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Hacker News: Lazy Man's Delight! Binary Modding a Water Dispenser for Hands-Free Operation

2025-01-11

Robbe Derks, tired of pressing buttons to get water, reverse-engineered and modified his ION 900 series water dispenser. Using an Arduino and PICkit, he dumped the firmware from the PIC18F6527 and PIC16F630 microcontrollers. With Ghidra, he reverse-engineered the firmware, identifying functions controlling buttons and valves. He then wrote C code to patch the firmware, adding a feature that dispenses 1 liter of cold water when both the 'room temperature' and 'cold water' buttons are pressed simultaneously. This involved overcoming challenges in reverse engineering and embedded programming, ultimately creating a hands-free water dispensing solution.

Hardware

Self-Driving a 1993 Volvo 940 (Part 1: Actuators)

2025-01-04

The author and friends are participating in the 2025 Carbage Run winter edition, a 6-day winter journey across Sweden to the Arctic Circle and back to Helsinki. Their car: a 1993 Volvo 940, almost devoid of electronics. To make it self-driving, they're retrofitting actuators: steering motor, brake booster, and accelerator servo. This post details the process of adapting an electric power steering system from a 2020 Toyota Corolla, replacing the vacuum-assisted braking system with a Bosch iBooster, and using an off-the-shelf RC servo for the accelerator. A Tesla radar sensor was also added. It's a challenging project, with future posts covering wiring and a custom ECU.