There is a really nice story up on Wired about How to get the most out of Google Voice.
I implemented a few of these right after I got my number a while back. Nice to see someone document them all.
Incidentally, this is the entire reason I switched from the iPhone to the Android.
Why, the U. S. Military of course!
Iraqi insurgents using $26 software to monitor Predator video feeds
from Engadget by Nilay Patel
We can’t say we’ve ever heard of a $26 Russian program called SkyGrabber before, but it’s about to get famous real fast — according to the Wall Street Journal, Iraqi insurgents have been regularly using the satellite-snooping software to monitor live Predator video feeds. Apparently the Predator transmits video over an unencrypted link, so there’s no major hacking or security breach going on here, but it’s obviously a huge issue — and we’d say the bigger problem is that Pentagon officials have known about this flaw since the 1990s, but they didn’t think insurgents would figure out how to exploit it. Way to underestimate, guys. The WSJ says the military is working to encrypt all Predator feeds from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, but it’s slow going because the Predator network is more than a decade old and based on proprietary tech — too bad it’s not proprietary enough to keep prying eyes out of it.
I ran across this quite by accident. It is about a year old, but is totally fascinating!
I have started working with the Arduino and am having a blast with it. Nifty little system that is cheap and pretty darn easy to get running – even on a Mac.
So, after spending a few months futzing around with it, I started coming up with all sorts of gizmos that I would like to build. First up, is a repeater controller.
Why a repeater controller? Why not!
Seriously though, it would be really easy to implement. But, the other reason is to stay legal! All these rigs have been out there for years that have cross band repeat on them, but they don’t do it legally. There is no ID that goes on, for instance. That is kind of a no no as far as I am concerned. Yes, it is cool that you can do this, but if it is not going by the FCC rules, what’s the point?
Another reason is that I think it is needed for other things as well. It would be great for EMCOMM use to have a small box that you could plug in between two HTs and have a mini repeater that could be cobbled together in under 60 seconds. Toss it into a Pelican case, put it on top of a high building or top of a hill, and you can use it however you want to use it.
At the moment, I don’t have any real code to put up yet, but I will soon. The thing is flowing together quite nicely. Expect something very very soon.
I have just put the finishing touches on my Do-it-yourself solar power story. If you have ever wanted to run things with free electricity, this should be a good starting point. I would love feedback, so be sure and write me if you have any questions or comments.
Solar Power: Parts1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 -6
Updated 7/4/2009: For some reason the links on this story got all messed up. I have now fixed them, as well as added some more material to the original.
A few weeks back I had the opportunity to see Phil Anderson of MidnightScience talk about one of his new toys – a ultrasonic receiver. What the heck is that? Read on!
Breaking it down to its most basic level, it allows you to listen to things that you can not hear. Our range of hearing as humans is from about 20 to 20,000 cycles per second. That’s on a good day, of course. However, there are all sorts of things that make sound above what we can hear. Bats, for instance, use sound in the 20,000 to 160,000 cycles per second range for echolocation. Mice sing to their babies and their potential mates in the 20,000-30,000 cycles per second area. Insects make all sorts of noises as well.
Phil happened to have some of his Ultra RX-1 kits available and I picked one up. It is a very reasonable $70 and comes with everything you need except the 9V battery.
The build was very non dramatic. The entire project went together very smoothly and I only discovered one problem in the manual that I would have been able to get past had I actually read through the instructions first. Totally my fault and the problem was corrected on my end.
That said, everything went without a hitch and I had a fully functioning ultrasonic receiver about 3 hours later. Most people should be able to do the entire thing in about 2 hours, but I like taking my time along the way to admire my solder job.
At the time I built it, there were really no insects out to listen to, and I have not seen any bats in my neighborhood yet this year. Usually there are a few that show up just after sunset and they fly and swoop between my house and the one next door eating all sorts of mosquitos. They are a lot of fun to watch if you can see them.
Now that the weather is nicer for bugs to be out, I will start taking this thing out at night and recording sounds. Any good ones I get I will stick up here. May even try to shoot some video with the ultrasonic receiver on the audio input.
A while back I purchased two nixie tube clocks from TubeClock.com, a wacky place to get some of the most worthless (after all, let’s be honest here – they are using nixie tubes, but not near as worthless as the Chronulator which I still want to get as well) yet most awesome clocks on the planet.
There are actually a lot of different sites that sell nixie clocks, and you can find lots of tubes on ebay, for instance. However, the clock I use the most is Peter’s IN14 6 Tube Kit with the GPS attachment. I have it prominently placed in my amateur radio station and it is set for UTC. The GPS puck, a Garmin unit, is sitting on the sill of a window nearby. With this set up, the clock maintains absolutely perfect time.
Once a day the clock sets the minutes and seconds, then the rest of the day the clock uses the second pulses from the GPS satellites to keep the seconds ticking.
I have had this particular clock running for about a year and a half now. In that time, I have only seen the clock glitch one time – for some reason it ended up being 35 seconds off. I am not sure if RF interference did something or what, but it did reset itself. Same with the leap second that was injected into the time stream at the end of 2008.
