4 ms·

cool..... but wouldn't this be worth significantly more than $2k?

by edge17 16y ago

unwind 16y ago
Well ... That depends on how you want to define the value, I guess. For Adafruit Industries, who I only know of as being a small-scale electronics/microcontroller DIY/hobbyist retailer, I think $2000 is probably a sizable chunk of money. It's not as if they stand to earn any of it back, as the requirement is for an open source solution, published in public view and fully documented. Adafruit probably don't happen to have a 100% compatible clone of the Kinect hardware that they can launch as soon as drivers are available, heh.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  OTOH, having available drivers is very handy if you want to build a plug-compatible hardware replacement. You would need that and an army of lawyers...
  - daeken 16y ago
    I don't think it's as easy as build the hardware and make it speak the language. The iFixIt teardown of the Kinect shows some beefy hardware -- the most interesting piece to me being the 512MB DDR2 it has onboard. This says to me that they're doing considerable processing on the device side, rather than putting it all on the Xbox. If that's the case, it'd be a considerable effort to replicate it. Edit: 512Mbit, not 512MB. Meaning it's highly likely that it's a fairly dumb device.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      512Mb is 64MB. It's quite a lot for an embedded computer, IMHO.
      - daeken 16y ago
        Indeed. I misread the iFixit teardown earlier. 64MB makes a lot more sense.
daeken 16y ago
I'd been eying it already, so $2k would just be icing on the cake. This is right up my alley but I can't afford the hardware right now -- I'd be willing to split the bounty if someone can give me something to play with. (For reference, similar projects I've worked on/hacked: iPhone dev team, Belkin Network USB Hub, Emotiv EPOC brain-computer interface)
- jbermudes 16y ago
  Are you referring to just the Kinect or do you also need the Xbox?
  - daeken 16y ago
    I'd need both for it. Been thinking through the best way to hack it, which really comes down to: take control over the Kinect software (even just being able to see the binary would be ok, but being able to modify it would be optimal), MITM the USB connection, and work from there. I believe they're doing considerable processing on the Kinect itself, as that's the only way to justify the 512MB RAM onboard. Will be interesting to see what the actual data it sends back is. Edit: Big reading fail on my part; 512Mbit, not 512MB. That's much more in line with what I'd expect from a device not doing a whole lot.
    - jbermudes 16y ago
      It's going to be difficult to do a MITM attack because iirc, the 360 encrypts the data going over USB so that 3rd-party peripheral makers have to get a license from Microsoft to make a supported peripheral. Of course there always seems to be some sort of chink in the armor like with Wii. But I'm sure Microsoft is probably a lot better at writing operating systems compared to someone like Nintendo. (To those who are interested in this type of thing: In the Wii's case it was using a pair of tweezers to glitch the memory chip into spewing Wii OS code that revealed that Nintendo was using strncmp to compare SHA1 hashes instead of memcmp which rendered the entire authentication system open to attack because if you can create a hash that has a leading null-byte then it will not be compared. So even though all games and firmware updates were RSA signed, this exploit bypassed everything. )

cool..... but wouldn't this be worth significantly more than $2k?

by edge17 16y ago

cool..... but wouldn't this be worth significantly more than $2k?

Well ... That depends on how you want to define the value, I guess. For Adafruit Industries, who I only know of as being a small-scale electronics/microcontroller DIY/hobbyist retailer, I think $2000 is probably a sizable chunk of money. It's not as if they stand to earn any of it back, as the requirement is for an open source solution, published in public view and fully documented. Adafruit probably don't happen to have a 100% compatible clone of the Kinect hardware that they can launch as soon as drivers are available, heh.

rbanffy 16y ago
OTOH, having available drivers is very handy if you want to build a plug-compatible hardware replacement. You would need that and an army of lawyers...
- daeken 16y ago
  I don't think it's as easy as build the hardware and make it speak the language. The iFixIt teardown of the Kinect shows some beefy hardware -- the most interesting piece to me being the 512MB DDR2 it has onboard. This says to me that they're doing considerable processing on the device side, rather than putting it all on the Xbox. If that's the case, it'd be a considerable effort to replicate it. Edit: 512Mbit, not 512MB. Meaning it's highly likely that it's a fairly dumb device.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    512Mb is 64MB. It's quite a lot for an embedded computer, IMHO.
    - daeken 16y ago
      Indeed. I misread the iFixit teardown earlier. 64MB makes a lot more sense.

daeken 16y ago

I'd been eying it already, so $2k would just be icing on the cake. This is right up my alley but I can't afford the hardware right now -- I'd be willing to split the bounty if someone can give me something to play with. (For reference, similar projects I've worked on/hacked: iPhone dev team, Belkin Network USB Hub, Emotiv EPOC brain-computer interface)

jbermudes 16y ago
Are you referring to just the Kinect or do you also need the Xbox?
- daeken 16y ago
  I'd need both for it. Been thinking through the best way to hack it, which really comes down to: take control over the Kinect software (even just being able to see the binary would be ok, but being able to modify it would be optimal), MITM the USB connection, and work from there. I believe they're doing considerable processing on the Kinect itself, as that's the only way to justify the 512MB RAM onboard. Will be interesting to see what the actual data it sends back is. Edit: Big reading fail on my part; 512Mbit, not 512MB. That's much more in line with what I'd expect from a device not doing a whole lot.
  - jbermudes 16y ago
    It's going to be difficult to do a MITM attack because iirc, the 360 encrypts the data going over USB so that 3rd-party peripheral makers have to get a license from Microsoft to make a supported peripheral. Of course there always seems to be some sort of chink in the armor like with Wii. But I'm sure Microsoft is probably a lot better at writing operating systems compared to someone like Nintendo. (To those who are interested in this type of thing: In the Wii's case it was using a pair of tweezers to glitch the memory chip into spewing Wii OS code that revealed that Nintendo was using strncmp to compare SHA1 hashes instead of memcmp which rendered the entire authentication system open to attack because if you can create a hash that has a leading null-byte then it will not be compared. So even though all games and firmware updates were RSA signed, this exploit bypassed everything. )