https://josephscottcampbell.com/ Recent content in Home on Scott Campbell's Robotics Blog Hugo -- gohugo.io en Fri, 04 Oct 2024 08:03:10 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-10-4-24/ Fri, 04 Oct 2024 08:03:10 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-10-4-24/ Updating my Hugo Theme When I tried to build my website on FreeBSD I noticed that there were some problems with my template. I realized that it was because many of the features that were being used in my template Hugo Blog Awesome were deprecated. Thankfully it is still being updated, and I was just using an old version. I had never updated it so I head to lean a little bit more about git. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-9-27-24/ Fri, 27 Sep 2024 08:12:05 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-9-27-24/ Golf Cart Mr. Christy put me on the Golf Cart project until I go on CO-OP. Vecna Robotics, a warehouse automation company, is offering us sensors we can use for our golf cart project. Mr. Christy took pictures of the different parts on his tour of the facility and tasked me to catalog what was in the pictures and find what would be useful to us. The amount of information I can get from the information in the pictures is limited. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-6-6-24/ Thu, 06 Jun 2024 21:08:42 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-6-6-24/ Introduction This week I made a lot of progress on the float. It is very nearly ready for the world championship. This week I made finishing touches to the float PCBs and we ordered them. I also made some edits to the shop image and the image on my own computer. I also worked on getting our documentation quality for the float up to a good enough level that people on the robotics team are going to be able to use the float that has not worked on it. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-5-24-24/ Mon, 20 May 2024 13:39:24 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-5-24-24/ This week I was hard at work on the float, we added a hard power switch on the outside and made the top of the battery pack into a PCB. The Power Switch The Power Switch was a simple change that was a long time coming. Up until this point you turned Jena on by opening the tube and unplugging the power connector. Although this worked it obviously was not the most user friendly, was time consuming, and could introduce extra wear and tear on connections inside of the float. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-5-16-24/ Thu, 16 May 2024 12:47:04 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-5-16-24/ New England Regional Sunk Robotics won the New England MATE ROV regional this year! It was a very narrow victory against MUREX robotics from Phillips Exeter Academy. The New England regional has come a very long way since the first year we were in it, MUREX was using a novel method of sending data over power lines rather than using a separate Ethernet cable. We in marketing displays and technical documentation, they won in their engineering presentation by 2 points and we won in our product demonstration by 10 points. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-5-9-24/ Thu, 09 May 2024 13:54:41 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-5-9-24/ Getting Ready for the Regional Competition New England Regional is on Saturday so I spent this week working on getting the Float to a state that it is functional for regionals. The Float needed to have better reliability, and polish the topside client. Error Recovery Topside Client https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-5-2-24/ Thu, 02 May 2024 19:46:44 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-5-2-24/ Float Code and Electronics This week on the float I made significant progress on the code. I needed to integrate the depth sensor code into the firmware for the float which presented a interesting timing challenge. Many sequences need to be kept in sync in order for the code to function correctly. I first wanted to convert my code to run entirely using millis() because I found that the alarm interrupt routine does not work with the Blue Robotics Depth Sensor Library because reading from the depth sensor takes too much time. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-4-25-24/ Thu, 25 Apr 2024 18:46:47 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-4-25-24/ Introduction This week and during vacation the robotics team made a lot of progress. Ben and I were able to get the float in the water and operational. We now just need to make some finishing touches and get the depth sensor working. The float now is able to communicate over WiFi, sink, then float. Electronics Changes By far the largest changes that we made we electronic. We did a complete overhaul of the PCB, replacing both the microcontroller and the motor driver. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-4-4-2024/ Thu, 04 Apr 2024 13:00:43 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-4-4-2024/ Work on Float This week was filling with some fairly unsuccessful debugging and some work on using the different motor driver. Next week I plan on really putting my head down and getting a PCB with the new motor driver. I wanted to get the float ready for pool testing, but the motor driver that we are using keeps on overcurrenting. I tried to work around it, but it ended up being a waste of time. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-3-27-24/ Wed, 27 Mar 2024 13:15:50 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-3-27-24/ Work on Float Electronics The Float Electronics work, with a caveat! The motor driver we are using dances right on the edge of the operating current of the motor. This means that if the motor spikes in current draw it has a nasty habit of lighting on fire. This is not a big enough issue to completely halt testing, but it is a big enough issue that I want to completely resolve it before the competition. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-3-22-24/ Fri, 22 Mar 2024 06:41:39 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-3-22-24/ Float Electronics This was a successful week for the float on the electronics front. There were some small issues with the PCB that needed to be corrected. I was supplying the 5v pin with 5v, but that is actually and output pin. I was thankfully able to correct that by simply cutting the trace. The hall effect sensors were not acting as reliably as I was hoping they would. I isolated the circuit and tested until I realized that the issue was one extension wire that we were using. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-3-14-24/ Thu, 14 Mar 2024 13:44:05 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-3-14-24/ Float PCB I finished the schematics for the float PCB last week, but it took me a long time to route it. I had to use jumper cables to jump between traces because I was not able to fit everything on one layer. I made sure that the hall effect sensors are actually getting 5 volts and getting pulled up to 5 volts. I am hoping that it will be more reliable because of that change. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-3-7-24/ Thu, 07 Mar 2024 14:01:31 -0500 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-3-7-24/ Working on the Float This week I kept working on improving the float’s electronics while Ben worked on tuning the buoyancy of the float and making mounts for the hall effect sensor. Electronics The main issue that we have been trying to solve is the hall effect sensor’s reliability. Right now the hall effect sensor is fairly accurate, but it is too vital of a component to fail even 1% of the time. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-2-15-24/ Thu, 15 Feb 2024 19:51:15 -0500 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-2-15-24/ Making the Float PCB This week I finally milled the PCB for the float. My first attempt worked with the small problem that the mounting holes were slightly too far apart. After I remilled the PCB everything seemed to work, but when I plugged in the cable to drive the motor and give the 12v of power the profiling feature stopped working. Milling the PCB was more of a challenge then I was anticipating. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-2-8-24/ Fri, 09 Feb 2024 06:36:21 -0500 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-2-8-24/ Making My Own Dev Board Last week I started using KiCad and I really enjoyed it. I thought that it might be fun to try to make my own Dev Board. With the help of Roman I selected the STM32F103C8. It is a fast and extremely low cost microcontroller that JLCPCB keeps on reserve. Roman also pointed me in the direction of a very good tutorial made by Phil’s Lab. In this tutorial he makes an STM32 based microcontroller, but the chip is slightly different, so I get the joy of figuring out how to adapt everything. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-2-1-24/ Thu, 01 Feb 2024 22:17:49 -0500 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-2-1-24/ Float Issues We assembled the float, and we noticed that it was intermittently working. The hall effect sensor would sometimes detect the magnet and sometimes it would not. After some troubleshooting we realized that the issue was that the internal pullup resistors in the Adafruit QT Py are not strong enough for the length of the bus we are using. I added a 10k resistor to the model using Autodesk Eagle. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-1-26-24/ Fri, 26 Jan 2024 13:34:30 +0000 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-1-26-24/ Working on the Typewriter I decided to save time and use a shell script and systemd service to run the typewriter software on the raspberry pi. It works perfectly and automatically starts up when you give it power. Unfortunately the typewriter ran out of ink. We had some spare cartridge, but they were not compatible with the typewriter. We wanted to see if we could take the ribbon out of the old typewriter cartridge and put it into the new one. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-1-18-24/ Fri, 19 Jan 2024 12:34:25 +0000 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-1-18-24/ Introduction This week I worked on many projects for small amounts of time. I worked with Ben helping him assemble the float, I helped get people onto the server, I worked on the typewriter, and I experimented with a new kind of gripper. Typewriter I tried building the docker container for arm, I keep on running into different problems with this. Docker buildx is saying that it is not able to connect to the https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-1-4-24/ Thu, 04 Jan 2024 12:39:33 -0500 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-1-4-24/ Learning Go I started the week by learning the Go Programming language. I thought it might be interesting because it is a more modern programming language than I am used to using. I used the Go by example set of guides to learn it and I found it interesting, I want to use it on the back end of my next project. Fixing the Typewriter Mr. Christy reversed engineered an electric typewriter over the course of the last few years. https://josephscottcampbell.com/float/ Thu, 21 Dec 2023 19:50:58 -0500 https://josephscottcampbell.com/float/ What is a Float? A vertically profiling float is an underwater vehicle that uses a buoyancy engine to move itself through a column of water. A buoyancy engine is an emerging technology that changes its density so it can float or sink at will. The main benefit of using a buoyancy engine over a more traditional propulsion method is energy efficiently. A buoyancy engine only needs to input energy for a small portion of the time that it is moving. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-12-21-23/ Thu, 21 Dec 2023 13:22:21 -0500 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-12-21-23/ Float Progress This week my progress was a slightly hampered because I was not able to work on the depth sensor. I believe the previous depth sensor was dead-on-arrival, but I do not want to try using the new depth sensor until I am sure that I was not the culprit. I focused on making a waterproof bulkhead for the antenna this week rather than working on the depth sensor. Mr. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-12-14-23/ Thu, 14 Dec 2023 13:02:45 -0500 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-12-14-23/ Depth Sensor Last week I emailed BlueRobotics about the problems I have been having with the depth sensor. The depth sensor is returning consistent garbage to the microcontroller. Support got back to me, they asked for close up pictures of the way I had the sensor set up. After sending them pictures of my setup, they said that I2C connections are not supposed to be as long as I had it. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-12-7-23/ Thu, 07 Dec 2023 12:45:02 -0500 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-12-7-23/ Depth Sensor For the MATE ROV 2024 competition we need the float to be able to accurately measure the depth of the float. Thankfully Blue Robotics makes a sealed depth sensor that can be mounted similarly to a Wetlink Penetrator. Connecting to Adafruit QT PY I am using polarized connectors to connect the depth sensor to the board. I crimped them so I can switch from the Adafruit QT JST connectors to other connectors. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-11-30-23/ Thu, 30 Nov 2023 12:49:58 -0500 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-11-30-23/ Working on Float Electronics This week I primarily worked on the electronics for the float. We are now on track with the goals for the electronics. PCB Franklin and I went though a few iterations of the PCB, and we arrived at a design that works. We are using polarized snap-in connectors for all the electrical connections in the float. Last year one of the most common failures was caused by connectors coming apart, and this is intended to fix that issue. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-11-17-23/ Fri, 17 Nov 2023 07:11:06 -0500 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-11-17-23/ Float I started this week by working on the float. I am trying to catch up on the deadlines from October. The deadlines were intentionally very aggressive so we were expecting to be a little bit behind schedule. I succeeded in catching up to the October goals on the electronics and software side, and I think I will be able to meet the November goals. You can find the self-imposed deadlines for different elements of the float here. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/float-documentation/ Wed, 08 Nov 2023 17:43:45 -0500 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/float-documentation/ Firmware Documentation Goals The float needs to be able to do the following tasks Complete profiles on command (control motor driver) Measure depth of the bottom of the float accurately Communicate depth/time back to surface station after each profile Communicate information about the team and the current UTC time to surface Indicator LEDs There is an indicator LED on the Adafruit Py QT. This chart shows what each behavior means. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-11-9-23/ Wed, 08 Nov 2023 12:55:43 -0500 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-11-9-23/ Introduction This was a very short week, we had a voting day and Veterans Day, so I could only do two days of work this week. Finishing Breadboard In order to make sure everything is working I wanted to test the breadboard with every component on it. I put the hall effect sensor, microcontroller, motor driver, and the motor. Everything worked as expected with the code. Setting Up Indicator Lights One of the design elements we wanted to add for both the LED and float are hardware indicators for everything. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-11-2-23/ Thu, 02 Nov 2023 13:19:47 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-11-2-23/ Introduction I got sidetracked this week helping other people with their projects for the first few days. Next week I plan on focusing solely on the float and getting the float’s code to the point where I can start focusing on the electronics. Helping Anthony With His Jersey Frame I helped Anthony with his code on for his Jersey Frame. His project is making a LED Light Up Frame for a sports Jersey. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-10-27-23/ Thu, 26 Oct 2023 12:51:40 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-10-27-23/ Functional Communication Reliable communication method, ArudinoWebsockets and WiFi. I want interacting with the float to resemble using a shell like bash. I have been testing the floats communication with the python3 websockets library example client. You can use that by running python3 -m websockets ws://ip.address. I am connecting to a preexisiting WiFi network rather than hosting a hotspot because it makes it simpler to debug. I don’t need to disconnect from the internet to interact with the microcontroller. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-10-20-23/ Tue, 17 Oct 2023 13:32:39 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-10-20-23/ Getting GPIO on Adafruit Py QT Working Getting the GPIO working on the Adafruit Py QT has been a challenge. This week I was finally able to do it using the Arduino IDE. I learned I had been using the wrong documentation for the board. It uses a SEEED Xiao footprint, but it is not compatible with the software. I was able to find the documentation made specifically for the Adafruit Py QT and it made the process much smoother. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-10-13-23/ Thu, 12 Oct 2023 12:33:38 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-10-13-23/ PBS Nova Interview Matty Harris, Zach Bertocchi, Noah Gibson and I had an interview with PBS Nova. Similarly to the other interviews that we did it was very fun to get to look behind the scenes of how the news is made. The people at Nova were great to work with. They let us take the interview in the direction we were interested in, and did not try to spin the narrative at all. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-10-5-23/ Thu, 05 Oct 2023 12:42:28 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-10-5-23/ Antivirus Research I had COVID for part of the week, so I could not work in the shop. During that time, I tested how Windows Defender detects RATs. I researched how Windows Defender detects RATs last year when I made one that uses Websockets for C2. I noticed that Windows would detect the malware once dialed out to my server. To test if dialing out was triggering Antivirus, I made a very similar RAT, but instead of using my server for C2, I used Discord. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-9-29-23/ Thu, 28 Sep 2023 11:41:13 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-9-29-23/ Continued Work on Battery Holder While I was waiting for the radios to come in I made the cylindrical battery holder in CAD. Later in the week Ben Wirz cleaned up the model. The limit for voltage on non-ROV devices in the MATE ROV competition in 12 volts, so we are putting 8 AA batteries in it (8*1.5=12). Testing Radios The replacement RFM69HCW radios came in from Adafruit. We bought the 433MHz Spring Antenna with them. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-9-22-23/ Thu, 21 Sep 2023 12:48:51 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-9-22-23/ Continued Work on Communication On Monday I started work by testing my last theory about why the packet radios might be acting up. I put them in 443 MHz mode and fashioned an antenna with the proper length for 433MHz. When I did a range test I found that it was able to go much farther and much more reliably, but it was not reliable enough to be used in the float. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-9-15-23/ Thu, 14 Sep 2023 12:01:01 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-9-15-23/ Float For most of this week I focused on the vertical profiling float. I started off by setting some long term goals by writing a timeline and outline for the float this year. The project timeline should have a working float that we can test for reliability by the end of 2023. The goals for September are: Choose communication technology Choose easily available motor Have CAD model of modular base Having working example “ping, pong” radio code Get a new bigger tube Radio Selection The first goal was choosing a communication technology. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/float-outline-2023-2024/ Mon, 11 Sep 2023 11:23:09 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/float-outline-2023-2024/ Project Goals The goals for the Sunk Robotics float this year are supposed to address the shortcomings of the float last year. The float was able to complete vertical profiles and was built on a good frame, but it had reliability issues, and was not able to complete the communication part of the task. We are planning on designing a PCB and having a board house manufactured it. We also want a more reiable battery solution. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-9-8-23/ Wed, 06 Sep 2023 09:58:10 -0700 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-9-8-23/ Setting Up Workstations Mr. Christy asked Joao and I to set up the new workstations. The computers were already built by Zack and Cormac last year, so we only needed to plug in the peripherals and flash the shop’s Windows 10 Image on them. To do this we used two thumb drives. One with Macrium Reflect, and one with Windows 10. We booted off of the Macrium Reflect USB, and flashed the Windows 10 Image. https://josephscottcampbell.com/press/ Thu, 24 Aug 2023 21:07:48 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/press/ Wired - CharlieCard Hack - Andy Greenberg NPR - CharlieCard Hack - Arun Rath and Kana Ruthalter WBZ Radio - CharlieCard Hack - Matt Shearer View this post on Instagram A post shared by Matt Shearer (@reportermatt) Boston Globe - CharlieCard Hack - Hiawatha Bray https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/get-free-hotspot-data/ Thu, 17 Aug 2023 21:48:28 -0700 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/get-free-hotspot-data/ Introduction Most data plans have a very small amount of “hotspot data” allowed, oftentimes when you use up all of your hotspot data the network will throttle your hotspot connection to an excruciatingly slow speed. That begs the question: How does the cell carrier know what data is coming from your phone, and what data is going through a hotspot? The short answer is through a piece of metadata associated with each packet called Time to Live (TTL). https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/def-con-blog-4/ Sun, 13 Aug 2023 10:04:43 -0700 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/def-con-blog-4/ Day 4 - Sunday Sunday did not have too much going on becausw all of the villages were shutting down. We tried to watch a talk about memory injection in linux, but we got kicked out because we could not find seats. Zack Noah and I went to the voting machine village, we learned how to hack the voting machines used in the 2008 and 2012 election. You simply pull the screen down, unplug the card reader, hit a reboot button, wait for the machine to reboot, then finally press change settings. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/def-con-blog-3/ Sat, 12 Aug 2023 10:04:43 -0700 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/def-con-blog-3/ Day 3 - Saturday I was not able to get myself up as early as I did on the previous days, so I only got to the conference at about 11am. We went around the convention center and talked to people, but everything was very busy and we did not want to wait in lines. Second Rave Lights Hacking Attempt We figured out some more about how the rave lights are supposed to be hacked. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/def-con-blog-2/ Fri, 11 Aug 2023 10:04:43 -0700 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/def-con-blog-2/ Day 2 - Friday On Thursday I got up at 6am so I could see the conference early. There was not much open but it was still very fun to walk around and talk to people. Once the lockpicking village opened I went there, it was terrifyingly easy to pick padlocks. Within an hour of first picking up a pick set I was able to open master locks in a few minutes. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/def-con-blog-1/ Thu, 10 Aug 2023 10:04:43 -0700 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/def-con-blog-1/ Day 1 - Thursday On Thursday we got up at 5:45 so that we could practice our talk one last time. The Talk We went to the greenroom and got our speaker badges. The speaker ops team was very surprised when the realized how young we were. When we went on stage we were shocked by how full the room was. Almost all the seats were full, with even more people standing in the back. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/def-con-blog-0/ Wed, 09 Aug 2023 10:04:43 -0700 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/def-con-blog-0/ Day 0 - Wednesday The convention officially starts on Thursday but there are many DEF CON attendees in the hotels before that. It was a unique and fun experience talking to so many people in the cybersecurity industry. We interviewed with Andy Greenberg over the phone about our security research for the Wired article about it. We went to the convention center to see where our talk was so we could quickly get there in the morning. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/rpi-pico-review/ Sun, 06 Aug 2023 22:56:06 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/rpi-pico-review/ TLDR; The Raspberry Pi Pico is a great microcontroller hardware wise. It is very fast, cheap, and works well. It is my go to for projects that use WiFi, but it has a serious library support issue. As with any technology it has its place, but there are many applications that other microcontrollers are better suited towards. Introduction - What is a Raspberry Pi Pico The Raspberry Pi Pico is a low cost microcontroller released by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/docker-minecraft/ Fri, 04 Aug 2023 16:00:07 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/docker-minecraft/ What is Docker? Docker is a utility that allows you to run applications in a virtualized environment conveniently. This makes your system as a whole more secure, because if an attacker gets into one container, it is harder to infect the whole system. Another big advantage is that when that application crashes, you can simply restart the whole stack running that application. That restarts almost anything that could have crashed and be causing issues without effecting the rest of your server. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/securing-for-def-con/ Fri, 04 Aug 2023 14:20:08 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/securing-for-def-con/ Intro - What is DEFCON DEFCON is one of the largest cybersecurity conventions in the world. Every year it takes place in Vegas and brings people from all over. Having all of those hackers in one place makes for a fun environment with lots of learning opportunities, but it also makes an environment where your threat model has to be a little bit more extreme. My Threat Model The bottom line is I am not a particularly interesting person to hack. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/float-project-6-5-2023/ Wed, 05 Jul 2023 01:06:25 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/float-project-6-5-2023/ Introduction I have been working on a vertical profiling float for the MATE ROV competition for the past few months. In that time we have gone through two iterations. The current float we have can reliably do vertical profiles, but the communication will be reworked next year because of some interference issues we had with the water. Since the last blog post I have started working with Ben Wirz on the project. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/def-con-1/ Wed, 05 Jul 2023 01:06:25 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/def-con-1/ What We Will Be Talking About Some other MVTHS students, Matthew Harris, Zach Bertocci, Noah Gibson, and I hacked the MBTA Charlie Card System and responsibilty disclosed it. I cannot give too much information on it yet, but it will all be available during DEF CON, and I will release more after it. I can’t spoil the surprise. All the information that I am allowed to release about the talk is in this forum post. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/lightbox-2/ Sun, 05 Feb 2023 12:20:39 -0500 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/lightbox-2/ Intro I started writing this post on 02/05/2023, but got busy, so I am finishing it on 05/06/2023. By the time this post is available the lightbox will have been done for a long time. Physical Construction Material Choice I wanted by lightbox to be fairly large, but I did not want to break the bank so I decided to use cardboard. I used a program called Slicer for Fusion which takes a 3D model and slices it into layers that can be laser cut and glued together. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/lightbox-1/ Wed, 30 Nov 2022 18:52:53 -0500 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/lightbox-1/ Introduction One of the required projects in the Robotics Curriculum is The Lightbox Project, because it is required I had to do this before continuing to work on the Float Project. The lightbox is a project where LEDs controlled by some external variable illuminate a piece of etched acrylic. My Design Outline The basic outline for the design of my lightbox is a cylinder with 6 indents where pieces of acrylic are placed with logos for different stocks on them, the logos will then be illuminated with different intensities of green or red depending on the percentage change of yesterday’s price to the current price. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/float-project-10-03-11-12/ Sun, 30 Oct 2022 17:46:30 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/float-project-10-03-11-12/ Introduction For the MATE ROV competition in 2023 we need to build a device that can sink to the bottom of the pool, then rise to the top of the pool and transmit data repeatedly following these specifications. In order to earn the full points for the challenge we need to use a buoyancy engine. A buoyancy engine is a device that is able to change its density in order to sink and float in water. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-9-26-22/ Wed, 05 Oct 2022 17:12:45 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-9-26-22/ Robotics Class Finishing Wrench I wanted to keep the first edition of my wrench, so I started the week by cutting a new wrench and cleaning up the edges with an angle grinder. After that I spray painted the wrench red in many small coats. Once it dried I put the wrench into the laser cutter and rastered the text I wanted onto the wrench. Image of wrench Starting Breadboard Arduino Later in the week I started putting together a Breadboard Arduino in order to make progress towards the required light box project. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-9-19-22/ Mon, 26 Sep 2022 08:41:35 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-9-19-22/ Robotics Class This week I focused on making a wrench that is 7/16 of an inch on one side and 10mm on the other side. This wrench is for rigging spot rowing boats, I need both sizes of wrench because depending on the manufacturer and model of the boat they can use either 7/16in or 10mm. I made a 3D model of the wrench in Fusion360, then projected it onto a 2D plane. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-9-12-22/ Sat, 17 Sep 2022 07:31:13 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-9-12-22/ Finishing the Turner’s Cube During the beginning of the week I finished the Turner’s Cube. I first finished facing the cube to 1x1x1in, then I moved setting up the machine for making the pockets in the cube. To do that I first found the correct bit for making the pockets, then I set up the offsets in the Milling Machine. Once I had finished that I started to make the GCODE on the milling machine, having it drill one pocket 0. https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-9-5-22/ Sat, 10 Sep 2022 19:39:10 -0400 https://josephscottcampbell.com/posts/week-review-9-5-22/ I spent the majority of this week working in the machine shop, learning how to use the milling machines from Mr. L with Clark Barayuga, Grace Kallberg, and Jacklyn Whealan. Before we could begin to use the milling machines Clark and I replaced all of the vice jaws, and made the vice’s reference edges straight within 5/1000 of an inch along the length of the vice. We did this by repeatedly measuring the change in the Y-Axis while moving a Haimer 3D-Sensor along the X-Axis of the reference edge, then adjusting the vice with a mallet until the change in the Y-Axis was within our margin of error. https://josephscottcampbell.com/about/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://josephscottcampbell.com/about/ I am a freshman at Worchester Polytechnic Insitute. I am in the graduating class of 2029 and have strong interests in embedded programming and cyber security. I have experience writing programs for embedded, desktop, and server platforms in Python, C, C++, and shell scripting. My cyber security experience is centered around Web and Binary Exploitation. This year at DEF CON 31 three other students and I spoke about our hack on the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Agency) where we were able to create fraudulent value on CharlieCards. https://josephscottcampbell.com/showcase/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://josephscottcampbell.com/showcase/ MBTA Hack Three other students and I were able to hack into the Massachusetts Bay Transportation agency and responsibly disclosed it. We gave the first talk at DEF CON 31 about it. Our attack found new vulnerabilities in MiFare Classic that allowed us to circumvent the checksum. This allows us to add anywhere between $0 and $327.67 to a CharlieCard as well as create different card types (student, senior, employee, etc).