Pseudonymous maker and punster “Colonel Panic” has designed a Bluetooth Low Power gadget for monitoring gadgets, both as a detector or to be used as a direction-finder in “foxhunting” video games: the OUI-SPY.
“OUI-SPY [is an Espressif] ESP32-S3 primarily based BLE detection system with built-in buzzer and energy administration,” Panic explains of the mission. “This board has some creative PCB artwork. Prepared-to-use, no extra parts required. Multi-target BLE system scanner with OUI filtering [or] precision proximity tracker for radio path discovering.”
Fancy slightly cruelty-free “foxhunting”? The OUI-SPY can ship. (📷: Colonel Panic)
The 2-board OUI-SPY, the silkscreen layer of which is embellished with a quote from the 1995 basic Hackers — “snoop unto them as they snoop unto us” — is powered by a Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32S3 and its Espressif ESP32-S3 processor, giving it a dual-core Tensilica Xtensa LX7 microcontroller and built-in Bluetooth Low Power (BLE) and Wi-Fi connectivity.
The previous is used to drive the OUI-SPY’s two modes. The primary acts as a multi-target BLE system scanner, able to monitoring and filtering by MAC deal with or Organizationally Distinctive Identifiers — which means it could possibly observe by producer in addition to by particular person system. On this mode, the Wi-Fi radio is used to offer a browser-based interface for simple configuration and an on-board buzzer gives audible alerts.
The second mode is quite extra enjoyable: Foxhunter. On this mode, the OUI-SPY locks on to a single system and tracks its sign energy, mapped to variable-speed beeping on the buzzer. This, its creator explains, means it may be utilized in “foxhunting” competitions to trace a BLE-enabled goal system — or for asset monitoring.
Panic has revealed binary firmware for each choices on GitHub, whereas fully-assembled models may be bought on Tindie at $75 every; when you’d favor to assemble your personal OUI-SPY, naked PCBs can be found at $20 the pair.
