On Saturday, a YouTube creator known as ChromaLock published a video detailing how he modified a Texas Devices TI-84 graphing calculator to hook up with the web and entry OpenAI’s ChatGPT, doubtlessly enabling college students to cheat on exams. The video, titled “I Made the Final Dishonest Gadget,” demonstrates a customized {hardware} modification that permits customers of the graphing calculator to kind in issues despatched to ChatGPT utilizing the keypad and obtain dwell responses on the display screen.
ChromaLock started by exploring the calculator’s hyperlink port, sometimes used for transferring academic packages between gadgets. He then designed a customized circuit board he calls “TI-32” that includes a tiny Wi-Fi-enabled microcontroller, the Seed Studio ESP32-C3 (which prices about $5), together with different parts to interface with the calculator’s programs.
It is price noting that the TI-32 hack is not a industrial venture. Replicating ChromaLock’s work would contain buying a TI-84 calculator, a Seed Studio ESP32-C3 microcontroller, and numerous digital parts, and fabricating a customized PCB based mostly on ChromaLock’s design, which is available online.
The creator says he encountered a number of engineering challenges throughout improvement, together with voltage incompatibilities and sign integrity points. After growing a number of variations, ChromaLock efficiently put in the customized board into the calculator’s housing with none seen indicators of modifications from the skin.
To accompany the {hardware}, ChromaLock developed customized software program for the microcontroller and the calculator, which is accessible open source on GitHub. The system simulates one other TI-84, permitting individuals to make use of the calculator’s built-in “ship” and “get” instructions to switch information. This enables a consumer to simply obtain a launcher program that gives entry to numerous “applets” designed for dishonest.
One of many applets is a ChatGPT interface that is perhaps most helpful for answering quick questions, but it surely has a downside in that it is gradual and cumbersome to kind in lengthy alphanumeric questions on the restricted keypad.
Past the ChatGPT interface, the machine gives a number of different dishonest instruments. A picture browser permits customers to entry pre-prepared visible aids saved on the central server. The app browser characteristic permits college students to obtain not solely video games for post-exam leisure but in addition text-based cheat sheets disguised as program supply code. ChromaLock even hinted at a future video discussing a digital camera characteristic, although particulars had been sparse within the present demo.
ChromaLock claims his new machine can bypass widespread anti-cheating measures. The launcher program may be downloaded on-demand, avoiding detection if a instructor inspects or clears the calculator’s reminiscence earlier than a check. The modification can even supposedly break calculators out of Test Mode, a locked-down state used to stop dishonest.
Whereas the video presents the venture as a technical achievement, consulting ChatGPT throughout a check in your calculator virtually actually represents an moral breach and/or a type of tutorial dishonesty that might get you in deep trouble at most faculties. So tread fastidiously, examine exhausting, and bear in mind to eat your Wheaties.
This story initially appeared on Ars Technica.
