Hacker's Guide to UART Root Shells

Keep up the videos very awesome! For someone new to hardware hacking what cheap devices could I try my hands on that has an UART interface?

I'm lazy so I just usually try 9600, 19200 or 115200, works 99% of the time and is faster than reversing the baud rate. Of course for an educational video showing how you can calculate the baud rate is very good. Great video !

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I had never considered before that you could take photos of both sides of the PCB and color traces in a photo editor. That's such a great idea!

In 1990, I built from scratch a few micro controllers and communicated with them using a serial interface and a terminal to configure them. This video brings back old memories and makes me glad that people are using the same technique.

If I wanted to show someone an example of what a well presented, entertaining YouTube video looks like, I would show them this channel.

Wow, impressive how you tought me serial communication in 17minutes when I have had quite hard to grasp it before. Very educational approch with practical example, and problem solving. Subscribed!

Please keep doing these. I’m trying very hard to learn to do stuff like this, I literally have all the gear. But either I’m slogging through textbooks that are too boring to read, just poking around under the microscope and multimeter or with uart to usb, reading tutorials for already wide open -eg dev boards and generally struggling.

This is an example of a perfect tutorial. Great pace, background info, and real-world examples. Thanks so much! Subscribed.

Simply brilliant. Thank you for explaining the concept of calculating the baud rate so beautifully.

This video should be what youtube is all about. GREAT WORK teaching!

Never seen anyone teaching something so easily! Love this thank you sir

A lot of the times, the manufacturer will have vcc connected to ground on the board which is what locks hart down and makes it read only. By disconnecting them with a small tear (micro grinder works well for this so you can do repairs later) you open it up to read/write. This is not for all of them, but it is a cheap and effective way that they do, do it.

Very cool video. I just got my first root shell on an old Wi-fi range extender I had lying around.

7:20 - In most cases, which pin is the ground should be readily apparent. Usually all but one of them will have small traces connected. The one that has a large, wide trace is going to be the ground. Some PCBs, however, have a certain degree of protection by making the traces less visible. On those, a multimeter with continuity would be a necessity. This board is not one of those, as you can visibly see the North pin and the 2 South pins have small traces, and the odd one out is connected to the Board Common Ground. This works for simpler PCBs. It is the more complex ones - where the ground is less obvious - where you need to use this method.

This is the best tutorial i have seen about usb to ttl. Thank you so much man for the help

excellent video. well explained and visualized. keep up the good work. subscribed.

By far the best thing on the internet for hardware hacking

This was interesting and informative. One small nit. I've always heard this called asynchronous serial protocol, and the UART is the hardware component that emits the protocol.

You can also use well known 'screen' command instead of 'minicom'. Screen is usually used to create background sessions but also has functionality to support configurable serial connections.