Everyone has seen the Xbox 360 Kinect hacked in a matter of days after our “open source driver” bounty – here’s how we helped the winner and here’s how you can reverse engineer USB devices as well!
USB is a very complex protocol, much more complicated than Serial or Parallel, SPI and even I2C. USB uses only two wires but they are not used as ‘receive’ and ‘transmit’ like serial. Rather, data is bidirectional and differential – that is the data sent depends on the difference in voltage between the two data lines D+ and D- If you want to do more USB hacking, you’ll need to read Jan Axelson’s USB Complete books , they’re easy to follow and discuss USB in both depth and breadth.
USB is also very structured. This is good for reverse engineering because it means that at least the format of packets is agreed upon and you won’t have to deal with check-sums. The bad news is it means you have to have software assistance to decode the complex packet structure. The good news is that every computer now made has a USB host core, that does a lot of the tough work for you, and there are many software libraries to assist.
Today we’re going to be reverse engineering the Xbox Kinect Motor, one part of the Kinect device. …
Adafruit was founded in 2005 by MIT engineer, Limor “Ladyada” Fried. Her goal was to create the best place online for learning electronics and making the best designed products for makers of all ages and skill levels. Over the last 6 years Adafruit has grown to over 45 employees in the heart of NYC. Adafruit has expanded offerings to include tools, equipment and electronics that Limor personally selects, tests and approves before going in to the Adafruit store. Limor was the first female engineer on the cover of WIRED magazine and was recently awarded Entrepreneur magazine’s Entrepreneur of the year.
After Microsoft launched the Kinect for Xbox 360, Fried, along with Phillip Torrone, organized a $2,000 challenge for open source Kinect drivers. After Microsoft condemned the challenge as modification to their product, Adafruit increased the prize to $3,000.
Microsoft does not condone the modification of its products… With Kinect, Microsoft built in numerous hardware and software safeguards designed to reduce the chances of product tampering. Microsoft will continue to make advances in these types of safeguards and work closely with law enforcement and product safety groups to keep Kinect tamper-resistant.”
After significant advancements in the open source drivers, spokespeople from Microsoft stated that they did not condemn the challenge, and in fact were excited to see what the community developed.
Hacking the Kinect
http://learn.adafruit.com/hacking-the-kinect/overview
Everyone has seen the Xbox 360 Kinect hacked in a matter of days after our “open source driver” bounty – here’s how we helped the winner and here’s how you can reverse engineer USB devices as well!
USB is a very complex protocol, much more complicated than Serial or Parallel, SPI and even I2C. USB uses only two wires but they are not used as ‘receive’ and ‘transmit’ like serial. Rather, data is bidirectional and differential – that is the data sent depends on the difference in voltage between the two data lines D+ and D- If you want to do more USB hacking, you’ll need to read Jan Axelson’s USB Complete books , they’re easy to follow and discuss USB in both depth and breadth.
USB is also very structured. This is good for reverse engineering because it means that at least the format of packets is agreed upon and you won’t have to deal with check-sums. The bad news is it means you have to have software assistance to decode the complex packet structure. The good news is that every computer now made has a USB host core, that does a lot of the tough work for you, and there are many software libraries to assist.
Today we’re going to be reverse engineering the Xbox Kinect Motor, one part of the Kinect device. …
Adafruit was founded in 2005 by MIT engineer, Limor “Ladyada” Fried. Her goal was to create the best place online for learning electronics and making the best designed products for makers of all ages and skill levels. Over the last 6 years Adafruit has grown to over 45 employees in the heart of NYC. Adafruit has expanded offerings to include tools, equipment and electronics that Limor personally selects, tests and approves before going in to the Adafruit store. Limor was the first female engineer on the cover of WIRED magazine and was recently awarded Entrepreneur magazine’s Entrepreneur of the year.
After Microsoft launched the Kinect for Xbox 360, Fried, along with Phillip Torrone, organized a $2,000 challenge for open source Kinect drivers. After Microsoft condemned the challenge as modification to their product, Adafruit increased the prize to $3,000.
Microsoft does not condone the modification of its products… With Kinect, Microsoft built in numerous hardware and software safeguards designed to reduce the chances of product tampering. Microsoft will continue to make advances in these types of safeguards and work closely with law enforcement and product safety groups to keep Kinect tamper-resistant.”
After significant advancements in the open source drivers, spokespeople from Microsoft stated that they did not condemn the challenge, and in fact were excited to see what the community developed.