The Hardware Hacker
For over a decade, Andrew “bunnie” Huang, one of the world's most esteemed hackers, has shaped the fields of hacking and hardware, from his cult-classic book Hacking the Xbox to the open-source laptop Novena and his mentorship of various hardware startups and developers. In The Hardware Hacker, Huang shares his experiences in manufacturing and open hardware, creating an illuminating and compelling career retrospective. Huang’s journey starts with his first visit to the staggering electronics markets in Shenzhen, with booths overflowing with capacitors, memory chips, voltmeters, and possibility. He shares how he navigated the overwhelming world of Chinese factories to bring chumby, Novena, and Chibitronics to life, covering everything from creating a Bill of Materials to choosing the factory to best fit his needs. Through this collection of personal essays and interviews on topics ranging from the legality of reverse engineering to a comparison of intellectual property practices between China and the United States, bunnie weaves engineering, law, and society into the tapestry of open hardware. With highly detailed passages on the ins and outs of manufacturing and a comprehensive take on the issues associated with open source hardware, The Hardware Hacker is an invaluable resource for aspiring hackers and makers.
Stats for nerds
19recommend
29mentions
28people
2010–2026years
69% recommend31% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The above deals only with PCB RE; if you would like to learn about overall Product RE see also;
Reverse Engineering: Mechanisms, Structures, Systems & Materials by Robert Messler.
Product Design: Techniques in Reverse Engineering and New Product Development by Kevin Otto and Kristin Wood.
The Hardware Hacker: Adventures in Making and Breaking Hardware by Andrew "bunnie" Huang.
- It takes all kinds.
I (have learned to) love working with hardware. There’s a specific tension between hardware developers (firmware) and software that runs closer to the user. I used to do a lot more consulting - building mobile apps that talked to BLE sensors, like refrigeration controllers, etc, and almost always the end user was a technician.
Now, I’m making apps specifically for non-technical users. I really love the challenge.
To come up with my app idea (and business) I tried to think about the worst possible hardware on the planet and thought label printers.
Turns out that the hardware is almost universally pretty good, but there was no software that worked for both Mac and windows, worked independent of device drivers, was easy to use, had modern conveniences, and didn’t cost hundreds of dollars.
At the same time my competitors are extracting as much value from the label printer landscape as possible, with a wake of irked users behind them. RFID in the label roll? Yep. Jacked up pricing and mandatory support subscriptions. Yep. More proprietary everything… yep.
I’m always looking for new markets and ideas. A year ago, when a competitor released a new printer with RFID, I got call after call asking me to bundle a printer with my app. At the time I didn’t find a compelling printer on the market … nothing that would set my business apart.
But then I found a Chinese manufacturer and read Hardware Hacker, and now I’ve got these awesome printers for sale, bundled with my design app! I’m competing in the 4” wide 300 DPI direct-thermal market. I’m not marketing this as a shipping label printer (that’s a solved problem), instead, it’s for making custom designed labels, usually with barcodes, usually with data from an external source.
The printer: https://mydpi.com
The book: https://www.adafruit.com/product/3465
- On the electronics side of things, I recommend "The Hardware Hacker" by bunnie.
- You could read the Hardware Hacker by Bunnie Huang and learn about its history. That might spur more ideas.
- I'm currently reading "The Hardware Hacker" [1] by the same author. It touches on a lot of the same issues at a higher level. Highly recommended even for those just casually interested in the topic.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/30804383-the-hardware...
- Shameless plug for bunnie: the "The Hardware Hacker" book has a fair bit more on the subject, and is, the verall, quite a good read.
Related
Hacking the Xbox
16 recommend · 23
Cracking DES
1 recommend · 6
Designing Embedded Hardware
2 recommend · 5
An engineering approach to computer networking
2 recommend · 12
2017–2026
Computer System Design
4 recommend · 9
Hackers
130 recommend · 236
Applied Cryptography
76 recommend · 258
