@kriqui I would love to play around with the cube if you still want to give it away?

If anyone wants a second one to experiment, I'm giving mine away. Just asking for postage.

Thanks for the offer, is the cube still available? Got one with a metal thing only in it :-)

If Sylvain's is gone, I've also got one that should go to someone with more time to play with it.

So, I can talk to the cube, move data around from the RNGs and the accelerometer, and I can input a 512 character message as ASCII (it converts it from text automatically, it seems) using M U B and pasting in my 512 characters. I can then use XOR to encrypt and move the contents from one flash (B) to the other (C). The problem is, when I take the encrypted version out, it is already in ASCII, but when I try to put it back in by pasting into the terminal (as if I were going to load and decrypt the message), it converts it again, which means I can't just use XOR to decrypt it.

Can someone tell me how I can take that message out, and get it back in with the same ASCII format it came out in? I tried using an online "ASCII to String" converter, but the encrypted version doesn't come out as a usable string...

Actually, the only limitation comes because buffers B and C have limited capacity. If you transfer data directly between UART and N (network, which is a capacitive link) you can transfer longer messages, using NNNN parameter and manipulating R and W addresses (please note the bug in firmware, so you have to enter 2×address).

You should adjust your terminal to read/write ASCII data, not numbers. It should be easy.

I only have one, so, can't try the capacitive link. Maybe at the next Supercon :) That's fine though, 512 characters at a time is okay for experimenting and most short SMS type messages.

I should be able to test this with just one cube right? Encrypt a message, copy the M C U output from the Terminal, shut off the cube, turn it back on, and then M U B and paste it back in, use X B C, and then M C U again to get the decrypted ASCII version of the original message back?

I tried setting the input on the Mac Terminal to ASCII, which works great to convert the text to ASCII numbers, but, when I already have the encrypted message as ASCII characters, and I paste it back in, it treats it like a string and converts it again, changing the values, so I can't decrypt it with XOR.

Can confirm that this is awkward.  You put raw ASCII bytes in and get numbers back out: send "A", receive "065" back.

It's really calling out for a Python (or other) app to drive it from the computer side, IMO.  Python has chr() and ord() -- C has atoi() and itoa() -- that will solve these problems.  Since you need to transmit full 512-byte blocks, you'll need to pad whatever text you want to encode out to 512 bytes too.  

I'll see if I can whip up something simple today on the train. Should be a few lines of Python code.

That's awesome, thanks for taking a look!

I would love to figure out how to use the Supercon badge as a terminal to encode / decode messages eventually too, maybe using the C commands you mentioned? I'm pretty sure Voja said that to use the badge as a terminal with the cube, you would have to solder a header onto the Cube's PCB, unless a change is made to the firmware to allow access through the MicroUSB port. (But I might have misunderstood that part).

OK, more than a few lines.  :)

https://gist.github.com/hexagon5un/6b0cf0b70f406b6d5164503cfbd9dbd7

But that's a good foundation to get started encoding/decoding with the Cube.

Mine is just a decoy with metal weights in it. :(

Yea same!

There was an awesome guy (forgot his name) who was taking the paper weights out and replacing them with the circuitry and soldering on the foil antenna on Sunday. Anyone who had only the weight was able to swap it there, bummer you missed him :(

On the plus side, you have an AWESOME project enclosure :) I was going to put in a D1 Mini board, some sensors, and a NeoPixel ring (I think it is bright enough to shine through the rubberized material) to make an MQTT sensor node, kind of like what was being demonstrated during the IoT lab.

Glad to see that someone will be re-purposing the slug.  I am somewhat worried that most of them will end up like more yoda heads floating around in the ocean.  I've kept mine with the idea that maybe at some point I'll be able to fill it with the required components for the original purpose (tindie maybe?) - or like you, find another use.

Mine too. Weird that they would have some that are just paper weights.

Thank you so much for posting this :) This is a really neat piece of hardware, kind of like a secret decoder ring for hardware hackers. I'm still learning about hardware, and it's hard for me to actually visualize how to write an ascii message on one 'clean' machine (like the badge!), use the cube to encrypt it, then send that message, and how the recipient then decrypts it.