction of the various components.
Rear of cardpunch

The individual boards in the backplane appear to be hand soldered and mostly consist of the what appears to be the same component, likely Solid Logic Technology blocks:
IBM 129 Logic board closeup

Once it was cleaned up, PMF tried puching some cards with great success:
Side view

We were able to verify that the registration of the cards and the punch were fairly accurate with this card guage:
IBM Gauge card
IBM  Gauge card (rear)

The ink tape of the print head that marks a human readable version of the EBCIDC was totally dry. Perhaps we can adapt a typewriter ribbon to work:
Print head gunk

Also hidden in the bottom of the card punch was an incident report log, with the last entry from 1980. For a device manufactured starting in 1973 that is a very long life. The logbook is sitting on an IBM card sorter, which will be cleaned up later.
Incident Report log book

We ended up not using the IBM-6 Oil Spray:
IBM-6 Oil Spray Part No 451110

Here’s a 1971 advertisement for the IBM 129 that notes its new features, including the monolithic memory, the ability to tabulate columns of the cards, and the automated card feeding, punching and stacking mechanisms:
IBM129 Keypunch ad

And here are more photos and video of the card punch. Once we have the manuals scanned and cleaned up, I’ll post links, too.

Tags: NYCResistor

January 13 2012

Do something before the PIPA vote on Jan. 24th

As the saying goes:

Dear Congress, It’s No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works

Jan. 24th will be a big vote for the Internet. PIPA, SOPA’s twin will be voted on in the Senate. Here’s what we’re doing to let our Senators know they should reject PIPA on Jan. 24th. We are asking our 2 NY State Senators to have town hall meetings or an in-district meeting with us (you can request them but sometimes the request stuff like faxes). We don’t have a date for a meeting in NYC yet, because the Senators are on recess and it’s difficult to effectively schedule a date with an answering machine. New Yorkers, stay tuned, we’ll announce the date to meet with our Senators. If you’re not in New York – we urge you to contact your Senators for a town hall meeting or in-district meeting in your area before the Jan. 24th vote. Those of us who call the Internet home need to educate Congress on the dangerous nature of this Act, because srsly, do they get how DNS works? Or what xkcd is? We don’t think so.

The following is a citizen packet prepared by Public Knowledge: 

Tell Congress to Reject Internet Censorship Tools in PIPA

On January 24th the United States Senate will be voting on S. 968 the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). Your two Senators will have the opportunity to decide whether America will adopt the tools of censorship used to block websites in China or reject them by voting no and standing with Senators Wyden, Moran, Paul, and Cantwell. Ask your two Senators to stand against adopting the tools of censorship in any bill that comes up for a vote.

What you should know about PIPA:

  • 83 of Internet’s original creators including Vint Cerf, co-designer of TCP/IP, and Robert W. Taylor, founder of ARPAnet, oppose SOPA and PIPA.
  • The government has a poor track record of protecting free speech on the Internet. For example, lawful hip-hop music blog Dajaz1.com was held by the government for anentire year on the accusation of copyright infringement.
  • Think tanks, government agencies, and industry associations across the political and social spectrum have said that SOPA and PIPA would undermine freedom of expression
  • Top cyber security experts have said that SOPA and PIPA would undermine a 15 year government initiative (DNSSEC) to update Internet security.
  • Human rights groups have told Congress that PIPA would help censorship regimes like China and Iran by sacrificing America’s fight for Internet freedom worldwide.
  • Congress has yet to allow experts on free speech, network engineering, Internet security, or human rights testify at a hearing on PIPA.
  • The content industry has spent $94 million in lobbying Congress to pass their bills in 2011, arguing that if China can censor the Internet the U.S. can also do it.
  • Lobbyists have misled Congress by saying the United States already uses censorship tools for malware and child pornography.

Sample Town Hall Questions:

  •  Will you stand with Senators Wyden, Moran, Paul and Cantwell and oppose Internet censorship on January 24th?
  •  Do you understand what the Domain Name Server (DNS) system is and have you consulted with cybersecurity experts on the effects of the Protect IP Act?
  •  Would you still vote for Protect IP if it restricts freedom of speech?
  • Have you taken money from the movie and music industry?

 

Who Opposes SOPA/PIPA’s DNS Filtering Provisions (full list)?

Non-profit organizations and education institutions, including Public Knowledge, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and library groups like The American Association of Law Libraries, American College of Research libraries, the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Special Libraries Association. Other non-profit organizations opposed to the bill include the Future of Music Coalition, the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice, the Internet Society and the Public Interest Registry.

A group of 41 “press freedom and human rights advocates,” including the Center for Media Justice, Free Press, and organizations from the European Union, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, England, Finland, France, Germany, India, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Sweden. Additionally, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, and Internews all oppose SOPA/PIPA’s filtering provisions.

83 Internet professionals, cybersecurity experts, and Internet engineers including Vint Cerf, the creator of TCP/IP, Paul Vixie, the author of BIND, Esther Dyson, the founding Chairman of ICANN, and Robert Taylor, an early ARPAnet innovator.

Founders of some of the most successful Internet companies: Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, Michell Baker, co-founder of Firefox, Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square, Caterina Flake, co-founder of Flickr and Hunch, David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo!, Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post, Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube, Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and co-founder of Alexa Internet, Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist, Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, Biz Stone, co- founder of Obvious and Twitter, Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, Evan Williams, co-founder of Blogger and Twitter, and Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!.

Think tanks such as the Brookings Institute and CATO Institute as well as consumer groups such as the Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, and U.S. PIRG: The Federation of State PIRGs, and the Entertainment Consumers Association.

The Sandia National Labs under the Department of Energy and OpenDNS, “the largest DNS and Internet security service in the world.”

130 “entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs, and executives who have been involved in 283 technology start-ups,” including Chas Edwards of Digg, Chad Dickerson of Etsy, and Dennis Crowley of Foursquare.

55 venture capitalists from firms such as Union Square Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, and SV Angel.

 

Thanks Public Knowledge!!

January 10 2012

Help bring a supercomputer back to life!

As part of my on-going quest to fill my apartment (and hackerspace) up with semi-working 1970′s supercomputers, my effort to revive the Cray-1 supercomputer needs your help! Through the grapevine, I managed to get my hands on a genuine backup disk pack of the once-thought-extinct Cray Operating System (COS). Using my homebrewed disk reader I was able to make a copy of the disk, and the folks over at the internet archive (thanks Jason!) were kind enough to host it for me. Now is where you, kind reader, come in! Help me reverse-engineer the file system so I can recover the actual operating system files and take a step closer to towards booting this awesomely-useless machine!

Download it and get hacking!

 

December 31 2011

Simple Serial Display – Dressed-up

 

Front of LCD display

The Simple Serial Display is a trivial accessory for your PC, Mac, or microcontroller to act as an always-on information display for whatever data you can serialize and push out of a traditional tty port.  Since I’m out of grad school on winter break, I decided to clean it up a bit and make it look nice.

This project came out of some hacking that Hilary Mason and I were doing back in ’09 for fun.  At Barcamp 2009, we presented it as a trivial project for anyone to build without complex electronics and with friendly Python and PySerial – a project within reach of any dev or sysadmin that might stare at progress bars.  One compelling use is to monitor long-running tasks, such as your mega MapReduce job.  The display includes an LED “flag” to alert you to whatever you care to be alerted about, such as the end of a job or an interruption, and the LCD panel can print simple progress bars or animated slash marks to track job completion.

The original design remains the same (specifications can be found in the Slideshare-hosted presentation below) leveraging a common FTDI brand serial cable (or similar,) and Sparkfun’s two line text LCD with their “Serial Backpack” adapter.

I dug around in the Resistor scrap bin and found a nice 6mm thick piece of clear acrylic, and used Zignig’s Box-o-Tron parametric box generator found on Thingiverse (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:404) to construct the enclosure. After some tweaks and prototyping with foamcore board, I came away with a delightfully tight design.  Considering this is my first project on the Epilog, I’m happy it didn’t require a lot of trial and error.

As with all casual projects, there’s a lot of room for improvement, but I’m pleased with the output of today’s effort.

December 15 2011

BIG SCARY ROBOT TIME

Some friends at a local university reached out to us recently and offered to let us rescue a robot from a junkyard fate. Not being in the business of turning down free robots, we quickly agreed. Three of us showed up on Monday in a Ford Escape. We left in a U-Haul.

This beast of a machine weighs in at 550lbs. It’s a Gilson Cyberlab C400 Automated Plate Preparation Workstation. We’re not exactly sure what that is, but we do know that it has a huge robotic gantry meant to move at high speed with accurate positioning. And it has neuroprobes. What are we going to do with it? Maybe it will be the next BarBot. Or a 3D Printer. Or maybe some sort of exercise machine. We’re not sure yet. Check the vids.

December 14 2011

Give the GIFT OF LEARNING with one of our great classes!

Looking for a unique gift for a friend or loved one? Why not consider giving them the gift of learning at one of NYCR’s great classes.

We have some really great classes in the upcoming weeks, click descriptions for more info:

December 18 – FIRE THE LAZZZOR ORNAMENTS* -
Last chance to make an ornament or small gift for a relative:
January 14 – FIRE THE LAZZZOR -
Our standard handy rapid-prototyping LASER CLASS
January 15 – NYCR Arduino/Soldering 101 -
Make your own Arduino and Learn to Program it!
January 22 – Soft Circuits -
Learn to make soft, flexible and washable electronic circuits embedded right into common textiles! We’ll cover conductive thread,…
January 28 – Intro to Adobe Illustrator -
Are you curious about how to make vector graphics?…

*Also, as an FYI– the material covered in the Dec 18th LAZZZOR CLASS will be the same overview as in our standard FIRE THE LAZZZOR classes, and your attendance will qualify you for future laser use at our laser nights.

Tags: NYCResistor

November 30 2011

Now through Christmas: Laser Wednesdays!

This time of year our laser gets pretty busy, so we’ve opened up an additional laser night on Wednesdays. Tonight through December 21st, come by on Monday or Wednesday from 7:30-10:30 to fire the laser!

 

And another thing…

Because it’s such a popular time of year for lasing, we ask that you prepare your cut files so they can be broken up into smaller batches. That way instead of one person monopolizing the machine for hours, we can rotate through. So if you have an army of 100 Christmas ornaments to make, prepare your file so they can be cut in 2 sessions of 50 or 3 sessions of 33.3333.

 

Tags: Events lasers

NYC Resistor on Make: Live’s Hackerspace roadshow II

Alicia, Catarina and Shelby's project
Mimi's RFID wallets
Tonight at 21:00 eastern (02:00 UTC) Make:Live’s Hackerspace roadshow II visits NYC Resistor and other hackerspaces. From NYC Resistor you’ll see Alicia, Catarina and Shelby’s electronic art book, Mimi’s RFID blocking wallets, Charles’ TV-B-Gone gun and other cool projects by NYCR members.

Charles' project
Bill's bug
Guy's PSK31 map
Max's plotter

November 26 2011

Hack Friday: Hexascroller’s LED lighting upgrade

Hexascrolled + LEDs
Adam and I upgraded Hexascroller to control 5 m of Adafruit RGB LED strip through a spare serial port connected to a Teensy 2.0 that drives the strip via SPI. Now when a new message is displayed, the accent lights switch to a bright flashing mode to attract attention, then they will return to soothing, slow color changing mode.

Click the “Read more” to see additional photos of the installation and setup.
RGB LED strip accent lighting
Teensy driving RGB LED strip
Hack Friday
ribbon of color

November 23 2011

Abort! Abort! No Craft Night!

There will be no craft night this Thursday, November 24th, on account of some ridiculous human “h0l1d4y”. Do not show up at NYCR that night, as all our Greeter Drones and HappiBots will be offline.

Tags: NYCResistor

November 22 2011

Reviving a Toyota Knitting Machine

We’ve had a few knitting machines rattling around the space over the years, but when fellow gadget lover Josh dropped off the lace carriage for our Toyota K747 knitting machine, I figured it was time to take it past basic stockinette stitch and explore the machine’s punch card mechanism.

Like most decades-old machines, a layer of dried oily gunk coated many of the moving parts. There are also a few broken/missing pieces. I’m in the process of cleaning / fixing the machine, and trying my best to document it as I go along. I got a hold of the K747 Service Manual, and started diving in. It’s oiled up now, and the next steps are to repair the broken needle selector and write up a program to generate punch cards for the laser.

Busted

 The picture above shows the offending broken lever. These 12 little blue levers tell the machine which needles to push out for the patterning, but lever #3 is broken so it never engages. Getting in to replace it is a bit daunting, in fact just getting to that lever in the first place was a bit of an event, I’m going to attempt to fix it with Sugru first. If that doesn’t work, then I’ll be makerbotting a replacement and praying I can get it all back together after dismantling it.

Since the machine is loud and takes up space I generally only work on it during the day when there’s more room, but if there’s sufficient interest I’d be happy to demo it at an upcoming craft night.

You can see more shots of the inside of the machine over on my blog: Knitting Machine Teardown Part 1 and Part 2.

November 20 2011

Upcoming classes at our Sister Space, New Work City

New Work City is a fantastic co-working at Broadway and Canal in manhattan. If you’ve never checked out a co-working space, it’s a lot like NYC Resistor, except instead of gathering in the evenings to hack on projects, it’s a place for freelancers, entrepreneurs, and anyone else who works for themselves to get stuff done.

It’s also a great source of community and connections, and as New Work City starts ramping up their own classes, we’re doing a bit of cross promotion. We think many of the classes will be interesting to the NYCR community!

Upcoming Classes at New Work City:

Check out their full class roster for dates, and sign up for their newsletter to get updates!

Tags: NYCResistor

November 18 2011

Humans can’t survive in a vacuum!

Earlier this week I went to MICA in Baltimore (and last month to CDI in Winston-Salem) to meet with a diverse group of very forward thinking individuals on the topics of art, science, education, innovation and all the ancillary things that get wrapped around that, in other words: the whole universe.

Folks from the NSF, NEA, several academic institutions, hackerspaces, and industry came together to start a discussion about advocating for an educational system that reminds us art and science do not need to be taught separately; and that formal and informal educational spaces have benefits of working together and sharing their research, be it citizen scientists and tenured professors, k5 to grey, cats and dogs, and other predetermined groups that result in mass hysteria. Creativity happens everywhere, in every subject matter, as does science – this is something we’ve witnessed at NYCResistor from the amazing projects people bring in every Thursday night at craft night. Our tagline at NYCR is we learn, share, and make things – not unlike the goals and missions of academic institutions.

The group has been given legs from a joint effort from the NSF and NEA and has yet to choose a name and website to point to, but is called NSEAD (Network to support Science, Engineering, Arts and Design) under the grant proposals. I am hopeful in the initiatives we will all be able to accomplish together. Members of this group previously have founded the STEM to STEAM initiative, including Art in the STEM curriculum and held a congressional hearing along these efforts. The discussion is just starting, and is being seeded with thoughts of innovation without walls, economic development, open research, art/science mashup exhibits, and even elephants. I’m honored and excited that the DIY community and hackerspaces have a place at this table.

Stay tuned, tell me your thoughts, and hack on – whatever your day job is.

-pip

Tags: NYCResistor

November 13 2011

ATTiny10 programming

ATTiny10 programming
Using Darrel Tan’s Programming the ATTiny10 instructions and a SOT-23 breakout board by Raphael, I was able to flash one of these very small MCU chips. Given the small package, these programmable devices can be dropped just about anywhere on a circuit that a transistor would be used.

Unlike Tan, my FTDI breakout cable does not have DTR, so the reset pin on the chip needs to be pulled low manually to put it into programming mode, and the pinout adjusted. Full instructions after the break…

TXD (Orange) --///--+
                      |   +----------------------+
CTS (Brown)  ---------+---| TPI DATA (1)   RESET | ------+
GND (Black)  -------------| GND              VCC | ---+  |
RTS (Green)  -------------| TPI CLK           NC |    |  |
                          +----------------------+    |  |
                                                      |  |
VCC (Red)    -----------------------------------------+  |
                                                        |
GND (Black)  ---------   -------------------------------+

In /usr/local/etc/avrdude.conf add:

programmer
  id    = "dasaftdi";
  desc  = "tiny10 no reset, sck=!rts mosi=!txd miso=!cts";
  type  = serbb;
  reset = ~4;
  sck   = ~7;
  mosi  = ~3;
  miso  = ~8;
;

Test program to generate a square wave output on pin D2. My version of avr-gcc doesn’t support the ATTiny10, so I’ve hardcoded the register assignments and pass in the wrong device name to the compiler.

#define DDRB2 2
#define DDRB 0x01
#define PORTB 0x02

.global main
main:
        ldi r16, (1 << DDRB2)
        out DDRB, r16

loop:
        ldi r16, (0 << 2)
        out PORTB, r16
        nop
        ldi r16, (1 << 2)
        out PORTB, r16
        rjmp loop

Compile and generate an Intel hex file:

avr-gcc -mmcu=attiny11 test.S -o test.elf
avr-objcopy -O ihex test.elf test.hex

Manually pull the reset line to ground and flash with this command (substitute the correct path to your FTDI device:

avrdude 
  -p attiny10 
  -c dasaftdi 
  -P /dev/tty.usbserial-FTE531WL 
  -U flash:w:test.hex

If all goes well, release the reset line and put a scope on pin 4. You should see something like this:
Square wave from an ATTiny10

November 05 2011

First Saturdays party is TONIGHT!

NYCR Ham party

C’mon out this Saturdaytonight at 8pm for our monthly first Saturday party. It’s our excuse to get the place cleaned up and in party shape. It’s a BYOB chill and chat extravaganza!

Update: I hear barbot may be making an appearance.

Update 2: Witness the firepower of the fully armed and operational BarBot (and other photos from the party):
Barbot returns

November 04 2011

Hex-curious?

Have you ever wondered how to make sense of hexdumps?

e1a02000e5d00000 e3500000012fff1e
e3a00000e2800001 e7d23000e3530000
1afffffbe12fff1e

Or been curious to know what exactly does a bxeq lr instruction mean in assembly?
<br />
   0:   e1a02000        mov     r2, r0<br />
   4:   e5d00000        ldrb    r0, [r0]<br />
   8:   e3500000        cmp     r0, #0<br />
   c:   012fff1e        bxeq    lr<br />
  10:   e3a00000        mov     r0, #0<br />
  14:   e2800001        add     r0, r0, #1<br />
  18:   e7d23000        ldrb    r3, [r2, r0]<br />
  1c:   e3530000        cmp     r3, #0<br />
  20:   1afffffb        bne     0x14<br />
  24:   e12fff1e        bx      lr<br />

If so, then you should sign up for the introduction to assembly programming and reverse engineering class. You can learn assembly programming and machine architecture using reverse engineering techniques on your own code. In this class we will write code, compile it into an executable and then disassemble it to learn about registers, stacks, branches, function calls and argument passing, structs and other common idioms.

Experience with any programming language is required; the examples in the class with be in C, with dissassembly into ARM assembly. Bring your own laptop with arm-elf-gcc and associated binutils installed to follow along.

November 02 2011

Shelby Arnold’s Dr. Who Pumpkin Hack

Shelby shows us how she made her beautiful Dr. Who pumpkin carving, and then gave it light and sound!

Tags: NYCResistor
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