I have an inventory software which works only when certain USB(given by vendor) is plugged in
I am very interested to know how does this work and how to create such usb.
Is there any way to make software work without that usb...?
I think you are referring to a protection dongle. To create yourself such a protection, you should have knowledge in electronics and USB protocol, and if you are a complete beginner getting something useful further than a working prototype would be very difficult to achieve.
However there are several vendors that are making such protections ready to integrate with third-party software. And they are prone to send you SDK tools as demos on request. For example Aladdin (that is now Safenet) is one vendor that once sent me for free such a demo kit for their HASP protection dongle. The deal is that you have their SDK with a working dongle to play with, integrate with your software and once it is working you can order actual dongles to distribute with your software.
For the reversing part of your question: as any software, if it was once programmed, it can be modified / reversed. It is just a matter or time and motivation. Some hardawre protection can be emulated (to let the protected software work without the dongle), or the software driver to the dongle can be cracked in a way or another.
Protection makers always show their products as the solution to software piracy but experience shows that a 100% secure and unbreakable solution just does not exist.
Related
I'm developping an open source OTA update system for a few MCUs of a certain project. I wonder if there is some "standard" protocol for CAN-bus based bootloaders. Everything I saw online and in Application Notes from the chip manufacturers seem to be using their own brand of communication and thus their own specialized upload software too (mainly for demonstration for ANs).
My question is, am I missing something? Is there some standard way of doing this I'd rather adhere to, or should I just roll my own like they do and call it a day?
Features I'm interested in for the protocol side besides the obvious ones: checksumming, digital signatures, authenticated encryption.
Based on your tag, despite I do not see this from your question, I assume for now that you want to develop a boot-loader for automotive ECUs, which have a CAN connection.
The relevant protocols, which provide the services, are ISO 14229-3 or SAE J1939/73, with the first one much more common to my experience.
For development purposes, also ASAM MCD-1 XCP has support for that.
However, these are just the communication services and does not include usual usage patterns, which differ a lot across the OEMs.
For security, the German OEMs put a document together called "HIS Security. Module Specification", which I unfortunately did not find any more on the web.
They also have a blueprint for the design of a boot-loader.
However, this is anyway somewhat outdated, as boot-loaders today often are at least partially based on AUTOSAR, like the applications.
Last from them, you could also get a document partially specifying how the services above are used for flashing an ECU.
If you need further input, feel free to ask.
However, you will need yourself access to the non-free industry standards and recommendations.
hi i'm currently looking at some new cisco phone systems and something on the wish list is a click to open account on our intranet.
I've been advised to look into tapi so I wondered if this worked with teams so I could create and test a solution.
i cant find any sample code younger than 4 years old so also wondered if this is fading out with the newer wave of unified comms
The current trend in the unified comms is moving to proprietary interfaces. TAPI does not really have decent facilities to deal with the addition of chat and video channels anyway. While some vendors seem to be willing to keep supporting it for some time, most seem to be designing new API's from the ground up (Teams Graph, Cisco WebEx, Alcatel Rainbow,...)
Specifically to your question: no, Teams does not support TAPI and there seems to be no intention to ever do so. None of Microsoft previous UC solutions (Skype for Business, Lync, Office Communication Server) did either.
If you don't want to develop/test straight onto your production Cisco, you may be able to get a VM version of the PBX with a trial/temporary license for software development purposes through a Cisco partner.
I want to do my final year project on augmented reality geo-localization,
Please tell me, from where to start ?
what technology to learn ?
what are recruitments to development this kind of application ?
If you want to perform Geo-Localisation and use GPS, I wouldn't recommend using Unity. It's arbitrary coordinate system can be a bit confusing and difficult to make an app using GPS that's reliable enough.
For Augmented Reality, you can't use anything like Oculus Rift or Google Cardboard, because those are Virtual Reality headsets and have no way of allowing the user to see the real world. Augmented Reality peripherals are things like Microsoft Hololens or Google Glass, neither of which are commercially available but there are cheap knock offs that are. AR can also of course be used on any mobile device, since they all have a camera built-in and chips powerful enough to process all the tracking data.
As for making an actual app, the best thing you can do is have a go. Analyse your market, see where the gaps are. If you want to make an app for a specific OS that isn't cross-platform, I would recommend learning some Objbective-C (for iOS) or Java (for Android), if you don't know any already.
For cross-platform, I would say something like Xamarin would be useful for making an app on both the major OSes, it was recently made free by Microsoft and you can essentially make one app in C# that works across all devices.
For the Augmented Reality itself, there are frameworks out there that can be used for your purposes. Things like Kudan, Vuforia, Wikitude, etc. Some of them offer free versions of their software. You can use these to deal with all the tracking and projection side of things so you don't have to go about creating your own AR engine.
The best thing to do is probably to sit down for a few minutes, or hours, and think about what you're going to do. Figure out what you want the end result to look like, then work backwards and think about the best way to achieve that goal. Eventually you will arrive at the language and engine you want to use to make your life as easy as possible and then you can get started learning from tutorials online and getting your app out into the world.
you can check my tutorial about geo-based augmented reality solution on Android: https://www.netguru.co/blog/augmented-reality-mobile-android
I have presented there the basics and how to start with simple implementation.
Well a good starting point would be to ask yourself few questions:
What type of devices, you plan to work on(oculus rift, google cardboard, Microsoft Hololens, web etc)?
Augmented Reality is achievable in both Web-Context and Application-context. Which route do you want to go for?
Depending on these questions, if you choose to do a normal application based on a device, then depending on the device(Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard, Microsoft Hololens), you would need to grab their specific developer kits and learn how to develop apps using the documentation. For Oculus rift and Microsoft Hololens, you would need the respective Headsets inorder to make an app in that, but If it comes to google cardboard, all you need is you mobile phone with a good processing power.
There is another way to work on augmented reality applications, that is by doing a Web Application using some amazing javascript libraries like Awe.js, Three.js and JSARToolkit.
You can google about them and find out more.
One of the more accessible ways to learn Augmented reality is Project Tango.
Devices are around $500 last I checked and you can use a free version of Unity + Project Tango's free plugin:
https://developers.google.com/project-tango/
Which ever hardware you pick I'd recommend checking out Unity3D as it seems to be the platform of choice for AR/VR at the moment. There are other options... this just provides the most flexibility based on all of the platforms it supports.
Side note: I have no affiliation with Project Tango and am in fact working on another platform... but it isn't as accessible at the moment.
What are the advantages of Creative Senz3d? And what are the disadvantages? Which one should i buy? Is it worthy to deal with Creative?
The Senz3D works with the Portal game Sixense where as the Kinect does not (as far as we know). Also, the Senz3D should come with special software that give you control of your computer with gestures where as the Kinect you have to build that yourself or go through hoops trying to find and install drivers and that special software for it. The Kinect works with many games you would find on the Microsoft store (I don't know if the Senz3D would be compatible...probably not) and works on your Xbox. Other than those, it's mostly just a toy for hackers and developers to just play with.
In conclusions, they both are kind of worthless
I'm thinking about switching my path "slightly" by going into desktop development (VC++, MFC, C#, etc) after about 8 years within embedded telecom systems development (C, MAKE, Symbian, 100 compilers etc, etc).
My concern however is that my experience within embedded systems maybe doesn't give me much value when going into desktop development. For example that the domain specific problems and environments I've worked with for so long still doesn't give me much to negotiate salaries with since it bares little worth on the desktop.
I think this place might be good for input on this.
So, the Q:
If you disregard the obvious generic experience on programming language level, give an example of something you have learned working with embedded systems that you could reuse when working in a desktop environment.
PS:
I should note that I'm no beginner in the desktop area - since many years back all my hobby projects are focused around desktop development.
Embedded engineers in general tend to be more disciplined when it comes to validating operations and dealing with finite resources.
This can also translate into coming up with an exception handling strategy earlier on.
The quintessential example is checking the return value of malloc. I have seen very few desktop software consistently check it, but it's commonplace in embedded environments.
Discipline of having a clean, well-organized set of source-code is the key skill that translates well to the "desktop experience". -- I've noticed that the embedded projects I've written and picked up are often WAY cleaner than their desktop counterparts.
Many desktop-only developers could benefit from the experience of making a program fit in 128K of FLASH and 32K of SRAM, not to mention communicating meaningfully with a user through only an LED or two and a couple of buttons. Making that a requirement might reduce some of the endemic code bloat in the applications industry. :-)
Even if you don't switch tracks to straight application development, the embedded experience translates well to driver development, as well as to low level utilities and to long running services. All of these are also domains where the disciplines that are nearly second-nature to a successful embedded developer remain valuable.
I was a desktop developer for almost 5yrs before switching to an embedded environment.
I find working on an embedded environment more challenging as we have to deal with memory limitations, slow CPU speed, cross-compilation issues, etc.
Having learned a lot of patience, discipline and low-level intricacies, desktop development should be as easy as a walk in the park.
State machines/event driven programming on embedded systems is not that different from event driven programming on the desktop. The depth of experience you have of these coding techniques on embedded systems, especially telecoms embedded systems, should make you a great desktop programmer.
Similarly, your experience with communications protocols should transfer nicely to the desktop. Most desktop applications have some involvement with the network.