adequate-can VS PrecisionGazeMouse

Okay, so, your comment about a "Dasher + Guitar Hero music theory/improvisation practice program" just sent me down a huge rabbit hole...

Well, rabbit hole(s) plural, I guess, most not directly related. :D

Largely because I made the "mistake" of looking at your HN profile & discovering you're also in NZ & we seem to have somewhat overlapping interests (and an affinity for "bacon" in account names, apparently), so, some thoughts[0]... :)

# Topic 1: Nissan Leaf VSP hacking

After reading your recent posts (https://ianrrees.github.io//2023/07/03/vsp-hacking.html & https://ianrrees.github.io//2023/08/05/voltage-glitch-inject...) on this topic & noting your remark about wanting to try reverse engineering a firmware image, I found the following thesis PDF (via a brief google search for `"reverse engineer" "firmware" "Renesas"`):

* "AUTOMOTIVE FIRMWARE EXTRACTION AND ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES" by Jan Van den Herrewegen https://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/11516/1/VandenHerrewege...

Not really what I was anticipating finding but seems relevant to your interests--I don't think it was already in your resource list.

While the thesis addresses the Renesas 78K0 rather than the Renesas 78K0R, from a brief look at the "Flash Protection" PDF Application Note in your resource list it seems there's a large overlap.

Perhaps most significantly the author presents "novel methods" that combine bootloader binary analysis with constraint-based power glitching in an effort to improve on the results described in "Shaping the Glitch".

While I haven't read the entire 186 pages :D they theorize that using their approach extracting 8kB firmware might only take ~10 hours.

And, most helpfully, they even published their source code under the GPL here: https://github.com/janvdherrewegen/bootl-attacks

So, an interesting adjacent read even if it turns out not to be directly applicable to your situation.

Given I have an interest in & a little experience with firmware reversing my original thought was to maybe provide some hopefully helpful references that more generically related to firmware reversing but more specific is good too, I guess. :)

In terms of reverse engineering tooling, I've used Rizin/Cutter/radare2 previously: https://rizin.re https://cutter.re

On the CAN tooling/info front, you might be interested in taking a look at my "Adequate CAN" list which I originally wrote-up for a client a couple years ago: https://gitlab.com/RancidBacon/adequate-can

Some other probably outdated reverse engineering tooling links of mine: https://web.archive.org/web/20200119074540/http://www.labrad...

In terms of how to approach RE, other than just "getting started & digging in" & learning by doing, I've sometimes found it informative to read other people's firmware reverse engineering write-ups to learn about potentially useful approaches/tools.

Anyway, hopefully some of this is helpful!

[0] I have a tendency to be a little... "verbose" and/or "thorough" (depending on one's POV :) ) so I'll probably split this over a couple of comments, in case I run out of steam while writing and for topic separation.

As someone who suffered some severe mobility impairment a few years ago and relied extensively on eye tracking for just over a year, https://precisiongazemouse.org/ (Windows) and https://talonvoice.com/ (multiplatform) are great. In my experience the hardware is already surprisingly good, in that you get accuracy to within an inch or half an inch depending on your training. Rather, it's all about the UX wrapped around it, as a few other comments have raised.

IMO Talon wins* for that by supporting voice recognition and mouth noises (think lip popping), which are less fatiguing than one-eye blinks for common actions like clicking. The creator is active here sometimes.

(* An alternative is to roll your own sort of thing with https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/dragonfly and other tools as I did, but it's a lot more effort)

I'm curious if anyone on here has ever tried eye-tracking as a way to move your mouse pointer around. For example product like this: https://precisiongazemouse.org/ (I just found it googling, I have no idea if it is any good)

Ah I see, I would definitely try other apps, Precision Gaze Mouse for example. I don't have any real experience with eye tracking, but I would imagine rigging up Talon the way you're thinking would make it less accurate than if it were on a 27 inch monitor.

You might like https://github.com/PrecisionGazeMouse/PrecisionGazeMouse or https://github.com/cmauri/eviacam - basically you control the mouse using your head via a webcam.