Wow! After more than two years I finally got my hands dirty hacking the Nabaztag rabbit. The release of the source code last summer were very encouraging here! Expect some awesome results in the next time

Let’s start with NabaztagInjector, an Arduino Library to inject data:

What bothered me for long was the missing possibility to connect external devices to the rabbit. How awesome would it be to use the rabbit for sending data into the net? Imagine it as WIFI shield you Arduino.

Guess what – that’s possible: replacing the RFID reader with an Arduino (both use the I2C bus) running a simulation of the RFID reader chip, enabled me to inject any custom data to the rabbit. Hacked!

As result, I created this tiny Arduino library to encapsulates the full process behind and easy API:

/**
 * Simple Arduino NabaztagInjector example sketch
 **/

#include <Nabaztag.h>

void setup() {
  Nabaztag.begin(0); //0 = standalone
}

void loop() {
  // send 1337 to the rabbit
  Nabaztag.inject(1337);
  //done
}

Check out the full Readme, Source code and Examples here:

http://www.rngtng.com/nabaztag-injector-arduino-rfid-hack/

Alright, I spend some time with my new toy Nabaztag ‘Nabaccia‘

What confused me most: there have been two Firmware version out there. Some project depend on the old one, some other on the, new Jabber based, version.

Here are some interesting projects I’ve found:
http://nabaztools.sourceforge.net/ (outdated, MAC OS X)

http://sourceforge.net/projects/opennab/ (PHP)

http://code.google.com/p/nabazlib/ (python)

http://nabazlab.sourceforge.net/index_en.htm (windows only)

A working Proxyserver: jNabServer

http://code.google.com/p/jnabserver/

A good summery how to start ‘nabazhacking’ is here:

http://www.saraproft.org/?p=912

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2006/03/more_nabaztag_hacking.html

A very detailed look into the electronics of the rabbit:

http://www.petertyser.com/2007/03/11/nabaztag-nabaztagtag-dissection/

Forums:
http://nabaztag.forumactif.fr/ (french)
http://www.mynabaztag.de (german)
http://www.nabaztalk.com (english)

Blogs:
http://www.nabaztag-blog.de (german)

Quite complete list of other sources:

http://www.nabzone.com/?frG=/liens.php

Yay, my new toy has arrived: It’s a Nabaztag. Short story: I first met the rabbit in 2007 at re:publica conference @ Berlin, and always want to have one since then. Nabaztag is a rabbit connected to the Internet with moving ears, 4x color LEDs, a RFID reader, a button and Sound In & Output. It’s hard to understand why one wants to have such rabbit, but the idea to connect things with the internet sounds very interesting to me. But just for playing around, it was to expensive … till now!

Sadly (well, luckily for me) Violet, the producer of Nabaztag, is on it’s way to bankruptcy. As of this MyRobotcenter started selling them half price – nice! I couldn’t anymore resists buying and got the rabbit+mirror+zstamps for a good price – that’s all right!

According to violet, each thing needs a name, so mine is called Nabaccia, listens to emails via nabaccia – things.violet.net and, of course, twitters here as well. So, now it’s time to hack the rabbit. I saw a couple of interesting project out there, let’s get it on! More on this soon!

I know it’s totally wired and hard to understand why, just don’t ask

Image by Liron – thx!