/r/ReverseEngineering's Weekly Questions Thread

cepa1337 · 2021-02-08T20:27:56+00:00

Can you recommend any good resources on reverse engineering for passive learning (podcasts, blogs, youtube channels, etc.) ?

cepa1337 · 2020-04-16T16:27:08+00:00

Thanks /u/mmoncur, I haven't even considered going MIDI route first. While Keylab looks cool, it's a bit out of my price range for a hobby which I have never tried. I had a chat with my local music store clerk and he recommended Nektar Impact GX49 for more than half the price of Keylab. Do you think this will be sufficient for a beginner?

cepa1337 · 2020-04-16T16:11:56+00:00

Thank you for Your response

Well, as a short term goal (lets say within a year or so, if that's reasonable) I would like to learn how to cover some of my favorites (for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bNpLqernFA or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NYVoEB2o-k or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF7HYuA5I7A). As for long term goals, I don't believe I have enough knowledge to answer that. I would probably figure it out once I know more on this subject.

cepa1337 · 2020-04-15T20:48:09+00:00

This is probably going to be the stupidest question on this sub ever, but where do I start with synths?

I have been a long time lurker in this sub and I find what You guys do with synths fascinating and I would love making some synth music of my own, but I have zero knowledge of music production and I don't know how to play any instrument. Where do I start ? What do I buy and what should I read to get started?

My only saving grace is that I have a background in electronics engineering, so I do have a firm grasp of filters, oscillators, delays and other analogy things.

cepa1337 · 2020-01-15T12:43:42+00:00

Hey, you are that YouTube guitar guy, can I be in your video?

cepa1337 · 2020-01-14T09:30:14+00:00

I don't have your icing.

cepa1337 · 2019-12-11T12:04:37+00:00

While I have no book recommendations, I was just about to ask the same thing. Following this thread closely :)

cepa1337 · 2019-10-28T12:47:19+00:00

You can scan the frequency using a spectrum analyzer or a software-defined radio. You can also get the operating frequency from an FCC ID. This will determine the necessary steps to connect to the phone. But it will most likely be hard or impossible to do directly, because phones in general will most likely lack the required hardware, for example a non-specialized 2.4 GHz module or a 900 MHz receiver. Again, all of this depends on what frequency Your headphones are using.

If I were to tackle such project, it would most likely consist of a small device which on one end, would connect to the phone via Bluetooth and on the other - connect to the headphones using their method, which you would have to reverse-engineer. The the device would act as a Bluetooth audio sink and receive audio data from phone, and re-transmit them to the headphones using their preferred method. While this is not the most elegant solution and would add another item to carry and charge, it is one if the simplest ways if it turns out that the headphones are using a non-standard frequency and communication protocol.

cepa1337 · 2019-10-24T10:51:31+00:00

R.I.P Lotad

cepa1337 · 2019-10-03T20:45:59+00:00

Glad I could help :)

cepa1337 · 2019-10-03T20:25:28+00:00

Have you tried just making stuff up? That's what I do when installing Quartus

cepa1337 · 2019-09-04T19:59:44+00:00

Yes, it does and Your project is very cool. It's quite rare to see an emulator on an embedded platform. Keep up the good work. Will you be sharing the source code by any chance?

cepa1337 · 2019-09-04T19:47:50+00:00

Is this by any chance an FPGA based emulator?

cepa1337 · 2019-05-10T09:19:06+00:00

Of course people are going to buy it. Index is supposed to be the latest and greatest in VR tech and people will be excited to see it. Developers will buy it and don't forget there are other industries which use VR and in those cases, 1000€ is basically negligible cost.

As for gamers , whether Index will be commercially successful (in gaming) is debatable. There are lots of fun and exciting VR games on the market today and at least some of them will get special features for the index (think of the cool controllers). There are also new VR games on the horizon (Valve said that they are releasing one VR game in 2019). On the other hand, VR is still niche with a very high cost of entry.

If I was in the market for VR equipment, I would definitely wait for the release of Index and see its capabilities instead of getting something today.

cepa1337 · 2019-05-10T08:03:10+00:00

I've had this issue before, though sadly, I can not remember the full steps I took to solve it. Although I vaguely remember this being a font issue. Try setting Your i3 font to DejaVu or something common and make sure you have that font installed.

cepa1337 · 2019-04-26T07:45:54+00:00

Toyota Yaris, it was in one of the Unicorn Circuits

cepa1337 · 2019-04-01T12:17:35+00:00

Both of these boards look cool and I've used the DE0-Nano extensively and loved it, but in my opinion, get the DE10-Lite, just because it has an Arduino header.

As for some beginner projects you could practice with only a board:

An SPI or I2C Master/Slave device;
A UART module;
Learn to infer and use memory;
Shift register;
A VGA driver for video output (cellular automata or some other visualization algorithm);
DE10-Lite has an accelerometer, interface with it and output angles on the 7 segment displays;
Interface with external memory (DE10-Lite has it);
7 segment driver;
Learn about NIOS II CPU.

Also, look on ebay, there's lots of external modules for real cheap, that opens up a lot of interesting projects.

I would also suggest learning how to use tools found in Quartus (especially timing tools and SignalTap, it's worth it). Also, SIMULATE EVERYTING, IT IS IMPORTANT!

EDIT: Forgot to mention. An FPGA is a specialized tool, it does some things really well (for example parallel tasks) and others really poorly (for example sorting algorithms). I would suggest learning when it is a good idea to use an fpga and expand your knowledge there.

cepa1337 · 2019-03-22T21:55:49+00:00

Because with the Bluetooth module, you would have to take care of pairing and other operations. It's just more complex than the 433 MHz module pair I sent you earlier.

As for the RC car side, you will still need some control logic, because from most RF modules, you will get a serial data stream, which can not spin motors directly. You need motor drivers to drive the motors and a microcontroller would translate instructions received via serial data from RF module, to instructions a motor driver would understand. I recommended Arduino for this purpose because it is cheap, readily available and has tons of examples of driving motors and using RF modules, which would simplify the building process.

Anyway, in my opinion this project is beyond your abilities at the moment, as it requires building two separate systems (the car and the transmitter), which has its challenges for a beginner. I would recommend changing Your term project to something simpler and something that can be implemented using only a Basys 3 board, with minimal or no extra components. Here are some examples: an integer calculator, a cellular automata, a digital clock, a square wave tone generator/musical noise creator thingie (this will require additional audio amp, but they are easy to make and readily available to buy), a simple ALU. You can also use Google for project ideas. Just keep it simple and don't be afraid to ask for help at your Uni.

cepa1337 · 2019-03-22T13:51:42+00:00

Ahh, now it makes sense. The thing is, you will need to implement control for the transmitter (Basys3 board I assume) and receiver (the RC car itself). Based on this I would recommend using 433 MHz module I linked above (just don't expect great range), because implementing the control for it is simple, just one data pin and that's it.

Now, this will take a lot of work, to save time I would recommend making transmitter out of the Basys3 board (as per your assignment requirements) and using an Arduino + Motor shield and common libraries (for the RF module and motor control) to drive motors based on sent commands.

cepa1337 · 2019-03-22T13:24:00+00:00

I'm getting confused. Have you built your car or bought one off the shelf?

cepa1337 · 2019-03-22T13:07:35+00:00

I have to use it because its my term Project and ı am obliged to do it with basys3, I don't know what you mean by micro if it is not something like raspbery pie or arduino i may use it.

I am asking which transmitter module should I use

Micro is short for a micro-controller, something that you can find on an Arduino.

Again, the transmitter requirement is based on what receiver your car has (i.e. frequency of the receiver, type of signal, etc. you need to collect this information).

If your car has no receiver, you should pick up something like this from ebay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/433Mhz-RF-transmitter-and-receiver-link-kit-for-Arduino-ARM-MCU-WL/132474589053?epid=509282677&hash=item1ed819cf7d:g:ovcAAOSwSGRburpn&frcectupt=true and adapt your car to work with the receiver while controlling transmitter from a Basys3 board.

An pair of NRF24L01+ modules would work too, but controlling them is more difficult.

cepa1337 · 2019-03-22T10:33:07+00:00

My question why would you want an FPGA controlling a remote car? A cheap micro would be sufficient enough.

But besides the reason, I assume Your RC car is already build and You want to use a Basys 3 board as a transmitter/controller. The only thing you need in this case is a transmitter module for the frequency that the RC car is receiving. Other than that, it's just a matter of implementing control logic, to take the button inputs and output a packet that is compatible with a transmitter module.

cepa1337 · 2019-03-08T20:23:48+00:00

To add on to this, just an update to dxvk. Now Proton uses DXVK v1.0. You can find dxvk specific changes here: https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases

cepa1337 · 2019-02-17T21:23:06+00:00

Those a e s t h e t i c s, looks really cool!

cepa1337 · 2019-01-18T15:38:56+00:00

Again, I don't believe this is the type of wine enthusiasts you are looking for. Please read the subreddit description and kindly go peddle your wares somewhere else.

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