UptownMaker

This was originally going to be my calling card for Maker Faire. It's a very simple implementation of Osamu Tamura's AVR-CDC project , realized without a board. I had planned to make it a small device that can be plugged into a USB port and observed on a terminal spitting out information about me. The Great Global Hackerspace Challenge project took a lot out of me, though, so I didn't get it done in time. The blobby on the left is an I/O module- three input switches, three output LEDs, and a reset switch and power LED. It plugs onto the header that is currently being used for programming. The circuitry is pretty simple: 100nF bypass capacitor, the 5V in from the USB port goes to the positive supply pin through a 1N4001, and the USB D+/D- are connected to a couple of the I/O pins. Some words about that 1N4001: it was chosen specifically for its high forward voltage. See, the USB input wants a 3.6V input or so, and the AVR doesn't want to run at the 16+MHz needed for t...

So, since DHS can swipe your stuff at a security checkpoint for no good reason, I've been thinking I might like to make a self-destructing USB drive. There are two possible tacks for this: one, a "snappable" drive where there's a small ampule that one would crush (a la cold war suicide pills) that connects an on-board 3V lithium battery backwards across a couple of pins, roasting some silicon and making the drive pretty much irrecoverable. I guess in the end, it would be difficult to completely wipe out the entire flash matrix, but it's a start. This has a disadvantage in that you need to KNOW someone is ABOUT to take your flash drive away in order to activate it. The other method is a simple wire and switch method, where the drive is modified to reverse the 5V and ground unless the user does something to reverse that. The easy way is to put a switch on the drive which has to be flipped; that of course draws attention to the mechanism. A subtler method involve...