Using Launcher to select between Bruce Halehound Marauder and Ghost

I installed "Launcher" to select between Bruce Halehound Marauder and Ghost.

Its found at "https://bmorcelli.github.io/Launcher/webflasher.html"

This is a video about using "Launcher" https://youtu.be/CqeIo4jXe6A

Finding the ".bin" files for the SD card is not easy.  Here are the versions and date stamps of the ones that I found that worked. Now I realize that some of them do not give a version number!

Ghost does not include the version number.  Here is the location that I found and version that I used.

For the others I just searched my hard drive for the .bin files that I had previously downloaded.  If you can't find them I could post then to the internet somehow?

Idea for Raspberry Pi called "Pi Spy"

I have an Idea for a device for the Raspberry Pi perhaps called the "Pi Spy".  It would be a "hat" containing a CC1101, NRF24, NFC, IR Tx and IR Rx devices.  I could not find a truely blank proto board.  They all have several runs connected together and that does not work with the eight pin RF devices.  The proto board pictured below does not have all of the GPIO pins.  So the first thing I need to do is make my own proto board.

Then I need to come up with a GPIO to device pinout list for each device.  I want to use existing software and create a menu file to select what application to run for what device.

There is more to come....

Flipper Zero like RF hacking devices compared

Well I started off with a CYD, Cheap Yellow Display, then another then added a Bruce firmware update and now there are eight of them!

Three of them were built me me!  It was not easy.  A CYD is a much easier way to start out.

Then I wanted to try HaleHound, so I made my onn CYD to make all the taping into the circuits a lot easier than using a CYD and adding wires to it..

Now its up to 8 devices.  But all I use them for is for testing remote controls.

Starting from the left is a CYD with Bruce firmware and only one switch because you have to manually change the RF module on the back.

Then there is a CYD with Bruce with lots of switches so the modules do not need to be changed.

Then is the ESP DIV version 1 that uses an esp32 processor.

Then is the ESP DIV version 2 that uses a bigger esp32-S3 processor.

Next is my homemade CYD with Halehound software.

Next is a CYD equiped with Ghost firmware.

Last of all is a CYD with Marauder firmware.

In front of them is my FCFZ, Fully Compatable Flipper Zero.  But it does not work that well in spite of spending many hours on it trying to get it to work.

Comparing RF Devices

Firmware            Marauder Ghost   Bruce  HaleHound  ESP DIV2             

Version               1.4          1.9         1.15        3.6.1        1.7

WIFI                    4/29        7            15           8              7

BLE                     2/12        6            8             7              6

2.4 Ghz                -             -             3             6              2

Sub Ghz               -             -             10           7              3

IR                         -             -              4              -              3

RFID                    -              5            11            6              8

GPS                     -              2            2              1              2

Marauder has sub menu  items

HaleHound adds these:
     SIGINT (Signal Intelligence) – 7
     Radio Test! (Much needed for a DIY)
     Drone – 4 (Much needed these days!

The winners are:

For no soldering: Marauder

For soldering: its a tie between Bruce and Halehound

IF I MISSED FEATURES OR OPTIONS LET ME KNOW AND I WILL UPDATE THIS.

Here is a video comparing them:

.https://youtu.be/2eyKCzUsAdI

HaleHound ESP32-DIV and CYD

I have been trying to get a ESP32-DIV running with an ESP32-S3 processor as is required.  So far, after days of trying, all I have is a blank screen.  I have also tried to make a FCFZ (Fully Compatible Flipper Zero) to no avail.  So, out of the blue, I thought I would try the HaleHound software to see what happens. https://github.com/JesseCHale  I was shocked as it worked on the very first try!  It uses an older ESP32 processor.  I did not expect it to work so I just set it up with jumper wires to test it.

Here is a back view of the jumper wires.  The touch screen was somewhat erratic.  I would like a CYD version with push switches for making selections.  

The screen wiring follows the CYD version but the touch screen uses different I/O pins.  In the schematic of the CYD version the touch screen shares three pins with the LCD thus freeing three pins for other stuff.  BUT THAT IS NOT CORRECT!

Here is a screen capture of the successful ESP32 programming screen.

THis is what the final version looks like

Here is the wiring that I used for the jumpers:

DISPLAY PIN  -  ESP32 PIN

---------------------------------

1. VCC - 3v3

2. GND - GND

3. CS - GPIO15

4. RESET     - EN

5. DC - GPIO2

6. SDI(MOSI)    - GPIO13

7. SCK - GPIO14

8. LED - 3v3

9. SDO(MISO)  - GPIO12      

TOUCH       -       ESP32 DIV   -  CYD

-----------------------------------------------

10 .T_CLK - GPIO25     GPIO25

11. T_CS         - GPIO33     GPIO33

12. T_DIN - GPIO32     GPIO32

13. T_DO     - GPIO35     GPIO39/VN

14. T_IRQ - GPIO34     GPIO36/VP

I have the ESP32-DIV-V1 keyboard working!  Here is the schematic for it:

This is the correction to the CYD schematic found everywhere on the Internet:

Here is the back and front view of the ESP32-DIV-V1 so far.  Next is to add the RF modules.

Here is a video about this device:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOdiIxmgfRE

CYD Cheap Yellow Display with Bruce firmware adding NRF24 CC1101 PN523 and IR

Back in 2020 someone told me the covid19 tests were radioactive.  I pulled out my Geiger counter and proved that was not true.  Now I am hearing the Covid19 vax gives people a Bluetooth/RFID/MAC address.  So I decided to venture into hacking to find out if that is true.

Right away I had a second use for these devices.  I am setting up a Raspberry Pi RaspAP filtered router.  I need to compare signal strength between the RaspAP and  Netgear router.  The objective is to add an antenna to the RaspAP and see how the two compare in signal strength.

I bought a LilyGo and a CYD to compare the two.  The CYD lacks many sensors and the LilyGo has a screen so small that you need a magnifying glass to read it.

So I decided to buy and add the additional sensors to the CYD device. Now there is a guy who has added several modules to a CYD using around 12 switches to select between the modules. I am hoping to simplify the design with less modules, three position switches, and 3D print a case for it.

Here is my preliminary schematic design to connect the CYD with Bruce firmware to several modules.  Some IR devies require 5 Volts, so this may be to much of a simplified schematic.

The IR would not work, it just received nonstop garbage, so I changed the schematic to get rid of the interference that was apparently coming from the powered down NRF24 and or CC1101..

This revision of the CYD/Bruce schematic has the power for the GPS receiver coming form the 3.3 volt upper bus and a switch to power it off as it consumes a lot of power. Also the CS to the RF devices is now switched.

.The 3D printed larger case is at: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7258129

I decided to try to fit everything in the smaller case.  Connecting the wires to the SD connector is tricky.  I then brought them out to a 4 pin connector.

The almost finished wiring, point to point wiring is no fun, a circuit board would be better!  No GPS or NFC yet.  I had to cut away room for the antenna connectors for the NRF24 and CC1101.  I have designed a 3D printed case with these changes built in!

The NFC PN532 was supposed to fit above the IR modules, and be fastened on the back cover.  But the back cover will not allow that! So I went with the GPS receiver instead.

Here is my source for the 1.25mm JST connectors that are needed.

I ran into problems with one CYD.  IT would only support one CC1101 or NRF24 not both or two of the same.  I chased it down to the clock connection.  This CYD has a ground plane right next to the clock connection and it was capacitively coupling the signal to ground.  I added a piece of electrical tape to fix the problem.

While I am at it, here is how it is progressing:

Here is the other side of the board.

Interactive Arduino Uno Ethernet Shield Program

I have developed a Interactive Arduino UNO Ethernet Shield demo program.  It requires lots of memory.  It was a offshoot while I was developing a Ethernet based method of updating my LED signs. However the UNO suffers from a memory shortage just running this demo program!  This is what the screen looks like.  You cannot change D10-D13 because they are used by the Ethernet card.

Here is the video:

I have finally found an easy way to post code on blogger!  Thanks to "http://codeformatter.blogspot.com/" the code can be easily formatted.

 // Arduino Ethernet Interactive with table  
 // By bob Davis  
 // Based on code from Rui Santos  
  
 #include <Ethernet.h>  
 int led1 = 2;  
 int led2 = 3;  
 int led3 = 4;  
 int led4 = 5;  
 int led5 = 6;  
 int led6 = 7;  
 int din1 = 8;  
 int din2 = 9;  
 int din3 = 10;  
 int din4 = 11;  
 int din5 = 12;  
 int din6 = 13;  
 int data1 = 0;  
 byte mac[] = { 0xDE, 0xAD, 0xBE, 0xEF, 0xFE, 0xED };  //physical mac address  
 byte ip[] = { 192, 168, 1, 21 };           // ip in network  
 EthernetServer server(80);               //server port     
 String readString;  
 void setup() {  
  // Open serial communications and wait for port to open:  
  pinMode(led1, OUTPUT);  
  pinMode(led2, OUTPUT);  
  pinMode(led3, OUTPUT);  
  pinMode(led4, OUTPUT);   
  pinMode(led5, OUTPUT);  
  pinMode(led6, OUTPUT);  
  pinMode(din1, INPUT);  
  pinMode(din2, INPUT);  
  // start the Ethernet connection and the server:  
  Ethernet.begin(mac, ip);  
  server.begin();  
 }  
 void loop() {  
  // Create a client connection  
  EthernetClient client = server.available();  
  if (client) {  
   while (client.connected()) {    
    if (client.available()) {  
     char c = client.read();  
     //read char by char HTTP request  
     if (readString.length() < 100) {  
      //store characters to string  
      readString += c;  
      } //if HTTP request has ended  
      if (c == '\n') {       
       client.println("HTTP/1.1 200 OK"); //send new page  
       client.println("Content-Type: text/html");  
       client.println("Refresh: 2"); // refresh every second   
       client.println();     
       client.println("<HTML><BODY>");  
       client.println("<style>table, th, td {padding: 3px; border: 1px solid black;</style>");  
       client.println("<table width=350><tr>");  
       client.println("<th colspan=6>Digital Outputs</th>");  
       client.println("</tr><tr>");  
       client.println("<th>D2</th><th>D3</th>");  
       client.println("<th>D4</th><th>D5</th>");  
       client.println("<th>D6</th><th>D7</th>");  
       client.println("</tr><tr>");  
       client.println("<td><a href=\"/?button1on\"\">Turn On</a></td>");  
       client.println("<td><a href=\"/?button2on\"\">Turn On</a></td>");  
       client.println("<td><a href=\"/?button3on\"\">Turn On</a></td>");  
       client.println("<td><a href=\"/?button4on\"\">Turn On</a></td>");  
       client.println("<td><a href=\"/?button5on\"\">Turn On</a></td>");  
       client.println("<td><a href=\"/?button6on\"\">Turn On</a></td>");  
       client.println("</tr><tr>");  
       client.println("<td><a href=\"/?button1off\"\">Turn Off</a></td>");    
       client.println("<td><a href=\"/?button2off\"\">Turn Off</a></td>");   
       client.println("<td><a href=\"/?button3off\"\">Turn Off</a></td>");    
       client.println("<td><a href=\"/?button4off\"\">Turn Off</a></td>");   
       client.println("<td><a href=\"/?button5off\"\">Turn Off</a></td>");   
       client.println("<td><a href=\"/?button6off\"\">Turn Off</a></td>");   
       client.println("</tr><tr>");  
       client.println("<th colspan=6>Digital Inputs</th>");  
       client.println("</tr><tr>");  
       client.println("<th>D8</th><th>D9</th>");  
       client.println("<th>D10</th><th>D11</th>");  
       client.println("<th>D12</th><th>D13</th>");  
       client.println("</tr><tr>");   
       client.println("<td align='center'>");  
       data1=digitalRead(din1);  
       client.println(data1);  
       client.println("</td>");    
       client.println("<td align='center'>");  
       data1=digitalRead(din2);  
       client.println(data1);  
       client.println("</td>");    
       client.println("</tr><tr>");  
       client.println("<th colspan=6>Analog Inputs</th>");  
       client.println("</tr><tr>");  
       client.println("<th>A0</th><th>A1</th>");  
       client.println("<th>A2</th><th>A3</th>");  
       client.println("<th>A4</th><th>A5</th>");  
       client.println("</tr><tr>");  
       for (int aChannel = 0; aChannel < 6; aChannel++) {  
        int sensorReading = analogRead(aChannel);  
        client.println(" <td align='center'> ");  
        client.println(sensorReading);  
        client.println("</td>");  
      }  
      client.println("</table></BODY></HTML>");  
       delay(1);  
       //stopping client  
       client.stop();  
       //controls the Arduino if you press the buttons  
       if (readString.indexOf("?button1on") >0){ digitalWrite(led1, HIGH); }  
       if (readString.indexOf("?button1off") >0){ digitalWrite(led1, LOW); }  
       if (readString.indexOf("?button2on") >0){ digitalWrite(led2, HIGH); }  
       if (readString.indexOf("?button2off") >0){ digitalWrite(led2, LOW); }  
       if (readString.indexOf("?button3on") >0){ digitalWrite(led3, HIGH); }  
       if (readString.indexOf("?button3off") >0){ digitalWrite(led3, LOW); }  
       if (readString.indexOf("?button4on") >0){ digitalWrite(led4, HIGH); }  
       if (readString.indexOf("?button4off") >0){ digitalWrite(led4, LOW); }  
       if (readString.indexOf("?button5on") >0){ digitalWrite(led5, HIGH); }  
       if (readString.indexOf("?button5off") >0){ digitalWrite(led5, LOW); }  
       if (readString.indexOf("?button6on") >0){ digitalWrite(led6, HIGH); }  
       if (readString.indexOf("?button6off") >0){ digitalWrite(led6, LOW); }  
       //clearing string for next read  
       readString="";   
      }  
     }  
   }  
 }  
 }  

How to and why disable IPv6

In July the world quietly turned on IPv6.  We quickly started having strange network problems.  I have known for quite a while the IPV6 is a hole through your firewall.  A VERY BIG hole at that.  It is designed that way so that officials can trace you even if you are connecting through your neighbors wireless connection.  Well today a news story came out about some of the known the problems with IPv6.  It will be years before IPV6 (and windows 7 for that matter) is safe to use.  The good news is that if you stay with XP you are safe for now.....

"Experts are reporting a rise in the number of attacks that take advantage of known vulnerabilities of IPv6, a next-generation addressing scheme that is being adopted across the Internet. IPv6 replaces the Internet's main communications protocol, which is known as IPv4."  That is from http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/security/scariest-ipv6-attack-scenarios

So you ask how do your turn off IPV6?  Just go into the network properties and get the properties of your network card and disable it right?  NOPE, not a chance.  OK so you Google Microsoft (do not use Bing it never finds what you want) and find how to use regedit to turn it off at: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929852  Now you can breathe a sigh of relief.  Not so quick, according to "The Dude" its still going full blast, its not even slowing down.......

Think about it, if they designed IPV6 to trace every Internet connection through multiple firewalls, are they going to make a way to turn it off?  I doubt it.  But here is a fudge fix.  remember back when you looked up the network properties of your network card and turned off IPV6?  There was an IP associated with it.  Go to your firewall and block that IP from ever accessing the Internet.  I will not guarantee that will work either but I do not know of any other method.

3LW 8108 or SC8108 Network Cable Tester

As promised I will tell you about my experiences with the 8108 or SC8108 Network Cable Tester. I bought it on Ebay for around $50, that is a far cry from the price of some cable testers!

The first feature that the seller did not list is that the remote beeps when it is connected to the right cable. Basically you install the remote in the persons office that you want to check the cable. Then you go to the switch, see what light is out, and plug that cable into the tester. The remote will then beep to let you know you have the correct cable. You can then run two tests on the cable. The tests will tell you if the cable is wired correctly and the length of the network cable. I had several cables that were not wired correctly, but two of them, after looking at the map, were wired as crossovers. That used to be the norm when running from switch to switch.

Basically I give the 3LW 8108 or or SC8108network cable tester two thumbs up.

Was there anything I was disappointed with? Yes, for one thing if you leave the computer plugged in at the other end, then the only test that you can run is the network cable length test. That is helpful to let you know how long it is to get a good idea as to who's office it goes to. However, with some network cards, it will come back saying that there is a "short" in the cable, when there is actually nothing wrong with the cable. This problem has something to do with the network card at the far end.

The Dude network monitor

Once again "the Dude" has come to my rescue. This program is great at finding network problems.  This picture shows a very unstable network.  Everything should be green (working fine) or red (turned off).  The orange indicates that they are having issues.  This is a screen capture of the network status when the cable to the main server was bad, It failed to work at 1 gig and was unreliable at 100 M/s.  The solution was to replace the old network cable with a category 5E cable.  The old cable was not connected correctly.

Since having that problem I have ordered a network cable tester on EBay that promises to be able to detect if the pairs are connected correctly. I will post more on that once the tester arrives.

Network wiring issues resolved

Recently I resolved an issue that has been around for years where I work.  A year ago when we upgraded the switch in the service department two computers could no longer connect to the network.  I chased the problem down to their network cables and we replaced them. 

When we moved the shipping computers to building 3, I reused old network cables and they had problems connecting to the network and the entire network had issues (The Netgear firewall called it a ‘UDP Flood’ and tried to shut it down).  When I ran new network cables to those offices the problems went away. 

When I tried to connect Building 4 to the network once again we had issues and to ‘fix’ it I told the computer to only connect at 10 Megs (Not the normal 100 megs/second) and the problems appeared to go away.  The correct solution would have been to run a new network cable to building 4 but that would take too much time, because it is a buried cable!  In an attempt to make a quick fix I tried just changing the connectors on the existing cable and that fixed the problem! 

After studying the faulty connectors I saw that two wires were not in their correct position within the plugs.  I have since looked at other connectors where I work and have confirmed that some of the network connectors have their wires in the wrong positions.  I have used the ‘568b’ network standard for years and it supports up to 1 gig networking.  The main offices are all connected at 1 gig.  In the future any network cable that I see that does not conform to either 568a or 568b will be replaced!

Back when I was first running network wires I was told that “any order will work” as long as both ends of the cable are done the same.  That was actually true back then but I insisted on finding out what was the correct standard and on only following that standard.  To connect reliably at 100 mps requires the correct order, and 1 gig will not work at all without the correct order of the wires.

This is one of the faulty connectors, the blue pair should be in the center, surrounded by the Green or Orange pair.

Just to be clear here is a picture of a correctly wired network connector.  Note the blue pair in the center surrounded by the green pair.  The orange pair is on the left and the brown pair is on the right.

Look@lan - a good network tool

Today while looking at the logs I saw that a computer was misbehaving however I could not identify the computer name.  I tried Nmap/Zenmap several times and several settings to no avail.  Then I tired look@lan and instantly got the answer! 

After looking around a while I discovered another feature.  If you click on an IP address it gives lots more details about that computer including all the open ports!

Free Instant Keyword Analyzer Tool

Google no longer pays any attention to the 'keywords' meta tag on your web site. Instead they do an analysis of your web site to find out what are the actual keywords that are really used. So I tried to find out what were our actual keywords on our web site. It turns out that there are web sites that will do that for you but they require that you enter your phone number and an email address so they can annoy you with salesmen calling and emailing you.

I thought that I could easily write a program to do the job so I have started developing 'KAT' or "Keyword Analyzer Tool". It is totally FREE and gives the results in seconds!  It will strip the HTML code from your web site, feed that into an array and then count the number of times each word is used. I hope to add the ability to also count those words in links, headings, and in strong soon.

Keyword Analyzer Tool

EDUP USB wireless adapter drivers

I recently purchased one of these tiny EDUP wireless adapters on EBay.  First of all they advertise them as 'high power' but they are really not 'high power' if you were expecting 500 MW or 1000 MW like the real  high power USB adapters can put out.  If you really want high power add 500, 1000, or even 2000 MW to your search in EBay.  On the other hand the external antenna may double your range compared to the antenna that is built into most laptops.

Anyway I lost the driver disk and could not find it. I Googled it but no one seemed to know where to find the driver!  When you plug it in the computer says something about a RTL 8188 driver and that is the secret.  Just go to www.Realtek.com and search for the 8188SU driver.

Here is a link but you may have to cut and paste it into your browser:
http://www.realtek.com/search/default.aspx?keyword=rtl8188su

The Dude

I have come across a new tool for computer / network repair called 'the dude'.  I just used it to figure out why a server was not available to everybody.  When I clicked on the server under 'the dude' it noted that there was no DNS name for the server!  So I went to the server and changed some of its DNS settings, then restarted it, and then it worked fine.  This was after about 4 hours of fighting with the server because just 2 computers could not log into it.  One of those computers was mine!  It worked fine the way it was for everyone else?

using Wireshark to monitor network traffic

I wish that I could say that I have used WireShark to find a virus infected computer, but so far I have not been able to find anything with it.  However I did discover this neat Network IO monitor.  It is under statistics, IO Graphs.  Whenever the network acts up I can see that the network traffic has peaked out.

One thing that might hold you back from using WireShark is the need to tap into the network.  The tap is really a lot easier than it sounds.  You just need an old network cable and a couple of network jacks.  Pull the orange and green pairs out of the network cable and connect them to the green pairs on the network jacks as in the picture below.  This cable then goes from your router to your main switch.  Or in a home network from your modem to your router.  That way you can monitor all  of the traffic from your computers going to the Internet.

Then start WireShark and select your network card.  You can then selectively monitor the incoming or the outgoing network traffic by what network jack you plug the network cable from the monitoring computer into.  If you leave the program running for more than a few hours the computer may crash as it tends to run out of memory.

Network cable testers

Years ago I invented an in-circuit network cable tester.  It has been on my web site for about 10 years, but no one makes anything like it.  So I thought I would re-post it to my blog as the search engines seem to find things here much faster.

The in circuit network cable tester is only made by me and it is found no where else in the world that I know of! The in circuit network cable tester works on the principle that each cable pair is attached to a coil at both the hub and at the computer ends. So with a volt meter you can measure what almost looks like a short between the blue and the blue white wires. I eventually built this tester based on this principle because using a volt meter to test a cable was a pain in the but. This tester can also tell if it is a 10 only or a 10/100 device at the far end of the cable. A 10 only device only lights up the LED's for the orange and the green pairs. A 10/100 device will light up all 4 LED's if it is working properly. This device may fail to detect a short in some rare cases, but over 90% of the time it will tell you if there is a wiring problem.

The scanning tester is also my own design but several other people make very similar devices. It just uses a 555 timer and a 4017 to sweep through all 8 wires to verify that they are connected and that they are in the right order. This is a great device for testing home made network cables or ones that may have been damaged while they were in use. It also tests and detects network crossover cables.