Didier Stevens

Monday 5 February 2007

A running light with a PIN

Filed under: Hardware,Nonsense — Didier Stevens @ 1:49

We all know the problem, you’ve set-up a running light as Christmas decoration, and then a kid starts changing the patterns you’ve programmed.

But not anymore, I’ve made a running light with security: you need a PIN to access the configuration switches!

The movie is hosted here on YouTube, and you can find a hires version (XviD) here.

Joking aside: I got a set of E-blocks from Matrix Multimedia for Christmas.

E-blocks are a suite of small circuit boards each of which contains a block of electronics that you would typically find in an electronic system. Each E-block performs a separate function as either an input sub-system, an output subsystem or a processing subsystem. E-blocks are connected together using 8 wire buses on 9 way D-type plugs and sockets.

My microcontroller is an ARM board. I develop the embedded programs on my laptop in C/C++, and then transfer the executable to the ARM’s flash memory via USB. Once programmed, the ARM executes the program independently, my laptop is disconnected.

To familiarize myself with the E-blocks, I started programming some simple applications, like a running light. And after that, just for fun, I added security…

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