Instagram filter used: Lo-fi
Author: scruss
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#swagfail
Put me out to pasture, my conference swag skills are failing.
I picked this up at Solar Power International:
I thought I was picking up a USB memory stick, as I’d nabbed one in the same form factor before. Break off the backing card at the hinge, and you’ve got a nice tiny data store like the Kingmax ones I used to use.
On plugging it into my Mac, a couple of icons bipped on my dock, then Skype opened. Wat? More importantly, there was no storage to be seen, so once my virus fears had subsided a bit, I was determined to find out what this pointless piece of plastic was doing.
The stick identified itself to the system as an Apple keyboard (USB ID 05ac:020b), and spits out the following characters (captured by cat and xxd on my Raspberry Pi):
0000000: 1b72 1b5b 317e 1b5b 3477 7777 2e62 757a .r.[1~.[4www.buz 0000010: 7a63 6172 642e 7573 2f73 6365 2d32 3230 zcard.us/sce-220 0000020: 0a                                      .
After reading about evil USB dongles, it seems that the Ctrl-R keypress it’s sending is the Windows “Open Browser” command, and then opens the url
www.buzzcard.us/sce-220. This link redirects toÂwww.plugyourbrand.com/gosolar_sce/index.html?u=220, which appears to do some Flash/JS stuff which I don’t want to understand.The funny thing is, the card has the perfectly respectable www.GoSolarCalifornia.ca.gov (well, respectable if you consider a US .gov website as such) link printed on it. Even printing a card with a QR code linking to that address would be less opaque.
(This is not a link to goatse, honest.) As is, a bunch of plastic was wasted in vain just to save people typing an URL. We’re all going to die, and it really is your fault …
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(sort-of) Solar Powered Raspberry Pi
One day, I’d like to power a small remote server from solar power. Today is not yet that day. But I’m closer …
At the Solar Power International show (big modules! cheap modules! AC modules!!) last week in Orlando (squee-able minilizards! cuban food!!) there were a few vendors selling solar USB chargers. Most were folding thin-film units similar to this, but what caught my eye (and was actually for sale at the show) was the LSTech “Smart one“:
The unit features:- 2× 3.5 Ah 3.7 V Li-Poly batteries
- a 4W 5V solar panel inside the clamshell case
- a 1A USB output
- a USB Micro-B charging input and auxiliary solar panel input
- two ah-oww, make-it-stop bright LED
interrogationreading lights.
It comes with a couple of USB cables, and like seemingly all Korean semi-luxe electronic devices, comes in a soft brown velour bag. I’m not sure if the soft velour bag is the universal sign of quality in Korea, but I’ve noticed it enough that it might be A Thing.
I’ve run a Raspberry Pi for a couple of hours off this thing without making too much of a dent in the charge. I might be able to run it in full sun from the 4W solar charger, but I’m under no illusion that the Raspberry Pi’s ~3.5W continuous draw is going to keep running from such a small panel. That’s expecting an 88% capacity factor from a solar panel, which would be well if there wasn’t this small thing called night (or rotation of the earth, or cloud cover, or …)
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There’s precious little here here
Instagram filter used: X-Pro II
Photo taken at: Orange County Convention Center West Concourse
