Unbinare Wiki

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Unbinare is an e-waste reverse engineering lab. Our objective is to reduce the increase of e-waste by finding ways to reuse discarded electronic devices. A strong characteristic of this increase is the shortening lifespan of electronic devices. Factors such as planned obsolescence, the inability to repair and abandoned software support for devices that have reached end-of-life all contribute to electronics prematurely ending up in a waste stream. We believe we can help to change this trend by increasing the lifespan of discarded devices by changing their purpose; an electronic device consists of a lot of different components that all work in conjunction to provide its functionality. Each of these components can be repurposed into something else before the device ends up in a waste stream. More importantly, we operate from an anarchist context and consider our research to be a form of direct action to counter state and corporate control of the environment.

In order to meet this objective, we create hardware and software tools that assist in the analysis and reverse engineering of discarded devices and their components to help reimagine what they could become next. We believe in developing and using devices that are cheap, easy to obtain and easy to produce in order to allow anybody to join the effort. Finding new uses for discarded devices requires research and development and this wiki publicly documents our process. All of our projects are under continuous development and will be updated regularly. We make all of the source code and design files we produce available under a reciprocal open source license. Once they are available they can be found in our public git repository. Project updates will be announced on Mastodon

Project	Description
OI!STER	A target board with a QFP48 clamshell socket aimed at debugging and glitching STM32L5 MCUs.
UNBProbe	A passive, spring-loaded needle probe for probing PCBs.
UNBProbeBase	A Base connecting 12 UNBProbes to a prototyping area.
UNBRK	A QFP48/64/100/144 Breakout board with a prototyping area.
DEDBUG Protoboard	A protoboard aimed at SMD deadbug prototyping.
DEDBUG ProtoFlex	A set of Flex PCBs for the DEDBUG Protoboard

As of June 2023, all of the tools above are supported by NLnet and the NGI Zero Fund and form the first set of the Reverse Engineering Toolkit [RET]