Hacks..

By Hunter Davis

Hacks is a collection of my most popular tutorials, scripts, tweaks, Zipit Z2 work, and source code. Within these forty some chapters reside some of my most interesting work, and certainly some of the most viewed tutorials and hacks on the Internet today. Featured on Hackaday, Engadget, Make online, and hundreds of other blogs and forums, these hacks are meant to enlighten and entertain while providing the reader with concrete examples and launching platforms for future work. Whether you are wanting to reorganize your desktop, reboot your modem, port software to a new platform, administer a Linux box, or just entertain yourself on a lazy sunday, you’ll find something of interest in the chapters ahead. At just over 200 pages on most eReader devices it’s a terrific bargain and an excellent reference guide

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hunter Davis
• Release date: Jul 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465826039

Book preview

Intro to Hacks

Hacks is a collection of my most popular tutorials, scripts, tweaks, Zipit Z2 work, and source code. Within these forty some chapters reside some of my most interesting work, and certainly some of the most viewed tutorials and hacks on the Internet today. Featured on Hackaday, Engadget, Make online, and hundreds of other blogs and forums, these hacks are meant to enlighten and entertain while providing the reader with concrete examples and launching platforms for future work. Whether you are wanting to reorganize your desktop, reboot your modem, port software to a new platform, administer a Linux box, or just entertain yourself on a lazy sunday, you’ll find something of interest in the chapters ahead. At 99c it’s a terrific bargain and an excellent reference guide.

Intro To Hardware Chapters

Just the Way I Like It

So you’ve just bought a new wireless toy or mp3 player and you’re wondering what you can do with it. I’ve been there.Mp3 players, wireless toys (remember who started the whole IM-ME scene ;) ),broken laptops, cheap Chinese all-in-one game systems, these things find their way into your life. Sometimes they’re working, sometimes they’re not. But they’re almost never just the way you like it. That’s where hardware hacks come in. You take the parts you like, remove the parts you don’t, and maybe do something nobody has ever done before. Engadget called my Dockstar hardware hack a ‘Masterpiece’.It is my sincerely hope that the hack tutorials contained in the following chapters allow you to realize your next masterpiece too.

Hacking the Girltech IM-ME USB Wireless device

The Girltech IM-ME is a basic usb radio transmiter paired with a small console like device. It was suggested to me on the TP hacking thread I posted up a while ago. Hacking the IM-ME turned out to be an easy reverse-engineer, as there is no crypto to worry about and everything is sent in cleartext hex (everything). For 12$, this makes quite a nice little wireless console device. Read on for the protocol and info on implementing your own driver

After ordering the IM-ME as a filler item on Amazon (what won't I do for super-saver shipping), I plugged it in to my linux box. It was recognized as a standard HID device. This is good, as Girltech obviously didn't go to any great lengths to protect the communication coming off this thing. At this point, I could have either loaded up a windows VM with a promiscuous USB driver at the host OS level, or loaded up a windows VM with snoopypro installed. I went (as I usually do when reverse-engineering usb protocols) with snoopypro. The output driver strings are quite easy to read and patterns are colored by communication direction.

I set up a user 'toastc2c' with a password 'password'. The default software install (windows only) is basically an online multiplexer. You log into their software, which syncs with their website. Each instant message is sent to the handheld with a identifier string, which is used by the device to pagify the different messages. This is great, as it's pretty much arbitrary as to what we pipe down to the device. I figured I would need to inject some custom messages to the device (standard crypto protocol breaking stuff like huge messages and repeated characters etc) to get a handle on the communication scheme, but that wasn't really necessary. Turns out it's all clearhex, all the time. Either initialize with a VM and inject your own messages, or copy the init strings out of the spreadsheet I post below and init/multiplex with libusb.

Here is a spreadsheet with the initialization strings and username/password authentication. This is more than enough to write an interface driver in with libusb. I'm not sure about the DMCA implications of releasing a driver, but there's a script out there to ease the process for you if you're new to it. Note the device receives data in one hex byte strings which are each padded with hex 00. My username is 'toastc2c', which you can see is clearly transmitted and accepted by the receiving device (IM-ME usb dongle->console pairing). Happy Hacking

17$ Mobile Java Gaming Console – Plus Sample Code and Application To Get You Started!

I finally had a few minutes to start working through the new list of 'to hack' items this weekend, so I started with the Nickelodean NPower fusion gaming console. Buy.com had these for 17$, and I've seen them at various secondhand retailers here in southern California for about the same. It supports j2me, cldc1.1, and midp2. For 17$ this would be a fantastic target for a beginning java games developer. The absolute rock bottom price would allow for some fun opportunities like beta test groups, without the terrible expense usually incurred purchasing mobile devices.

After plugging it in, it's recognized as a 1gb photo storage device. There are a couple of .wmv videos installed stock, as well as an enticing java_vm folder, which will load .jar/.jad files. My goals were simple, get a custom application running on the Npower, and get some system information and a sample application for other developers to use as an example.

I started by downloading the JavaME SDK. It comes with a few sample applications, I chose the UI demo app as a good starting point. JavaME supports the java.lang.runtime class, so I figured a couple of quick system monitors would be useful.

The GaugeDemo seemed like a good starting target, so I built it fresh to ensure it would run on the fusion. It installed and ran fine, so I set about altering the page to display the system memory as it changes. I first added a label to the frame which contained the total and free memory. Looks like the Npower is allocating Java around 2mb of ram. That's about 10x more than is required by the cldc1.1, and more than enough for some hefty (and fun) mobile java development. As the free memory doesn't change, I drop the gauge to zero every 3 ticks to show change in memory.

You can download the changed source files and .jar/.jad file here. Just install it to your npower, then navigate to games->UIDemo->gauge, and there's your memory gauge. Fun! Happy Programming.

Npower Fusion – Breakdown Tutorial and Chipset Info

So a few of you had asked for a detailed chipset list for the npower fusion java console. Sounded like fun, so here it is. Turns out to be a pretty interesting device. For the super impatient among you, 200mhz 8mb ram arm SoC, possiblerockbox target. Read on for photos and follow along instructions.

Using your thumbnail or a flat screwdriver, pry up the front face. This is what holds the dpad and the 3 buttons in, so don't let them fall under the couch when you pop this sucker off. Trust me, you don't want to go under there.

Using a small phillips screwdriver, remove the 4 face screws from the front corners of the device.

Using a small flathead scredriver, insert it into the 4 slots on the outer edge of the device, this will allow you to pop open the rear plate and expose the motherboard

Now that the mb is exposed we immediately see 2 chips, the hynix kor 713a firmware (apparently common in ipod clones) and Telechip tcc8200 200mhz arm SoC (very interesting), as well as 3 chips covered in spacer tape. This leads me to believe we may be