In the first and in-between posts I leaned on “symbols left in the firmware” a few times without saying how I got hold of that firmware. This post covers that. There are gentle ways to pull firmware off a device, and there is the sledgehammer: pry the case open, lift the flash chip off the board with hot air, and read it in a socket. My controller was dead anyway, so the sledgehammer it is. ...
Here we go again. My Nanoleaf controller finally died, again. With the dark season setting in, a wall of 30 dark panels is not much fun, so getting an alternative controller working has moved up my list. So I have picked up where I left off. In “Nanoleaf Shapes deepdive, part 1” I went through the protocol spoken between the Nanoleaf Shapes controller and the panels. One piece was left unsolved: how the layout detection (0x80) handles branches. I could decode a straight chain of panels, but as soon as the tree branched out, the “layout data” bytes stopped making sense. ...
Between June 13th and 15th, 2025, the intensity of GNSS spoofing in the Baltic — and, as we’ll see, the Kattegat — surged dramatically. This uptick didn’t go unnoticed: authorities issued alerts and advisories to mariners across the region. The disruption is visible on monitoring platforms like gpsjam.org, though that site is increasingly saturated. Its detection is based on ADS-B reports from aircraft experiencing degraded navigational accuracy — a method that, while useful, has limitations. ...
In my previous blog post, “Going in Circles”, I explored two distinct GNSS spoofing systems operating in the Gulf of Finland, which manipulated ship positions into circular or hexagonal patterns. However, the region’s navigational anomalies aren’t solely due to wide-scale spoofing. Individual vessels have also been observed falsifying their locations, likely to obscure connections to Russian ports and evade sanctions. One such vessel is the LPG tanker FALCON (IMO: 9014432). Unlike the earlier cases where ships were unwitting victims of external spoofing, FALCON appears to be deliberately broadcasting deceptive AIS data. Its self-spoofing behavior results in conspicuous circular movement patterns, making the deception evident to observers. ...
Over the past year, there has been a marked increase in disruptions to satellite navigation systems across the Gulf of Finland, with reports of aircraft and ships receiving false GPS signals. Evidence points to GNSS spoofing activity originating from the Russian side of the border, raising questions about its purpose and impact. While some observers see it as a form of geopolitical signaling or electronic pressure, others suggest it may be a defensive measure—intended to shield strategic areas from potential drone incursions. In this post, I will dive into what I have identified as two distinct systems of GNSS-spoofing and see what we can learn about them based on self-reported AIS positions of ships. ...
A large white wall at my house seemed to be the perfect canvas for Nanoleaf Shapes, combining functional lighting with an the possibly of making art, as you would be controlling each individual panel as large RGB-pixels. So I bought 30 panels and for the first couple of months everything just worked. But then the issues started, which all seem to be related to the controller, which can be connected to the side of panels. ...