Hello,
I’m unsure how many here, have the Hexa still around.
Over the last two weeks, I had great fun, but also much trouble, puzzling, reverse engineering and development.
The goal was to take control of the hardware I purchased from Vincross.
Earlier on, last year, I found a method I call the “SimulatorKit hack”, where you exploit the SimulatorSkill to control the Hexa from ie. Python (my favourite), simply by sending websocket calls, to the Hexa, containing leg positions. That’s what makes it possible to move the physical legs, from the software.
However that method, while working fine, and being able to walk the Hexa around from a laptop, was not satisfying enough. I wanted to know what the mind.d software did.
I have made several inquiries, never really gotten an answer from (you Vincross) to share the source code, even recently.
Anyways, I have now broken the system. Guess being a security linux engineer paid off. Using strace on mind.d it was possible to identify how the process communicates with the servo board. Passing similar commands like the SimulatorKit hack to a serial interface. However this time a little more complex, because we’re not talking degrees (0-180), but potentiometer values ie. (0-2000), and each servo varies a little bit.
The above challenge is solved. However collaboration would make it much easier. I still would like to know how the serial interface is opened and initialized. I have made a workaround.
At this point I have written a REST API for the Hexa, that can interact with LED, Legs/Servos, Walk, Move Head, Change Speed. Essentially created what I wanted. Unfortunately I had to bypass mind.d, and run independently from your software.
What are your thoughts? Do you encourage this Vincross. I would like to share this with the community, perhaps, see it grow, get some feedback and so on.
