Building An Open Source ThinkPad Battery

If you own a laptop that’s got a few years on the clock, you’ve probably contemplated getting a replacement battery for it. Which means you also know how much legitimate OEM packs cost compared to the shady eBay clones. You can often get two or three of the knock-offs for …read more

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PackProbe Reports Laptop Battery Health

The 18650 cell has become a ubiquitous standard in the lithium battery world. From power drills to early Tesla vehicles, these compact cells power all manner of portable devices. A particularly common use is in laptop batteries, where they’re often built into a pack using the Smart Battery System. This …read more

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Building a Proof of Concept Hardware Implant

You’ve no doubt heard about the “hardware implants” which were supposedly found on some server motherboards, which has led to all sorts of hand-wringing online. There’s no end of debate about the capabilities of such devices, how large they would need to be, and quite frankly, if they even exist to begin with. We’re through the looking-glass now, and there’s understandably a mad rush to learn as much as possible about the threat these types of devices represent.

[Nicolas Oberli] of Kudelski Security wanted to do more than idly speculate, so he decided to come up with a model of …read more

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Talking to Laptop Batteries with the ESP8266

It’s not something you often give a lot of thought to, but the modern consumer laptop battery is a pretty advanced piece of technology. Not only does it pack several dozen watt-hours of energy into a relatively small and lightweight package, but it features integrated diagnostic capability to make sure all those temperamental lithium cells are kept in check. Widely available and extremely cheap thanks to the economies of scale (unless you try to get them from the OEM, anyway), they’re a very compelling option for powering your projects.

Of course, it also helps if, like [teliot] you have a …read more

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