I saw this article on Global Guerrillas this morning and had to comment on it. Apparently Iraqi insurgents have been using OTS hardware and some cheap software to intercept live video feeds from Predator drones. OMFG I can only hope that the control and telemetry links are encrypted. Once again hats off to GG for another great story. If you like this blog you should add Global Guerrillas to your list of dailies.
I’m a big fan hardware projects and have recently been playing around with a couple of Digi XBee pro modules for a UAV controller. Anyway I came across Travis Goodspeed’s blog post explaining a method for extracting keys from certain ZigBee chipsets. I won’t ruin the surprise for everyone so go on over to and check it out.
One of my favorite pieces of 3D modeling software is Blender. It is, in my opinion, the best open source 3D modeling platform out there. I have been using it for quick and dirty data visualization for a while new. It has Pythion scripting built in which makes it very hacker friendly. I have even been able to set it up to pass camera output into OpenCV for quick testing in a virtual environment. I was looking through the Blender 2.5 wiki page and cama across the Blender For Robotics page. I would suggest checking it out. One major missing piece in the DIY robotics world is a simple virtual environment for testing and rapid prototyping. Source code for the demo shown can be found here.
I have to admin, it was a little weird to watch the a kid get dragged around by robots. Oddness aside, this was a really cool demonstration of swarm technology. I thing swarm/pack behavior is going to be a mainstay of military robotics.
Tags: swarm
This library might be useful for rapidly developing and prototyping systems. It would be particularly useful for computer vision and UI design. It includes libraries for facial recognition, servo control etc. It’s written in C/C++ so its fast. I’d be interested to see how well it would run on an embedded system like gumstix.
made with openFrameworks from openFrameworks on Vimeo.
I consider Australia and New Zealand the up and coming meccas of civilian UAV development. Here is a cool video about a recent UAV challenge.
Team Telemasters 2008 UAV Outback Challenge Documentary from Aaron Donaldson on Vimeo.
I ran across this little gem the other day. It’s an OS meant to run on the ARM that is entirely pythonic. From their site: “Pycorn is an interpreted operating system written in Python, intended
to recreate the easy learning possibilities of 8-bit microcomputers.
Device drivers, file systems, network protocols can all be implemented
in Python with no C or assembler code.”
It seems like a promising platform for building hacker friendly embedded systems.
I’ve been tossing an idea I call DrumLine around in my head for a while now. The idea is to build a network of drums that, when within range of each other, will automatically start playing a beat dictated by a master drum or drums. I was looking around for an easly library to use to test some variations before buying the basic hardware and came across this page. http://www.media.mit.edu/resenv/classes/MAS961/schedule.html I found the simpulator.py code particularly helpful.
I’ve been tossing around an idea I call DrumLine around in my head for a while now. The idea is to build a network of drums that, when within range of each other, will automatically start playing a beat dictated by a master drum or drums. I was looking around for an easly library to use to test some variations before buying the basic hardware and came across this page. http://www.media.mit.edu/resenv/classes/MAS961/schedule.html I found the simpulator.py code particularly helpful.
I was checking out Freshmeat just now and I came across the OpenISIS project. I must say they could have picked a better name…or maybe I just have a juvinle sense of humor, but I digress. Apparently CAD is also an acronym for Computer Aided Dispatch. OpenISIS is meant to be used for emergency unit dispatch but I can see it being used as an quick to set up troop dispatch and communication tool. Kind of a poor man’s BFT (Blue Force Tracking)
Tickets Screenshot
