Słomkowski's technical musings

Playing with software, hardware and touching the sky with a paraglider.

Tutorials


I’ll publish here posts which may have educational value.

Usual and unusual ways to connect I²C device to the PC computer

Listing every possible way to connect I²C device to the computer I came up with.

Buderus 2107 as an electric water heater controller

Buderus 2107 as an electric water heater controller

I adapted a Buderus oil furnace controller to operate an electric immersion heater as a temporary solution for domestic hot water (DHW) in my house.

Compiling C++ application for Windows target under Linux

Setting up a C++ development environment for a Windows target under Linux may be tricky. To simplify the process, I provide a CMake project suitable for using MinGW under CLion and running the application in Wine.

Extracting security codes from old car radios

I needed to determine the security code for the Becker Europa 2000 radio commonly installed in Mercedes-Benz W124. I dumped the contents of an internal EEPROM via I²C and read the code.

Constant 3.3 V power supply on Baofeng UV-5R/UV-5X microphone connector mod

Constant 3.3 V power supply on Baofeng UV-5R/UV-5X microphone connector mod

An easy hack for Baofeng UV-5R/UV-5X replaces the dual-PTT functionality with a constant 3.3 V on the 3.5 mm jack tip. This is useful for microphones that require additional power.

Eavesdropping on USB communication for reverse-engineering using Wireshark and VirtualBox and writing a user-space driver in Python

Eavesdropping on USB communication for reverse-engineering using Wireshark and VirtualBox and writing a user-space driver in Python

If you have an unusual USB device that comes with its own Windows application, chances are that Linux software for it does not exist. What if I told you that it is fairly easy to examine USB communication with Wireshark and write the driver in Python?

Determining the pinout of the unknown vacuum fluorescent display

Determining the pinout of the unknown vacuum fluorescent display

Once-ubiquitous vacuum fluorescent displays are easy to reverse-engineer. Their mysterious green glow complements retro-styled devices well. In this tutorial, I show a simple technique to determine the pinout of an unknown vacuum fluorescent display.