WrewOS

We're living in some really cool times for DIY electronics hobbyists. It's a time where microcontrollers are cheap and easy to come by, yet powerful enough to actually be useful for things. A lot of this MCUs are quite small, making them ideal for embedded projects, portability, and even in some cases for wearables.

Combine this with 3d printing and you can get some super creative gadgets that do some ridiculously cool stuff. Alas, I don't have a 3d printer - which is probably a good thing because I don't know that I'd ever stop printing stuff if I did have one.

Thankfully, this is also a period where cool and weird gadgets abound - made possible by the same MCUs that I use in many of my projects. The ESP32 (especially the S3 variant) is inexpensive and quite capable (multi-core, with wifi and ble built in!) - making it a popular choice for pre-made electronics as well.

One such device is the T-LoRa Pager from Lilygo. You can get it either with stock lilygo firmware, or with special Meshtastic firmware pre-flashed onto it.

You can also do what I did, and build your own firmware! After seeing a friend of mine having a ton of fun building his own custom firmware I opted to build my own too - so WrewOS was born.

I started with firmware I built and made available for SpectraMesh, as it provides a solid foundation and incorporates SpectraMesh which I already wanted to use - plus doing it this way saved a lot of time over a completely ground up build of new firmware. Why re-invent the wheel when you don't have to?

Initially I started with a re-skin of it, using the color scheme I use on most of my personal websites (this one being the exception), which is in keeping with my personal style choices. I then started adding new features as "apps" that can be run. So far I have a few apps completed and working:

Drone Radar (pictured above) - a drone detection system that monitors for remoteID broadcasts from drones (mandated by the FAA) and plots them on a "radar" screen to show their position relative to your current position. It also will accept a SpectraMesh data feed of drone reports from other drone detection enabled SpectraMesh nodes - contacts reported by remote sensors but not detected locally are shown as cyan, contacts reported both remotely and locally are yellow, and contacts only seen locally are red. I have several drone detection sensors in place and all can (and do) feed into drone radar - it's seriously cool!
JamSpy - visualize WiFi and BLE noise in the environment around you and detect when potential jamming is taking place. It builds an initial baseline of observed devices and then reports on how that changes - if you suddenly stop seeing devices you've been seeing it increases the probability that jamming is occurring (especially when combined with changes in the noise floor).
Axonolotyl - detect the presence of Axon bodycameras and remotely enable their record feature to ensure they're turned on.
UniPwn - a autopwn tool for Unitree robots. You can reboot them, enable SSH, set the root password, and issue custom commands.
NFC reader - (in development) read and clone NFC enabled chips. Replay as needed.
Wardrive - wardrive mode where it maps observed wifi and ble devices based on GPS location when they're observed. Filters on things like Flock Safety cameras and plots them with special indicators so you know where surveillance devices are in a spacial map. Exportable, using the same format as WiGLE... in case you want to share.
StalkerSpy - identify TILE trackers, Airtags, and other similar devices that are commonly used as low cost trackers that can track you. This can also be used to identify credit card skimmers at gas pumps and ATMs.
BugSpy - detects ultrasonic emissions that are emitted by some bug mics.
EvilPortal Detector - detects the presence of evil portal.
Deauth detector - detects wifi deauth attacks underway
Colonial Fleet Mode - provides a hardware locking mechanism to lock certain apps away so that in normal operation they're not visible or available. When Colonial Fleet Mode is triggered a hardware security key verification step is required, and once the hardware security key is verified we reboot into a fully operational mode with access to all tools.
Easter Eggs - there are plenty of easter eggs and small things that make me giggle when they show up - sprinkled throughout the OS. Including the ability to launch and play D00M.

More apps are coming, too, such as a special app to talk on my friend's bespoke chat server and other stuff ranging from badass to silly.