Today I made a serial cable that will interface with my new Garmin eTREX GPS device that I bought on craigslist.org. Here are some nifty instructions and pictures that should get you on your way to hacking your own cord instead of paying the $50+ MSRP for a garmin brand one. This is really easy and inexpensive to do. I got it done correctly on the first try - nothing went wrong for a change! See the pictures below for my results (its not the most attractive cable, but it works!)
Heres how to do it:
1. First get yourself a serial cable. I got mine for $10 at radioshack.
2. Cut one of the ends of the serial cable off. Isolate the wires.
3. Get a multimeter to test what wire goes to what pin. I did this by stuffing a wire that I had laying around the house in the serial end and then touching the multimeter to each wire to see if it was completing a circuit. For some reason there is not a standard coloring system for serial cable wire. This confused the hell out of me. You may have some other way of testing, this is how I did it.
4. Refer to the picture above for the proper connections (courtesy of http://www.jens-seiler.de/etrex/datacable.html) - on my radioshack cable the colors used were red = TxD- brown = RxD- yellow = GND
5. Take an old card and cut it to fit into the garmin device.
6. Make holes in the appropriate spots for the cables to make contact with the contact points on the garmin device. Also make a slit in the card so that it will fit the slit thats on the GPS device as well.
7. I added some solder to the wire connections on the cable to make better contact with the device. I have seen cables made without this step, but I thought it would work better for me and make the cord fit a little more snug.
8. Test your cord and make sure nothing is touching and that it wont short circuit!
9. When its working, you can take a hot glue gun and cover the back of the cord…this will make it so that the wires never touch, it will also add some strength to the card.
10. Fasten the cable with one of those pull-tie plastic things that fasten in one direction. This will make sure that your cable will have less tension on the wiring when you pull it out.
THATS IT! for less than $15 bucks you can make your own cord for a Garmin eTrex GPS device. Now you can spend the extra $35 I just saved you on something nice for me! Check the pictures below to see how mine came out. It is working fine!
I thought you might like to meet the new addition to my household. This is a viscious and dangerous man eating plant. Although it hasnt actually eaten a person yet, be assured it is training to kill as you read this. For now, enjoy the video of my little friend in action.
Im currently entertaining names for the new carnivorous venus flytrap, so please leave me a comment with some suggestions!
Id like to take the time to share my newest project with all of you out there in happy internet land. Its called Polis T-shirts. You can visit the website at polistshirts.gothacked.org
In short, this project aims at a tactical media approach to shirt wearing/idea distribution. Whereas most tactical media involves some kind of action or intervention, I decided to take a step back and create a framework in which others act tacticly given the structure I have provided. An in depth explanation of this project can be read on the about section of the site and shirt production pictures are coming soon.
The goal and our motto is “giving the shirts back to the people.” The idea is that all of our clothes are corporately branded in one way or another. We decided to “open source” our shirts and allow the voice of the people to come through. Offered for a mere $0.99 the shirts were distributed and sold at Amvets on Hertel/Elmwood ave in Buffalo, NY. Each shirt has a unique identification number and when a person went to purchase the shirt, they would be politely asked to give their address and zip code. This information would then be passed along to the website and then plotted onto a map using the Google API. The map then represents what I call “spheres of operation” in which we can see exactly where the ideas on the shirts are permeating into society (visually on the map). To sum it up, the people wearing the shirts are engaging in the tactical action because others read the shirts and are infected with the various messages that were printed on them. Its rather ingenious if I may say so myself. My good friend Camille helped a great deal with the development of this work and theory.
Please check it out and leave me some feedback. Sorry, but all the shirts have actually been sold (36 in total) in less than 4 days! However, it is really cheap to stir up another batch. If you wish to participate in this or fund another set of 36 or more, then get in contact with me at cferrari@buffalo.edu and I will add you as a benefactor to the contact part of the site. You will have a rather honorable mention and be part of something really great and liberating. If you can do the whole process yourself, Id be glad to send you the designs or coordinate/approve
new ones for your area and add you to the map.
Thanks for the feedback and checking this out!
-Chris
I have had this idea for quite some time now and I think its about time that I put it into play. For the greater benefit of humanity (namely, raising money to replace my broken electronics) I am willing to offer my services for a modest fee.
What’s the best way to get your name,company, or website out there? Duh, of course, it’s advertising. I am willing to literally sell myself to you and your company for any ammount of time. In this experiment/project I am willing to adorn myself with image or text (or whatever for that matter) of your choosing for a set period of tme. The longer you want my space the more money it will cost (the price breaks up the line.) The highest bidder will literally own my personal outer shell as their advertising space. Dress me up in a NEON PINK jumpsuit with blinking lights and your slogan for all I care. I need a new laptop and this is the only way I can do it.
I want to take this time and space to feel truly sorry for myself. And now I invite you to do the same. In the last few months, I have suffered a great many losses.
This is a story of truth courage and the strength to carry on. My electronics have failed me. They have become the very thing that I depend on and they have parted from me for good; they have departed from me and left me bare, alone, confused, and afraid.
It all started on a dark stormy night in the dead of winter… (more…)
I borrowed this from my good buddy Brian Clark (with his permission of course.) I assume it will be rather helpful for all of you out there (including myself) that cant afford a DV camera.
Do you need an inexpensive camera to perform a hack? Hack a CVS video camera! (more…)
I always entertain and amaze my friends with this one. I didn’t know that my shoe tying method wasnt the “normal” way that everyone else goes about it until a few years ago. Someone watched my tie my shoe and started freaking out! It alarmed me and initially I thought I was a shoe tying freak. Now I have learned its a wonderful talent and displays my genius quite apparently.
I guess that when I was a little kid I devised my own method for tying shoes. I was always confused when people started talking about “little bunny ears” and “tree trunks” or whatever other kind of stories that were supposed to aid me in leanring how to tie my own shoes. I remember chilling out on my couch trying over and over again to tie my shoes. My mother was across the street having a coffee with the neighbor, so she wasn’t of any help in this process. I knew that if I was ever going to be able to tie my own shoes, I would have to learn it myself. This is what I came up with - Here it is for the world to look and marvel at.
I show people my technique every now and again. The most recent time was 2 nights ago at a party. I was hanging with my good friend Kyle and I said, “Hey check this out.” I wanted to know if this really was a shoe tying oddity or not. So, he is usually a good critic. After my demonstration, he almost fell over from shock and awe. So I thought I might be onto something.
What I can say for this is that I only tie my shoes once in their entire lifespan. I believe this weird knot is more efficient than everyone elses. So next time you see me around, ask me to tie your shoe and I’ll be happy to do so.
During the Spring Break from my studies at UB, I aquired a Nintendo gamecub console from my avid gaming mother. She loves to play all kinds of video games. Mom has beaten all the Final Fantasy series and Legend of Zelda games, which I havent even attmepted to do. She was saddened to tell me upon my arrival home that her “cube” was broken. I think she straight up burned it out from hours and hours of playtime.
One womans junk is another mans treasure. She gave it to me because she went right ahead and bought a new one. She could not live without this thing. I’m thinking that it just needs a new fan or thourough cleaning to get it into its working condition again.
Here are a few tips I picked up along the way to help you not get as frustrated as I originally started out as.
First, I flip the sucker over to see what the screws look like. Of course Nintendo uses crazy looking screws that no screwdriver will fit. The special screwdrivers cost at least $15 bucks on Ebay. I dont have the time or money to spend on that, so I found a neat little hack on how to make your own.
You will need : A bic pen and a lighter. Im also using a screwdriver to fit into the pen, but you may not need this (I didnt have the right kind of pen laying around.)
1. Take the pen apart. Make sure its solid and there are no turning/moveable parts. The pen I used was weird, so I had to attach a screwdriver to be able to reach the screws. Use the side that you would write with and melt the pen with the lighter so that it will melt a little bit and take the form of the screw when you press down on it. This is an ingenious method that I found at answerbag.com
Now that you have the screws removed, go ahead and watch this video. These guys explain this stuff better than I could. You can take your gamecube apart as far as you want, the person in the video completely disassembles it. I just needed to spray a can of air in mine and check to see if the laser is working properly (since I am getting a disc read error message once in a while.)
After the air and laser matinence, my cube has been running for about an hour with no problems so far. I dont know if I will ever have time to play this thing, but it will be fun to run a hack on it with the SD card exploit. I saw my friend do it a few months back, and I will try my hand at it now that I have a free working gamecube to experiment with. Stay tuned for a post on how I mod my gamecube!
After months and months of waiting, the Xbox 360’s firmware has been successfully hacked. I remember about a month or 2 ago there was a bootable DVD-R floating around that would let you play the games that were available at Xbox 360 kiosks (like the ones in Walmart and Circuit City.) Some hackers had found out that the discs were unencrypted and could be easily replicated to boot in any home users Xbox 360. Thats a big “DOH” on Microsofts part if you ask me.
Anyways, you would think that they would try and protect their gaming concols e abit more after the previous Xbox vulnerabilities. Since the console was rushed to the shelves, it only took them 4 months to hack Xbox 360’s firmware.
The only problem is that the hackers are acting “morally” and not releasing the firmware hack to the public. It is said that they believe in hacking and not software piracy. Yeah, yeah, yeah… The only thing the firmware hack does not do is play out-of-region backups. So if youre trying to get the pre release Japanese version of a game, you’re outta luck.
Im going to wait another year for more games to come out and for the hacking technique to become public and more refined. We dont know if there are any known bugs or issues with this as of right now. I can attest to this because I got my Xbox caught in the infinite clock loop right when the Splinter Cell hack was released to the public years ago. I’ll just sit back and let everything play out and get a feel for my options before I jump aboard and buy one of these badboys. Check out some more info on this topic at these sites: Maxconsole.net and hackaday.com. Also more technical info can be found at xboxhacker.net
After months and months of waiting, the Xbox 360’s firmware has been successfully hacked. I remember about a month or 2 ago there was a bootable DVD-R floating around that would let you play the games that were available at Xbox 360 kiosks (like the ones in Walmart and Circuit City.) Some hackers had found out that the discs were unencrypted and could be easily replicated to boot in any home users Xbox 360. Thats a big “DOH” on Microsofts part if you ask me.
The only problem is that the hackers are acting “morally” and not releasing the firmware hack to the public. It is said that they believe in hacking and not software piracy. Yeah, yeah, yeah… The only thing the firmware hack does not do is play out-of-region backups. So if youre trying to get the pre release Japanese version of a game, you’re outta luck.