Symon NetBrite Sign

[Jay Smith]

Skullspace!

We have in our possession a stunning LED sign. It's big, can display all sorts of colours, and can be configured over Ethernet.

The catch?
I have no idea how to talk to it.

It appears to use a proprietary protocol off of TCP port 700. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the Symon software that drives the sign.

If anybody had access to this software or knows a business that runs these signs, please let me know. I'd very much like to reverse engineer the protocol so we can get this running in our space.

In the meantime, all I have to go off of is another person's rudimentary attempt in C#:
http://sourceforge.net/p/penguinserver/code-0/HEAD/tree/trunk/

Feel free to hack on the sign too, just please don't disassemble it.

[Aemilianus Kehler]

Neat! Where did you end up getting it from?

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[Justin Lacko]

Let's see a pic! :)

[Adrian Stoness]

what about this?

https://github.com/bwilber/Net-Symon-Netbrite/blob/master/lib/Net/Symon/NetBrite.pm

[Jay Smith]

It works!

https://vid.me/r1uQ

The project Adrian found seems to work great with the sign we have. I've had a few suggestions for what to do with the sign:

- Integrate it with an IRC bot

- Use it as a meeting countdown timer

- Link it to our twitter feed

- receive messages over XMPP/JABBER 

- Personalized welcome messages from our access control system.

- 8====D

Thankfully none of these options are mutually exclusive. I'll start with a simple web service and work my way up from there.

In the meantime: Where should we put something like this?

[Adrian Stoness]

in the bathroom?

[Aemilianus Kehler]

That would feel like a waste.... I'd like it right above the 3d printer haha.. be neat if you could hook it up to a RSS feed on maybe security topics or new articles that are recent to maybe spark someone to look something new up.

[Stefan H.A]

It should be put in the bike shed, because that is what this discussion is going to turn into.

Seriously though, where ever it winds up I think it should be made portable so it can come with us on away missions like Yuri's night, Comic Con, The Anti-social etc.

[Sean Cody]

The portable suggestion is quite a good one.

As well if anyone has a old Pi and USB Ethernet adapter we can build a bridge for it which hosts Jay's web service and sort of glue it to the back (again portable right?!). It is my understanding it has a burned address so to make it portable without much jiggery pokery a bridge that has one interface for the static config and another for DHCP would solve that problem quite readily.

--
Sean

[Adrian Stoness]

note i was just being a troll guys

anyhow portable with a home at the space would be cool did we want it by the classroom where we could also have it say what the event is going on in there/ the space?

[Stefan H.A]

Could you play tetris on this sign? If you turned it sideways you could display a very tall game of tetris.

[Nathan Wild]

Front window, facing out!  (Assuming we are not prohibited from doing this sort of thing, and that it won't spew out random stuff from our irc ;)

Also we totally need to do Tetris or at least pong in it :)

[Justin Lacko]

I'm pretty sure you'd need a sign permit for street-facing signage.

Also IIRC the landlord had some objections to having signs in the windows - you'd definitely need to get their permission first, unless the rental agreement has changed.

[Ron Bowes]

This may be a very bikeshedable topic, but I enjoy it when everybody has a neat idea on what to do with something. :)

And FWIW, any content that's primarily going to be URLs (like RSS) won't work super well. I think Twitter would be cool, there used to be a Twitter group of all sksp members. I think mak created it. We can update that and have it display those?

[Mak Kolybabi]

On 2015-05-07 09:53, Ron Bowes wrote:
> I think Twitter would be cool, there used to be a Twitter group of
> all sksp members. I think mak created it. We can update that and
> have it display those?

I have not read farther than this, and am already browsing /b/ for
images to tweet.

--
Mak Kolybabi
<m...@kolybabi.com>

[Ron Bowes]

Fortunately, it's just text. :)

[Mak Kolybabi]

On 2015-05-07 10:47, Ron Bowes wrote:
> Fortunately, it's just text. :)

*starts reading libcaca API docs*

--
Mak Kolybabi
<m...@kolybabi.com>

[Jay Smith]

The sign lives!

It's currently installed in the space and can be talked to via jabber/xmpp at the...@skullspace.ca (not an email address). If you don't have a jabber account, you can register on Skullspace's jabber server for free.

Kudos to:

• Keith for acquiring the sign
  
• Alex for helping me troubleshoot issues connecting to the jabber server
  
• Adrian for pointing me to the perl module that drives the sign
  
• Mark for helping me host that script, and for solving the networking problem I've been having with the sign
  
• Russ, Edwin, and Sean for helping me sort through the SkullSpace network
  
• You. Because I probably forgot you. I always forget somebody. Sorry about that.
  

TODO

• Implement a queue so no one user/bot can hog the whole sign. I'll implement it robert's-rules style: Every user can display a message, but no user can post twice until every other user in the queue has had a turn. I want bots to be able to spam interesting things to the sign.
  
• Documentation
  
• Make lots of bots!
  

Displaying a message on the sign

Just send a message to the...@skullspace.ca! Some formatting commands are also available:

• {red} Everything after this is red
  
• {green} Everything after this appears green
  
• {yellow} Everything after this appears *orange*
  
• {scrolloff} if used at the beginning of a message, this will stop it from scrolling until the next message is sent

There are many more formatting commands available, some of which might even break things! I'll put them up in the wiki this weekend.

Have fun, and remember: bots are encouraged! XMPP is pretty easy to work with when scripting.

Disclaimer: Messages are logged.

[Benjamin Bergman]

Any chance that jabber account can reply either when your message has
been posted or when your queue is emptied? Or maybe we can send a
command to flush our queue? I imagine with a bunch of bots, the
backlog could grow pretty big.

[Roswyne]

It might be better to let at least X users post before someone gets another turn. If all of them have to, it'll get stuck if even one is inactive.

[Jay Smith]

That shouldn't be a problem at all - good idea.

[Jay Smith]

It only cares about users with a message in the backlog. If the user doesn't have any messages "in line", it's not going to sit and do nothing until that user takes it turn.

[Roswyne]

Cool, I misinterpreted that.

So will each message stay up awhile before it cycles off?

[Daniel Simeone]

The sign is now performing Henry the Fifth. -- a new line every 5 seconds!

Should take about 5-6 hours!


-D

--

--Daniel Simeone
PhD candidate,
Candidat au doctorat,
Université McGill University

[Jay Smith]

Oh god. I love this. I logged on to "the...@skullspace.ca" on my phone's jabber client and got bombarded with Shakespeare... And the occasional bitcoin stock quote.

[Daniel Simeone]

Shakespeare's bitcoin's have appreciated significantly.

-D

[Mark Jenkins]

On 16/05/15 04:16 PM, Daniel Simeone wrote:
> Shakespeare's bitcoin's have appreciated /significantly.

This caused me to try and find an inflation adjusted gold price that
went back that far:
http://thegoldvault.blogspot.ca/2010/06/historical-price-of-gold.html

Gold was pretty expensive in Shakespeare's time.

Perhaps London real estate would have been a better long bet. Pretty
crazy the stories about iceberg homes...
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/18/basement-conversions-disputes-digging-iceberg-homes

Anyway, here's my source tree:
https://github.com/skullspace/saythesign
Includes a program that will read a line from standard in and post.

I'll accept contributions from other folks and put your work in my
crontab (https://github.com/skullspace/saythesign/blob/master/crontab)
as long as your code can be cron triggered and isn't an all the time daemon.

My todo list, in no particular order:

* One-time announce newly pushed commits to the
https://github.com/skullspace/ repositories, the repositories of any
members of the group, and the repositories of anyone else who wants a
flashing celebratory brag of their logline anytime they publish new
code. Could make for a nice atmosphere next time we have a hackathon
with programming

* "This week at Skullspace"
https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=andreworr.ca_ca51jqs1vfhu7t3l9qno5qdihk%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/Winnipeg

* random text file quote, will use for quoting a song with prominent
use of the word "SIGN" at midnight.

* HTTP POST (REST API) to xmpp:the...@skullspace.ca bridge,
skullspace network only... eventually per user api keys for outside posts..


I'm also fascinated to see how far we can take this co-operatively
without adding any queuing to
https://github.com/skullspace/Net-Symon-Netbrite . Right now, even
scrolling messages are bumped by new incoming messages before they have
finished scrolling. As such, I'm pretty sure my bitcoin price quotes
that are published every 10 minutes were bumped this even evening prior
to scrolling by due to an "interrupt" from Shakespeare every 5 seconds.

Not yet a problem as that was apparently a one time, 5-6 hour thing.


Folks writing bots but not looking to add code to my repository and
crontab may want to consider the shell account service I run on the VM
server. I used to have self-serve account claiming, will fix eventually
or sooner if I get enough inquiries. Cool thing you can do in a shell
account to start a daemon on startup is use "@reboot" in your crontab.


Mark

[Jay Smith]

I'm also fascinated to see how far we can take this co-operatively without adding any queuing to https://github.com/skullspace/Net-Symon-Netbrite .

 ...oops.

So this is probably a bad time to proudly announce that I've just incorporated queuing into the sign! Each message will display for a minimum of 10 seconds (enough for a couple of lines of text). The server will cycle between each person in the queue - no single bot can completely flood the sign. Bring on the Shakespeare!

[Mark Jenkins]

> * "This week at Skullspace"

Done... sorta...

https://github.com/skullspace/saythesign/blob/master/thisweekatskullspace.py

Runs every 5 minutes and shows next seven days. Calendar re-downloaded
every hour.
https://github.com/skullspace/saythesign/blob/master/crontab

Has a major bug or feature depending on your point of view -- only one
off events are currently shown, repeating events are absent.

So presently only Daniel's Papers We Love is appearing.


Mark

[Sean Cody]

Congrats Jay et al. on the project.
SUPER cool idea and implementation.

--
Sean

[novem...@gmail.com]

Resurrecting this thread from the ancient texts; I am hoping the gods accept our humble request for help.

We've inherited a Symon device, which we assume is a netbrite - but aren't really sure since it doesn't say anything about a model number anywhere on it. We have attempted to place the device on a switched network, but it doesn't request a DHCP lease nor does it even get a link light on our switch. We think the device might be configured by Serial given its age.

We called the phone numbers listed on the back of the device to see if they could help us identify the sign, but they just wanted to sell us pro services, and send a technician to our hackerspace for setup and installation, which we obviously don't want (or maybe we do, for comedic value)

What we know:

• its serial number
• it's on Symon SDU Firmware 2.0.b

Here is what we've tried so far:

• Serial:
• all baudrates, 7n1, 8n1, flow control on and off - no change in behavior on the sign and no response over serial
• Ethernet
• brute forced all RFC1918 address spaces with arp requests
• tried different combinations of static arp based on the serial number, which is apparently part of the MAC address (even though our serial number doesn't even align with a mac address + vendor OUI
• Prayer
• sacrificed only one goat

If anyone out there has a solution for interfacing with this apparently non-ethernet Symon device please join me on this quest. Our next step is to open the damn thing up and see what we can see.

Thank you for your time and I apologize for this intrusion of your histories.

- JOHN DOE

[Dennis Sloane]

"Brandon Neighbourhood Renewal Corporation, as a non-profit organization, strives through advocacy, capacity building, provision of knowledge and sustainable funding from various sources to challenge and empower all citizens of the neighbourhood."

BNRC is starting up a Maker/Fab space as per the following posting:

 TylerLane
Joined: Yesterday
Posts: 2

Maker Space/Fablab Feedback 

4 hours ago

We are in the process of designing the layout for Brandon's first Makerspace/Fablab. The idea of a Makerspace is a building where the members can use the tools and build a community around their craft of choice.  
We are leaning towards opening with a full woodshop (table saw, band saw, etc.) and a laser cutter/engraver. But we are looking for feedback on the idea and are open to going a different way with it.  
Would love to keep the discussion here or if you wish to contact me offline mak...@bnrc.ca is the email. 

As a parallel entity, Skullspace might be able to connect with the BNRC on the topic. I know there are lots of other entities like NorthForge that could do this but I thought I would post this as a sort of catalyst.

My only idea might be to either key fob or lock protect some of the more dangerous equipment: high voltage and rotating equipment. Or give a training course on the use there-of.

Oh, and I see a link to a job posting for a Maker Space Coordinator. I guess they are still looking. I will likely throw my hat in the ring since it is still full of current and voltage (electrifyingly exciting):

http://bnrc.ca/images/careers/Makers_Space_Coordinator_-_Job_posting.pdf

I am still boonied up here. I maybe working at a ski hill for the winter in La Riviere, Manitoba!

Always moving,

Dennis

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[Edwin Amsler]

Man, you’ve definitely hit the usual bits. I’d have to open ours up to see if there’s a reset switch or some such. You *should* get at least a link light unless it’s somehow disabled in firmware. 

IIRC it might be a 10baseT device that needed a compatible switch? I’m hazy on the details but if you’ve got some really old gear around it may be worth seeing if you get a link light with that. 

Regards,

Edwin

[Jay Smith]

Hi!

There's some crude code on the Skullspace GitHub page that bridges the sign to XMPP (displaying messages sent to the sign via jabber).

https://github.com/skullspace/Net-Symon-Netbrite

The sign comes preconfigured to expect a static IP address. The expected address for one of the signs is 10.50.31.16, but I'm not sure which one and I can't remember how I figured that out. You'll have to set up the network to assign that IP to the sign.

If you'd like, I can swing by Skullspace sometime to help you out with the signs. I'm pretty free in January and haven't seen the space in a while. Let me know when works best for you.

Jay

[d-_-b]

Jay,

I believe that the message was from another hackerspace who have also inherited a NetBrite sign.

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) thor.robinson;

) skullspace/ppca/phreshlyspun/icon/skullbasebbs
-- 
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Version: 3.12
GMU/O/AT/! d- s+:+ a+ C++++ UL++++ P L+++@ E---- W@ N! o K? w--- 
O- M-- V? PS+++ PE Y+ PGP+ t+ 5+ X R tv++ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e* h-- r y+ z+
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[Jay Smith]

I just realized I missed the part where you said that you bruteforced all of RFC1918. So, you already had that part covered. Sorry about that.

If it's anything like the signs I worked with, it should have tcp port 700 open. My networking skills are a bit fuzzy, especially when it comes to devices that dgaf about ARP requests. But if you know the Mac address, you should be able to manually add an entry for the device to your ARP table and try to hit that port.