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Hot-Rodding A Bluetooth Adapter
carbolic writes "Remember the Bluetooth records where we 'modded an adapter' and connected to a cell phone first from 1 kilometer, then from 1 mile away? Popular Science has the hack in the November issue (or online now) with instructions. Additional step-by-step is laid out here for USB, and and here for PCMCIA. Soldering is required, but come on - you can't be a true geek without learning to solder."
Soldering is fun. I modded my Xbox. Now where is my Bluetooth adapter...
E V E R Y T H I N G I W R I T E I S F A L S E
You mean like this hack?
Even more frightening than programmers with screwdrivers.
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you can't be a true geek without learning to solder.
The bigger the glob, the better the job!
Basic soldering tips.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
So now we have to walk a full mile to knock that Bluetooth spammer out?
Great hack..
What is NOT useful about extending what could be the best cross-everything wireless technology so far beyond its retail limits?
Unless the people who say that EMFs and very high and very low frequency radio waves can kill you are right, I think this is great!
I'll just wear a lead apron until they tell me one way or the other....
Thing about soldering, I just KNOW that the joint is bad if I've not scarred myself. At some point during the process, I have to touch skin to hot bit to make my pain sacrifice to the gods of solder. Once this suffering is endured, I know that it'll work. If no pain, no joint, and I'll have to redo it until I'm scarred from the experience.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
OK, I don't know what scares me more:
The fact that these guys are using what looks like their kid brother's woodburning kit as a soldering iron (just look at the size of this thing compared to the size of the pad they are working on), the fact that they didn't prepare the coax (tin the leads) BEFORE they put it into place, or the fact that they are blithly ignoring the part 15 regs which DO NOT ALLOW an external antenna to be installed on a device like this.
Oh, let us not forget that the cable they are using is not rated for the Bluetooth frequency range, and will have a pretty significant attenuation at those frequencies, that the connectors they are using will not have a good impedance match at Bluetooth frequencies...
www.eFax.com are spammers
I was struggling to think of a practical application for this so I came up with an evil one instead.
Step 1: Fit USB Bluetooth Adapter to victim's PC
Step 2: Sneak up to one mile away
Step 3: Use Bluetooth mouse/keyboard to control them
Of course, from practical jokes comes food for thought of serious security implications.
Have a look at AtStake's Ollie Whitehouse's presentation on Bluetooth insecurities and be extra afraid that you can't look around the room for the attacker any more.
Indy Media Watch-Proctologist of the Internet
Sorry, but it's true. Ask around at the next anime convention or star wars message board...you'll see what I'm talking about.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
So, what are microwave radiation levels being emitted from a setup like this?
Where does the "Type R" sticker go? What part of the Bluetooth adapter gets the "VTEK" logo? Does it use a giant aluminum wing to get extra range?
Who cares about soldering? These are the details that we need to know.
Real geeks don't need instructions...
What really cracks me up is that Carbolic even links to his previous submission even though another reader had already outed him there
Dude, if you're going to post a story that's entirely within your online store, at least say so! You're making nifty stuff, geeks are likely to want it, but don't do this kind of astroturfing crap.
I threw mine in the trash well before the battery ran down.
About enough to heat a teaspoon of water by 5 degrees in a week.
Imagine a beowolf cluster of these ... ... )
(on a mesh network, no less
I thought WTF happened to the once calm, collected, slashdot geeks, ones who only goe to war if it is a Flame War.
Maybe, Bill has pissed them off one too many times. Now that the assualt weapons ban has lapsed - THEY ARE TAKING UP ARMS NOW.
No kidding on that soldering iron. I'm surprised he didn't just destroy the whole board immediately. He should have had a proper chisel tip in the thing at least. Now if he wanted to do an actual good job, he should have had a nice Metcal solder station like this MX500. I've used these things for years and it is impossible for me to ever touch a normal soldering iron again. Just make sure to keep the tips nice and clean.
it seems as though this is the year for long distance wireless. Finally Wi-Max is almost here and blue tooth has been modded to have a distance of 1 mile...count me in
Fantastic. You've just invented a brilliant 802.11b and g jamming device. This thing should prevent the use of WLANs within a fairly significant radius. Although it uses FHSS, it will appear as all band noise to a DSSS system like the 802.11 2.4GHz devices. Why do you think there are already workplaces with "No Bluetooth Allowed"? And thats just for the short range bluetooth devices. Boosting the power on one of those things just aint clever.
"They looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined"
There is an error on the page you linked to, the "right" diagram shows the solder sanwiched between the iron and the joint, hte iron should be on one part of the joint and the solder on another, that way the heat draws the solder into the joint and forms a strong bond, if the solder is hotter than the joint (as in the "right" diagram) the joint will be significantly weaker.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
LMR-100 *is* microwave cable, and N connectors are suitable for microwave.
I've seen TV ads for a pocket, battery powered soldering tool that heats/cools in a second or two. Does that thing work? Any reason not to use it? BTW, I have no interest in the tool or its vendor, other than to solder like a soldier :).
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make install -not war
Nope. Not at all. I have this thing called a "life".
Well, a mile will certainly help you go toothing. ;)
This really isn't that big of a mod. 1. Remove antenna 2. Add bigger antenna 3. Hack friends bluetooth phone/computer Cool would be adding a high gain amp to the antenna mounted on a roof, and get line-of-sight distances.
This is an FCC Search and Destroy Vessel, stop your bluetooth spamming, or we will be forced to drop the f***in hammer!
Oh, that tears it, drop the f***in hammer!
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
I read the article in the magazine and they just soldered an antenna to a bluetooth adapter. How could putting a bigger antenna on a receiver cause interference?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
A source to back up my assertion
Another Source
A source from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (PDF)
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Bluetooth uses the ISM band just like 802.11B/G so a Cantenna would work. (Haven't read the article yet)
-- "You can lead a yak to water, but you can't teach an old dog to make a silk purse out of a pig in a poke" - Opus
You can easily find your pigeonhole by ranking your social and technical skills on a simple "3K" scale:
You are an "ubergeek" - as long as your esoteric projects sometimes work. If you're an informed, though noncreative, expert, you're just a (default) "geek". If they never work, then you're a "nerd". If you never turn to machines for alternative to your social dysfunctions, but rather other humans with your limitations, you're a "dork". If you work out your antisocial tendencies with others, in sports, you're a "jock". If you never work out your antisocial tendencies, you're a "punk". If you institutionalize your antisocial tendencies into a new social order, you're a "prep".
Note that in the 3K taxonomy, "nerd" and "prep" are misfits: they're "3D" or "3P". Which is part of the system: nerds and preps can't fit into anyone's pigeonholes but their own.
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make install -not war
The problem I have with Bluetooth is that all the adapters are device-specific. That is, if you want to connect a printer, you need to get a dongle specific for printers. Likewise for all other devices, or so it seems. Perhaps I'm missing something.
I've been casually following the development of Wireless USB (WUSB), but we're still at the white papers stages there it seems. Also, there are some indications that this will suffer the same non-generic dongle problem.
What I want is a USB dongle that can plug into any device with a USB jack, and wirelessly connect to a PC with a receiving station card/WUSB receiving dongle. Is there a reason this can't happen? I would personally be willing to sacrifice distance for speed, but YMMV.
I was just poking around on their site, as I haven't been in that place in years (mid-90s most likely)
It was a lot of fond memories, then a rude surprise to read that David had died in 2002. His family is apparently still running the store, but that really changes the mood of the day, ya know?
They are essentially worthless (at $20, I couldn't resist the chance to
try one). They are unable to put enough current through an object to
heat it to solder-melting temperature, unless the object is very small
and delicate (read: a solid-state component that would be easy to damage
by using a soldering iron that deliberately passes current through the
connection being made). It is tough to solder anything larger than or
equal to the size of a 1/8-watt resistor lead with this iron, and you
can forget doing antenna work or anything else that requires serious
heat delivery.
It might have worked a bit better if they had dropped their series R and
required lithium AA cells. As things stand, the miniature butane iron
sold by Radio Shack at about the same price is a much better deal.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
They took a similar tack here with this iTrip amplifier.
Makes me wanna mod my iTrip so bad. If anything just for the larger antenna.. the amp is nice but I think it introduces an unneccesary level of complexity. Or maybe the mod is useless without the amp??
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
I've been paying attention to this hack for a while now. What I am curious about is, how long until you can use this in reverse and go into a PC that has Bluetooth on?
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.
You must be a software weenie :-)
All the geeks I know solder. The *real* geeks solder surface mount ICs with hot air guns and toaster ovens, and design their own multilayer PCBs using ExpressPCB's excellent services. They get their SMD parts from Digikey, which has done very well catering to those Radio Shack can't be bothered with any more.
Disclaimer - I'm not financially interested in the above companies, except in a negative sense...they seem to take a lot of my money!
"I'll just wear a lead apron until they tell me one way or the other...."
Mecha-Betty-Crocker will think you're hot.
I used a "prying tool" last night on my old iBook battery to get in to replace the cells.
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
anyone know of a site that can illustrate doing this to a wifi card? actually, what i want is to add an external antenna to a card that doesn't have one.
"you can't be a true geek without learning to solder."
sigh... you can't be a true geek without
regularly alienating 99% of the population.
(tho this comment gets up to 99.5 for excluding
non-hardware true geeks)
I'm a programmer who used to do industrial automation. I know what I'm talking about here. I was the guy with the slodering iron. Also the oscilloscope, Vom, various test leads, crimper, and laptop with programming tools. I was much less dangerous with the laptop. Less likely to find the bad ground on the 480VAC systems too.
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Ok for someone to steal the phone book from my Nokia from a mile away, my Nokia needs to be modded also, right? To send the data over a mile away. Or am I missing something? I watched that TechTV stunt where they connected to a cell phone using a modded linksys dongle but they did not mention modding the Nokia. If they did not, how did the Nokia transmit more than a mile? Thanks for any helpful response.
I cannot belive the BT people invented something without being aware of Wifi, their stupid code of channel hopping randomly everywhere is so stupid its beyond belief, when they could have kept a record of the channels with wifi activity and not hopped on those. Damn McFLIES
Now someone, make a device, that can KILL a BT device by short bursting it with 1000WATTS of BT power for 1 second or so (while your wifi is turne 100% off)
What cell phones should have is low powered Wifi (under 50feet) instead of BT.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
You're a jerk. A complete knee-biter. Now, which star system is wowbaggs in?
It's antennas. Antennae appear on insects.
You get more gain. This is why it is illegal. Let me ask you this... The article says you get 1km radius with this modification. If this modification did nothing, how this increase in range be explained.
It's illegal, and it's illegal for a reason. It will harm other uses of the frequencies in your neighborhood.
Don't do it.
That sounds like a pretty nasty burn...
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