🌍 23 Websites You Need to Bookmark
The internet is full of hidden gems—like sites that remove paywalls, find recipes based on what’s in your fridge, and even tell you the best glue for sticking this to that. 🔥📌
#InternetHacks
Taking Back The Internet With The Tildeverse https://hackaday.com/2024/09/14/taking-back-the-internet-with-the-tildeverse/ #Retrocomputing #internethacks #minimalist #Tildeverse #Fediverse #minecraft #gemini #Gopher #radio #retro #Tilde #voip #www
A Look At The Small Web, Part 1 https://hackaday.com/2024/09/10/a-look-at-the-small-web-part-1/ #CurrentEvents #internethacks #OriginalArt #Featured #Interest #smallweb #gemini #Gopher #HTTP
A History of Internet Outages https://hackaday.com/2024/07/27/a-history-of-internet-outages/ #internetoutages #submarinecables #internethacks #CrowdStrike #History
Linksys Velop Routers Caught Sending WiFi Creds in the Clear https://hackaday.com/2024/07/15/linksys-velop-routers-caught-sending-wifi-creds-in-the-clear/ #internethacks #SecurityHacks #plaintext #linksys #router
Ask Hackaday: Has Firefox Finally Gone Too Far? https://hackaday.com/2024/07/14/ask-hackaday-has-firefox-finally-gone-too-far/ #internethacks #SoftwareHacks #webbrowser #firefox #privacy
The Gopher Revival Is Upon Us https://hackaday.com/2023/12/29/the-gopher-revival-is-upon-us/ #internethacks #finger #gemini #Gopher #web
Browsing The WWW On a 1980s IBM PC Using MicroWeb https://hackaday.com/2023/11/06/browsing-the-www-on-a-1980s-ibm-pc-using-microweb/ #Retrocomputing #internethacks #MicroWeb #IBMPC
Is a Pigeon faster than the Internet? https://hackaday.com/2023/09/02/is-a-pigeon-faster-than-the-internet/ #internethacks #carrierpigeon #internetspeed #datatransfer #pigeon
Stay Online When The Power Goes Out With This Fiber Modem UPS Hack https://hackaday.com/2023/08/30/stay-online-when-the-power-goes-out-with-this-fiber-modem-ups-hack/ #UninterruptiblePowerSupply #internethacks #fibermodem #verizon #ups
Share Your Projects: Leave Breadcrumbs https://hackaday.com/2023/08/09/share-your-projects-leave-breadcrumbs/ #internethacks #documentation #research #Skills #forums
2600 Breaks Free From DRM with PDF/EPUB Subscription https://hackaday.com/2023/07/21/2600-breaks-free-from-drm-with-pdf-epub-subscription/ #internethacks #amazon #kindle #ebook #News #2600 #drm
SSH Is Magic, But Tunnels are Even Better
Once upon a time, I was doing on-site support for a hardware install at a hotel a few years ago. The remote tech's remote desktop software didn't want to play with my Linux laptop, so he couldn't get into the switch he needed to configure, to make the install work. I asked if it had an SSH port he could use, were he were in the room with me. Of course it did, but that didn't do him much good. I ran a reverse SSH tunnel out to my public server, and pointed it at the switch on the local side. I convinced him to SSH to my server on the given port, and he was magically connected to his switch. He was literally in awe of that trick, and demanded to know how it could be done. SSH is magical, but tunneling traffic over SSH is straight-up wizardry. [Shawn Powers] agrees, and decided to help the rest of us understand the process.
There are two basic ways to launch a tunnel, the first being a local tunnel, that listens on the local machine, and forwards it to the remote machine. On the other hand, a remote tunnel will listen on the remote machine, and deliver the traffic to the local machine. The real fun begins when you have multiple SSH sessions, and connect one tunnel to another, to route something just where you need it. For extra credit, check out the hidden SSH command line, by pressing Enter, then tilde and the C key, each one at a time. Also for extra credit, check out the rest of [Shawn]'s Linux content, to learn some extra Linux goodness.
Know which way the wind blows, whether weather boosts your mood
As a quantified-self experiment, [Ayan] has tracked several daily habits and moods for a couple of years and discovered some insights. Too much coffee is followed by anxiety while listening to music leads to feelings of motivation and happiness. There was a strong correlation in the data, but [Ayan] wondered if external factors like the weather and air quality also played a role.
To find out, [Ayan] extended the custom dashboard built in Notion.so with weather data and some local sensors. Working at Balena.io (yes, the makers of the ubiquitous Raspberry Pi SD card flashing tool, Etcher), [Ayan] turned to balenaCloud to translate the data from (you guessed it) a Raspberry Pi into the dashboard via Notion’s API beta. We think Notion holds a lot of promise for all sorts of web-based dashboards as a research notebook and organizational tool. Who knows where the API will lead any interested readers?
Check out the full tutorial where [Ayan] walks you through the hardware used and each step to connect the APIs that bring it all together. [Ayan] plans to add a coffee-maker integration to automate that data entry and would welcome help getting a manual trigger set up for the data integrations.
#hardware #internethacks #raspberrypi #balena #datacollection #etcher #notion #quantifiedself #raspberrypihat #sensehat
Classic Multimeter Tells You If Your WiFi’s Working
Debugging network issues isn't easy; many a sysadmin has spent hours trying to figure out which of the many links between client and server is misbehaving. Having a few clear pointers helps: if you can show that the internet connection is up, that already narrows down the problem to either the server or, most likely, the client computer.
After hearing "is the internet up" one too many times, [whiskeytangohotel] decided to make a clearly visible indicator to show the status of the local uplink. He used his father's old Simpson 260 VOM as a display, with its large analog indicator pointing at a steady value if the internet's up, and wagging back and forth if there's an outage. The exact value indicated is determined by the average ping time for a couple of different servers, so that you can also tell if the connection is slower than normal.
The ping times are measured by an ESP8266 connected to WiFi, which checks a predefined list of web servers and calculates the average ping time every fifteen seconds. An analog value in the 2.5 V range is then generated and measured by the meter. The smooth motion of an old analog meter stands in nice contrast to the modern-day problem of unstable WiFi.
While analog multimeters definitely have their uses, we're the first to admit that our classic meters don't see as much action as they could. Repurposing them as [whiskeytangohotel] did is a neat way of keeping those heirlooms around for the next generation. Of course, if you don't have an analog multimeter, you could also use an analog clock for your ping meter.
#internethacks #analogmultimeter #connectionspeed #pingmeter
Gaming Twitter’s Trending Algorithm To Make A Point
If you have ever taken to Twitter to gauge the zeitgeist, you'll have noticed that among the trending hashtags related to major events of the day there are sometimes outliers of minority interest associated with single-issue causes. When a cause with a distasteful pedigree was cited one as proof of widespread public support in a debate in the UK's House of Lords there were concerns raised that a flaw in the ranking algorithm might be responsible, and it was left to [Mallory Moore] to prove the hypothesis by getting a #ThisIsAnExploit hashtag trending without a groundswell of popular support.
Some previous detective work had established that equal ranking might be awarded equally not simply for Tweeting a hashtag but also for retweeting it. The exploit takes advantage of this by means of a relatively small cadre of people all Tweeting the tag a number of times, then retweeting all other instances of it. The resulting rank gain is then in the order of the square of the number of accounts interacting with the tag, and thus hugely inflated over the number of real participants. To test this she created the #ThisIsAnExploit tag and asked her followers to do just that: Tweet it and retweet all others containing it. In a short time the exploit succeeded, beating a very high-profile tag associated with the travails of the British Prime Minister in the process, and with most of the effort due to only 50 accounts.
Our world is now significantly influenced by social media because for many it appears more trustworthy than the old-style mass media with a print origin. Work like this is important because a reminder that transferring the message from newspaper proprietors to tech barons does not confer credibility is sorely needed. Meanwhile now the weakness is in the wild we wonder how Hackaday readers might have fun with it. Does anyone want to see a #RaiseTheJollyWrencher hashtag top the pile?
Casually Chirping Into The World Of LoRaWAN
While wireless communications are unquestionably useful in projects, common wireless protocols such as WiFi and Bluetooth peter out after only a number of meters, which is annoying when your project is installed in the middle of nowhere. Moving to an LTE-based or similar mobile solution can help with the range, but this does not help when there's poor cell coverage, and it tends to use more power. Fortunately, for low-bitrate, low-power wide-area networks (LPWAN) like e.g. sensor networks, there's a common solution in the form of LoRaWAN, as in long-range wide area network (WAN).
The proprietary LoRa RF modulation technique that underlies LoRaWAN is based on Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS). This modulation technique is highly resistant to channel noise and fading as well as Doppler shift, enabling it to transmit using relatively low power for long distances. LoRaWAN builds on top of the physical layer provided by LoRa to then create the protocol that devices can then use to communicate with other LoRa devices.
Courtesy of global LoRaWAN gateway and software providers such as The Things Industries and ThingSpeak , it's possible even as a hobbyist to set up a LoRaWAN-powered sensor network with minimal cost. Let's take take a look at exactly what is involved in setting up LoRaWAN devices, and what possible alternatives to LoRaWAN might be considered.
No Free RF Lunch
When it comes to picking the appropriate wireless communication protocol for a project, it's essential to keep in mind that one gets to pick any two of the following high bandwidth, long distance, long battery life. This is evidenced by for example how amazingly quickly one's smartphone drains its battery when ramping up gigabyte-sized transfers over 5G mmWave, whereas Zigbee manages a paltry 250 kb/s, but can operate for months on a coin cell, or forever using energy harvesting.
LoRa spreading factor comparison (Credit: Sakshama Ghoslya)
LoRaWAN has a best-case data throughput rate (Adelantado et al., 2017) of a few tens of kilobits per second, depending on the spreading factor (SF). Here the SF is essentially the ratio for how fast the transmitted signal is being sent: a higher SF (up to 12) means a slower transmission and thus lower bandwidth (<1 kbps), but with increased reliability. A lower SF (down to 7) means that the signal is being transmitted faster, thus with higher bandwidth, but with possible loss of reliability.
LoRaWAN does support parity bits, as every fifth bit, and LoRaWAN end devices ('motes') generally wait for an acknowledgement from the gateway so that they can retransmit in case of a timeout. Even so, depending on the environment, messages may be lost due to interference, obstructions and competing motes sending data.
LoRa achieves its long-distance performance as mentioned using CSS, which is a form of spread spectrum signaling, but different from frequency hopping (FHSS) or direct-sequence spread spectrum (DSSS), the latter of which underlies Zigbee and some forms of WiFi (IEEE 802.11). Where CSS differs is that it does not use any special encoding, uses a constant amplitude yet modulates in the frequency domain.
LoRa signaling can thus be identified as 'chirps' in the RF spectrum, that either increase in frequency ('up-chirp') or decrease ('down-chip') within a certain band, either 125 kHz or 500 kHz. These can be used to create symbols that are then used to encode LoRa frames, as in the below image.
A LoRa communication sequence, showing the distinct up- and down-chirp symbols. (Credit: Sakshama Ghoslya)
In this sequence we see 8 preamble up-chirp symbols that identify the start of a LoRa frame, following by two down-chirp synchronization symbols. These are then followed by the payload message. The exact duration of each symbol is dependent on the SF chosen.
Adding The Wide Area
As alluded to earlier, LoRaWAN relies on gateways to act as the interface between LoRa-enabled devices and the wider Internet, translating from LoRa to an IP-based protocol and vice versa. The company behind LoRa (Semtech) covers the details behind this in their documentation. This includes the security aspect of transmitting the data via LoRaWAN. Assuming end devices are configured with security keys, all traffic between an end device and server can be fully authenticated and encrypted.
Basic LoRaWAN layout. (Credit: Semtech)
Another important aspect with LoRaWAN end devices is that of device classes. Here three distinct classes are identified, which largely depends on their power budget:
- class A: these are devices which wake up occasionally to communicate with a server, transmit some data, etc. This could be e.g. a sensor node.
- class B: devices that interact with a server on set intervals, allowing it to also respond to requests.
- class C: in this category, the device is always powered-on and always communicating.
Just Plug It In
ST B-L072Z-LRWAN1 LoRaWAN/Sigfox development board.
At this point, we should have a clear idea of what the technology behind LoRaWAN entails, and what is needed to set up a LoRaWAN. This raises the question of where exactly we would get a gateway and the other requisite hardware from. Assuming that we're not looking at setting up a commercial operation here, we are still left with a number of straightforward options to get started.
Essentially the way to go is to purchase some off-the-shelf modules to connect to one's computing or sensor platform of choice and also create your own gateway, or create an account with one of the open LoRaWANs active in the target region.
Here typing 'LoRaWAN module' into one's search engine of choice gets you a smorgasbord of choice, ranging from Semtech's SX1301 to Murata's offerings or one of the dozens of alternatives, obtainable as IC to integrate into your own hardware design, as pluggable module or as entire development board (e.g. STM32L0-based). What the best choice is would mostly depend on the device class and whether it's intended to be an end device or gateway.
With that sorted, the main question is probably whether to run one's own gateway or not. If yes, then ThingSpeak (Ruby-based, GitHub) and The Things Stack (Go-based, GitHub) by The Things Industries are two popular options. If that isn't your jam, or setting up gateways in the area where you intend to deploy the end devices isn't feasible, signing up to use the ThingSpeak's network, or The Things Network is an option. This comes with online dashboards as well, removing the need for any locally hosted server hardware.
Not The Only Game In Town
Of course LoRaWAN isn't the only option here. Another common LPWAN option is Sigfox, though its reach among hobbyists is at this point somewhat limited. DASH7 is an interesting, open protocol, which operates just like LoRaWAN in unlicensed bands. Semtech themselves appear to see DASH7 as complementary to LoRaWAN, with DASH7's higher data rates making it more applicable to certain scenarios. Interestingly, Semtech notes that hybrid LoRaWAN and DASH7 devices are already being deployed.
The idea behind this is that sometimes DASH7 is more efficient to use as it can complete a transaction faster with its higher bandwidth, whereas other times LoRaWAN ends up being more energy efficient. This is an aspect that is possibly commonly overlooked in comparisons between these different LPWAN technologies.
Meanwhile, Wael Ayoub et al. (2018) identify LoRaWAN, DASH7 and NB-IoT as the three main LPWAN standards. NB-IoT (Narrowband IoT) was developed by 3GPP, with the first specification being frozen in 2016. Unlike the other two standards, NB-IoT uses licensed spectrum. Both NB-IoT and LoRaWAN feature a similar range, though NB-IoT has the advantage of operating in licensed spectrum, meaning potentially less interference from the countless consumer devices that also operate in those bands.
Wrapping Up
Clearly there are more than enough options around for wireless communications to fill a wide range of needs and requirements. At the moment it would seem that LoRaWAN is the obvious LPWAN choice for hobbyists as well as for small commercial deployments, but DASH7 might make sense if you need more bandwidth.
The best part of all of this is probably how easy it is for even those with a modest budget to get started with fun projects that involve leaving sensor and actuator devices around a wide area, enabling exciting options such as farm automation and monitoring. How things will evolve here the coming years will be hard to tell, but with how unstoppable LPWAN appears to be as part of the IoT wave, it's clear that the options will be increasing rather than decreasing.
#featured #interest #internethacks #originalart #wirelesshacks #dash7 #lorawan #nbiot
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