From reddit/r/programming I found this VERY interesting article about how to reverse engineer USB devices. They use as an example the motor of the Kinect. Its pretty well explained and they use python as example language.
Archive for category Herramientas / Tools
Reverse engineering Kinect!
18/11 01:04
My chrome extensions
14/11 15:08
Just a post about my Chrome extensions (wich autoinstall and syncronize in all the chromes you’ve got associated with your gmail account!).
Google Mail checker:
Displays the number of unread messages in your Google Mail inbox. You can also click the button to open your inbox.
Very accesible!
Adblock:
AdBlock for Chrome! Blocks ads all over the web.
With Browser Button for AdBlock.
I don’t use it always (thats why I have the button) but its great.
Session Manager:
Session Manager lets you save sessions of your opened tabs and windows, and to quickly re-open them whenever you like.
Great++;!! I use it to open my “just started my pc” tabs, and to save some investigation tabs (say you are learning perl and you have 6 tabs of interesting webs talking about perl, save that session for the next day!).
Webpage Screenshot:
Fast&Simple solution to Save & Share & Print & Edit screenshots of any webpage. Capture to PNG/JPG drawing tools, and sharing features.
Its very useful frequently, you can save your screenshots in your computer or upload it to webpage-screenshot host. You can add notes and draw on the screenshots, its very easy to use.
Google Chrome to Phone:
Google Chrome to Phone Extension enables you to send links and other information from Chrome to your Android device.
Curious and useful if you have an Android phone. You can share links fast (google maps, funny stuff… anything).
And the last one (that I don’t use but I know someone who I’m sure its interested):
Smooth Gestures:
Mouse Gestures! Quickly and easily navigate webpages using the mouse or keyboard.
What extensions do you use?
Skip password of default keyring in Ubuntu 10.04
14/11 14:29
Today just after getting up my Ubuntu asked me for “Default password for default keyring to unlock”… and that irritated me as I wanted to connect to my home network as everyday. So, to skip this window the next time you start a session you can follow the next steps:
1. Right click on the network icon > Click Edit the connection...
2. Go to the Tab of your connection (Wireless for me), click the network you trust and click Edit...
3. Check the "Make avaiable for all users" checkbox (and watch that the "Connect automagically checkbox is checked too!).
4. Apply.
I hope this helps someone :)
Kinect OpenSource Driver!
12/11 16:35
I reblog (a bit late probably) that there is already an OpenSource driver for Kinect, that thing of the XBOX360 for playing without controller… but that has a lot of possibilities in other areas like robotics.
Here you can watch a video of his autor:
Here you can find an interview (in spanish) with Héctor Martin Cantero, the autor of this publication: http://www.elmundo.es/blogs/elmundo/mundoplayer/2010/11/11/el-hacker-espanol-de-kinect-se-trata-de.html
And here is the web of the project.
I want to play with it!!
Can I run X game on my computer?
12/11 16:12
A friend told me about a web that tells you if your computer is able to run some specific game (minium requirements. Its very easy to use, you just need to acces from Internet Explorer (no plz!) or Firefox, choose the game and push the “CanYouRunIt?” button. It will ask you to install a little Java package or an ActiveX control to analize your pc, and in some seconds you’ll have the results.
The web is: http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/
Here you have some screenshots:
Acquiring images from the webcam from MATLAB
11/11 18:20
To acquire images from a webcam from MATLAB 7.9 (R2009b) I just needed to:
imaqhwinfo
ans =InstalledAdaptors: {'coreco' 'winvideo'}
MATLABVersion: '7.9 (R2009b)'
ToolboxName: 'Image Acquisition Toolbox'
ToolboxVersion: '3.4 (R2009b)'
Tells us what video adapters we have.
wininfo= imaqhwinfo('winvideo')
wininfo =AdaptorDllName: [1x87 char]
AdaptorDllVersion: '3.4 (R2009b)'
AdaptorName: 'winvideo'
DeviceIDs: {[1]}
DeviceInfo: [1x1 struct]
With this we find the DeviceID (1) of the webcam.
Now, if we go wininfo struct, from there to DeviceInfo struct there we will find an array called SupportedFormats of our webcam.
I’ll use ‘YUY2_320x240′:
winvid = videoinput('winvideo',1,'YUY2_320x240');
In my case the imagenes are being returned in YUV for default, to change this you need to change the ReturnedColorSpace variable from the object winvid (I do this from the variables explorer of MATLAB like in the screenshot above). I changed it to RGB.
preview(winvid);
With this we can see the webcam :) Example of whats the window like:
With:
capt1 = getsnapshot(winvid);
We capture an image.
We can show it using:
imshow(capt1);
For example.
For learning more stuff we can go to the MATLAB help and search for Image Acquisition Toolbox and search what we need.
Source: madan.wordpress.com
How to install Windows XP from a USB pendrive
11/11 00:22
A friend asked me how to install Windows XP on a netbook as it does not have CD drive so the easiest workaround is installing it from an USB pendrive. So, after googling a bit, we found at kioskea.net this article wich I’m copying-resuming here for our use in the future.
To start we will need:
A USB memory where our Windows XP fits (1GB+).
A Windows XP CD or ISO.
The computer where we want to install the SO wich will need to be able to boot from an USB stick (like any computer that is less than 4 years old aprox).
The software WinSetupFromUSB.
You can find WinSetupFromUSB in this thread: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/120444-how-to-install-windows-from-usb-winsetupfromusb-with-gui/
Direct links for the last version (0.2.3):
http://www.datafilehost.com/download-dfc48473.html
&
http://www.mediafire.com/?igwzq2qnn22
Lets continue…
Now you’ll need to install WinSetupFromUSB.
When its installed follow the next steps:
These are the 6 steps that you should follow (shown in the image) :
Step 1: Insert the CD of Windows XP in the CD drive of your PC or load the ISO from your favorite software (daemontools for example), then make click in Browse.
Step 2: Choose the route in the Window that will pop
Step 3: Choose the CD Drive or virtual disk where the ISO is and click OK
Step 4: Click Refresh and click the little arrow at the left and choose the USB stick that you are using
Step 5: Mark the field Fixed of “Force Target disk type”
Step 6: Click GO.Wait the copy process to end. A message will appear when the copy is finished. After that you can close de program.
And now install Windows XP…
Lets install Windows XP. Just follow these steps:
First insert the USB in the computer and get into the BIOS.
Now configure the BIOS to boot from USB memorys first (or hit the key that your computer has in the splash screen to select where to boot from).
Save changes of BIOS and reboot the PC.
You’ll see 2 lines of GRUB to choose from.
The first one is to choose the SO installation.
The second one is for starting the first boot of Windows XP after installing.
So, boot from the USB until Windows XP is totally installed.
Follow the usual installing process of Windows XP.And Voilá! Windows XP has been installed from your USB key.
And that’s all folks! :)
Open Hardware Monitor
28/10 20:45
Some days ago I wanted to watch the temperature of my laptop and I searched for some light and free (and, if possible, open source!) for this job.
I found Open Hardware Monitor wich fullfilled my needs perfectly. Its very simple but its just what I was looking for. For now it does not have support for too much hardware but here you have a list of the supported stuff.
So… just watch a screenshot :)
Creating independent executables from MATLAB
13/10 15:35
~I’ll translate it later, haven’t got time right now! Sorry!
Perl Script to Executable
05/10 21:25
To make (very much) easier the use of a little script I did I needed to get a perl script to be compiled into an executable. This is an easy and free way to do it:
Download from CPAN the package PAR::Packer:
$cpan
cpan> install PAR::Packer
Once downloaded and installed:
pp -o myexecutable.exe script.pl
I did all this in Windows using strawberryperl and I’ve had no problem, I’ve used references from cpan.
The executable is 2,46MB (800KB compressed in .rar).
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