Comments for Silly Science

Comment on Current Cost ‘Envi’ CC128 Teardown by Jean-Claude WIppler

Jean-Claude WIppler — Sat, 29 May 2010 09:23:19 +0000

That looks like a HopeRF RFM12B transceiver. Operating at 433 MHz, judging from the antenna wire length. See http://www.hoperf.com/rf_fsk/rfm12b.htm – it’s the same module I use, see http://cafe.jeelabs.net/lab/jn4/

ZigBee is a protocol. So they are probably using the ZigBee protocol through the RFM12B. There is an open source implementation at http://freaklabs.org/index.php/FreakZ-Open-Source-Zigbee-Stack.html

Comment on Open Workbench Logic Sniffer First Impressions by Basil Watson

Basil Watson — Fri, 21 May 2010 09:30:48 +0000

Thanks for the comment about inputs being 16 to 32 and not 0 to 15. Just started testing unit . Doing my nut about lack of response of unit

Comment on Energy Monitor – part 2 by dylan

dylan — Thu, 06 May 2010 14:35:15 +0000

There’s a project article using this device at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/tutorials/x-ameetut/index.html

Comment on Energy Monitor – part 2 by silly-scientist

silly-scientist — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:00:54 +0000

Ha! Awesome. That sounds pretty nasty work though… I wonder why Owl made it so hard? But pretty classic code cracking stuff! Would be interested to see if you get it all deciphered and then integrate it into Google Power Meter (see my post on that…)

Comment on Energy Monitor – part 2 by Steve

Steve — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 23:25:52 +0000

Could be interesting.

I had a theory based on something I read on another site though, and I think I’m onto something.

I took the data I snooped off the USB and put it into excel. I then assumed (hey, nothing like a crazy assumption) that the values were sampled radio data, thresholding the values at the average of the data, giving me a bunch of 1s and 0s.

I know that the ID of my transmitter at the moment (it changes if I reset it) is 596 and that they say there are “>4000 IDs per channel”, so I assumed 12-bit ID, then created a sliding 12-bit window and created decimal values across the data. Then I searched for the ID – boom, it’s there, repeatedly, and the bits surrouding it rarely change either – suggesting there’s other constant data too – it’s a pattern beyond randomness, I’m fairly sure.

Now how about THAT for some detective work!

Comment on Energy Monitor – part 2 by silly-scientist

silly-scientist — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 23:13:26 +0000

Hmm, sounds nastily more complex than mine… it might be worth me seeing if I can put it on the USB analyser at work and see if we can get a dump of what’s going on – hopefully that might be a bit more enlightening!

Comment on Energy Monitor – part 2 by Steve

Steve — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:16:46 +0000

My standalone receiver doesn’t appear to have any easy to access outputs – not even found a JTAG or anything. My USB receiver is weird – just a pair of HID devices, one of which gets written to (same packet every time) and the other replies with what i can only assume is what’s buffered up in the radio receiver. Incidentally, the radio in the USB receiver is from an Oregon Scientific weather station… o_O.

Once I’ve had a chance to read the data I’ll hopefully be able to figure out what it is.

Replaying the USB command in Linux hasn’t worked yet either. I wish it was as simple as RS232 and XML!

Comment on Current Cost ‘Envi’ CC128 Teardown by Energy Monitor – part 2 « Silly Science

Energy Monitor – part 2 « Silly Science — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:04:46 +0000

[...] pins? Check again… nope, seems fine. So I decide its time to void the warranty (follow these CC128 teardown instructions at your own [...]

Comment on Energy Monitoring by Energy Monitor – Part 1 « Silly Science

Energy Monitor – Part 1 « Silly Science — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 23:21:02 +0000

[...] the interface cable. The back of the unit has a handy RJ45 connector that has serial in it (see my initial energy monitoring post). This needs connecting to my XC-3 kit so that I can begin to get the data out of it. So time to [...]

Comment on Embedded Traffic Monitor by Energy Monitoring « Silly Science

Energy Monitoring « Silly Science — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:37:47 +0000

[...] receiver and then push the data somewhere useful via Ethernet. In fact I could combine it with my network monitor, ditch the screen and have it push the all the different types of data out into some nice pretty [...]