Brain dump time

Ok, its that time again. BRAIN DUMP!

Projects:
So my friend and I make this list every major break, like winter and summer break. I have posted our winter break list before, and now the summer list is underway. Here are some of the things that will make the list (I will post the full one when its done)

-web controlled car: My favorite IPTV show, Hak5 (go watch it, hak5.org) is doing a segment on building an r/c car that you can control over the internet. It works by basically using a computer controlled relay (Phidget) that responds to C code. The guys at Hak5 so far have written a crappy version of the C script that controls stuff in tank mode and then linked it to a PHP or AJAX page with a controller built in. So right now you can go to a website and control left, right, forward, back.

I thought this was cool, but a little $15 tank is kinda disappointing to drive around. I thought, how about something bigger? Those relays can handle up to around 100v, lets take advantage of it! Then it hit me: those electric Barbie cars, Power Wheels, that little kids have. I figured that once kids grow up, those cars (if they still work) are either thrown away or sold at yard sales. I have no idea how the motor(s) are attached or anything else, so a lot of it will depend on the specific kind of car we get. Then, we will probably upgrade the motors to drill motors and then just use the rechargeable batteries that they come with to power them. Then all of the motors get run through the Phidget which is connected to a laptop (my old Thinkpad). The Thinkpad has a webserver installed and has 2 network interfaces. The first one always connects to the strongest unprotected wireless signal. The second one is used as a backup when the primary interface is switching networks so that the connection is continous. When it is not serving as backup, it is sniffing WEP encrypted networks and cracking them. Then we can add that network to the list of OK'd networks to attach to and start communicating with. It will probably have to have a large wifi antenna, something like a 19dBi omnidirectional so we can get more networks. Then people can go to a website that is hosted on the laptop, go to the PHP (or Ajax) page, and control it. It will also have a camera (probably UStream'd) so users can see what they are doing. From there, the possibilities are endless. Depending on the amount of money we want to spend, we could add smaller r/c cars to act as scouts so multiple people can drive them. We could also make it sort of like the warcart that was done at MIT. It could have a seperate system of laptops and comm gear to intercept various frequencies. Imagine remote controlling a pink barbie car up to someones driveway and cracking their wifi, then sniffing their traffic and injecting your own http. All from the comfort of your home. Other possible mods include lights, GPS, stereo, whatever.


-cell phone rocket launcher: I tried this project once before but couldn't get it to work. The version I tried had a circuit you had to build, which I never got fully working. Instead, there is a much easier way. You simply connect the speakers on a cheap disposable cell phone to a component called a thyristor. A thyristor is basically a P and N type transistor connected so that it forms a kind of relay or switch. This is used to control the flow of a larger voltage that sets off the rocket fuse. So once you call the disposable phone, the speaker sends a small amount of voltage to the thyristor which then dumps all the voltage from the large battery in to the rocket ignitor, so the rocket launches. I am ordering the thyristor so it will be home in time for spring break. Hopefully I can get this one done then, since it is a pretty simple wiring job.

-laser cutter: This involves getting 2 old scanners from the salvation army. It turns out that scanners use a special kind of motor called a stepper motor, which if you buy them are actually kind of expensive. So instead, we use the motors and the axis from both scanners and interface them to an old win95 box via the parallel port. Then there is a open source software out there that will allow me to have them act as the laser cutter chassis. Then all you need is a laser. I was thinking of getting one from ebay, maybe a 500mW one. At that size, the come in convenient form: the laser is actually directed out a fiber optic cable, so you just fix that to the intercept of the 2 axis bars and turn it on.

-lab power supply: lab power supplies are expensive. There are a couple of tutorials on the web on how to turn an old desktop PSU into one. I will need a power supply for the project above, so hopefully I will be able to get one working.

-office supplies rocket: there is an instructables on this as well, I will put it up later.

All of this stuff will be complimented later with pictures, status, and more detailed descriptions.

quickie

To append the last post, here are some more remote solutions:

http://www.openjason.com/2007/11/28/11-free-remote-access-tools/

R/C computer anyone?

I thought I would do a write up on different options you have to get to your computer from the internet. All of these solutions are able to be used anywhere at any time as long as you have a internet connection. At most, you will need a thumb drive with a program or 2 installed.

Option 1: LogMeIn

LogMeIn.com is probably the easiest option. I have talked about it before, so here I will go into a little more detail. It is a webservice that lets you start an account and set up any computer to remotely connect to. When you start, you get a trial of the pro version and then it downgrades you to the free version. The pro version is like $20 a year, but the free version works fine, you can use free software to complement it so that it has the same features as the pro version. It works from a browser, so no software needed. It works by taking screenshots of the computer and then seeing where you click. I wish that it were a live connection, but the screenshot technique works on smaller bandwidth.

More Info: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/logmein-access-your-pc-from-anywhere/

Option 2: VNC

VNC is great. It lets you see a live view of the remote machine. There are several derivitives. RealVNC costs money, TightVNC is the one I use. You have to start the server on the remote machine and the viewer on the local one. To connect you need a static IP address. The viewer asks you for either a domain or an IP. Since most of the networks you will be on will be DHCP, which means it will automatically give you an IP address that is different every time you connect based on what IP addresses it has left to assign (and how many other computers are connected). To make sure that you can type in the same number every time, you need to use a service called DynDNS. It will install small program that basically checks your internal IP every once in a while and tells DynDNS.org what it is. When you sign up, you choose a domain name like whatever.isageek.com (they have several to choose from) and that domain will be bound to your current IP. It is this domain that you will use to connect with. This will get you working with VNC, but VNC traffic is not secure. To secure it, we will tunnel the connection through SSH. You can tunnel any kind of connection through SSH, and it is a great way to make sure no one is listening on your connection. This will require installing Cygwin. This entire process is documented here:

http://erikjheels.com/?p=470

I am working on getting this to function, i posted here:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/cygwin-ssh-setup-permissions-error-702852/#post3440484

I will follow up this post with details when I figure it all out.


Option 4: Remote Desktop

Vista buisness and Ultimate come with remote desktop built in to them. It is a very common way to administrate from afar. You can set it up so that you can connect from another Vista computer or an XP one. There are several tutorials online for how to set this up.


Option 3: Everything else

There are lots of other little standalone EXE's that you can download that you execute on both the remote and local machines. The problem is that for these, you have to have a person on the other end as they are designed for remotely helping people with problems. Examples include CrossLoop and Ammyy.


For the most features and control, VNC over SSH is the way to go. If you have 5 minutes to set it up, then LogMeIn works great to.

Custom greasemonkey script

Here is my version of the Profanity Filter GreaseMonkey script that I talked about in the last post. The difference is that it removed some words that are not offensive and that would impede reading stuff.

Its a big list!

I actually had a request for a post on my firefox configuration. Here it is:

EXTENSIONS:
-Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures : used to make a cool custom HTML signature in gmail

-Bookmark Previews : I have it disabled right now, but it lets you view a screenshot of every bookmark you have.

-Download Statusbar : Basically moves the download window to a bar at the bottom of the screen.

-DownloadHelper : Lets you download videos from tons of sites.

-dragdropupload : Lets you just drag and drop files from your computer into upload forms. Saves a lot of time.

-FireGPG : Simple interface for using PGP encryption in gmail

-Fission : Makes the page download status bar go from the bottom of the screen to inside the address bar, like in Safari.

-Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer : Syncs all of your bookmarks to an external server. Really helpful if you have hundreds of bookmarks like I do and lets you access them from anywhere.

-Gmail Manager : My favorite gmail notifier, it lets you log in to multiple accounts and mouse over to see the first chunk of the email.

-Google Reader Watcher : Checks number of unread feeds in Google Reader.

-LogMeIn Remote Access Plugin : Allows for use of LogMeIn (I'll do another post on that service soon)

-Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant

-NoScript : A great plugin that makes sure you don't get hacked. It doesn't allow a site to execute any scripts unless you let it. For the first week it's kinda annoying, but once you whitelist all of the sites you frequent, it will keep the number of viruses you get really low.

-pageaddict : Used to generate statistics about browsing habits (I like that sort of stuff)

-PDF Download : Before you open a PDF, it asks you what you want to do with it. Reduces browser crashing because of PDFs.

-SQL Inject Me : A hacking extension that trys a bunch of common SQL injection techniques. Good for quick scans. Could be used for evil...

-StumbleUpon : VERY addicting, also great for staying current with internet memes and finding new cool sites. This is why I have 800+ bookmarks.

-Torbutton : comes with Vidalia. Basically allows for anonymous browsing.

-URL Fixer : automatically fixes domain spelling errors like .cmo instead of .com

-User Agent Switcher : Allows you to change the user agent of Firefox.

-WOT : Web Of Trust rates websites as safe or dangerous. When you are going through google results, this keeps you from going to virus ridden sites.

-Greasemonkey : allows you to run javascripts on every page you go to


I did GreaseMonkey last because I wanted to lost the scripts I am running on it. Here they are:

-Disable Text Ads : Does what it says on the box. Disables all google text ads.

-Text Area Backup : ever type out a giant block of text in a form and then lose it all by accidentally moving to another page or closing the tab? This saves it as you go.

-Google ads remover+ : Removes more Google ads.

-Profanity Filter : Parses the text on a page and replaces any red flagged words with whatever you want (default is ***). The only problem with this is that by default it red flags some words like 'nerd' and 'crap', so it needs some tweaking. If I have time I will post my version.

-NoDelay : Removes the counter from sites like RapidShare and MegaUpload. No more waiting for downloads to start.

-YouTube HQ + 702p : automatically shows the high quality version of youtube vidoes and if it is available in 702p, then it shows it in its full resolution.

-Facebook Remove Feed Articles : Removes all of the annoying ads that show up in your facebook feed.

-Googlenlarge : automatically enlarges images in google image search when you mouse over them.


And now, Plugins:

-2007 Microsoft Office system

-DivX Player Player Netscape Plugin

-DivX Web Player

-Foxit Reader Plugin for Mozilla

-Google Talk Plugin

-Google Update

-Java Platform SE 6 U11

-LogMeIn Remote access components

-Microsoft Office Live Plugin

-Move Media Player

-Mozilla Default Plugin

-PhotoSynth

-QuickTime Plugin

-Scorch Plugin : allows you to read sheet music online

-Shockwave Flash

-VLC



Are you sorry you asked?
Comment if you need clarification or have questions.

Did you know...

Ok, I just had a good idea, so I am dumping it before I forget. I love using Wikipedia for looking stuff up, but the only problem is that you need a computer or at least a smart phone to access it. However, the proliferation of internet enables phones and micro computing lends a hand here. What if you were able to combine a simple wearable computing piece of hardware with the internet to allow instant access to Wikipedia or anything else? I like the idea of just using some of these as a computer display. I would like to be able to use a phone for internet and as small a computer as possible. The closest thing I can think of is a PicoITX. Anyway, I don't like the look or price of video goggles, so I thought it would be easier to just use a pair of glasses like these with an embedded one of these. This is in the realm of wearable computing, which I know is a whole different deal with tons of research going in to it and stuff. But I still am curious to see how hard it would be to make me be able to read Wikipedia anywhere. No more need for Mosio or anything. Just put on the glasses. use your phone as a keyboard, and have the collective knowledge of the world at your fingertips. Actually, now that I think about it, you could just get a video out from your smart phone to the micro screen, which would give you a browser and internet and input all in the same very small box. Hm, hopefully some phone companies start seeing how awesome this could be and GET TO IT!