Brad McPike

Author: bmcpike

  • “ShinyHunters” Hack In On Canvas School Websites

    On Thursday May 7th 2026 the servers for the company Instructure was “hacked” by a group known as “ShinyHunters.” Canvas, a web based class interaction platform by Instructure affected students at Indiana Tech. Pages on Canvas returned a maintenance screen in place of course access. Canvas was inaccessible around the hours of 5 pm to 11:45 pm that day. Everything is back to normal the day after. Various extensions were given for assignment due dates. Personal data of Indiana Tech student is considered safe because records and sign-ons are not within Canvas.

    https://www.wthr.com/article/news/education/indiana-colleges-impacted-by-canvas-cybersecurity-hack/531-a5a0216c-1041-45af-b5c0-24bf73fed844

  • Thoughts On Data Center Energy

    An opinion column in my local paper caught my eye. The author talked on the shortage of energy from retired coal and how Indiana could find funding to power new server farms. State legislature are working to put a policy in place to require data centers to pay for constructing new power generation plants.

    Link to Tribtown article:

    Data Centers: Which way Indiana?

  • LoRA Tech and Meshtastic Messaging

    First, I must make note that I heard about Meshtastic from Josh Nass, KI6NAZ, the YouTube Ham Radio Crash Course guy, and if you want the low down on what is Meshtastic is and practical uses, please see his videos here: Get Started With Meshtastic FAST!

    What is LoRA?

    ESP32 Boards

    I started out with the ESP32 version with a Heltec v3 board.

    nRF52840 Boards

    The nRF52840 boards are more efficient with battery usage. A charge has lasted Several days with these boards compared to the Heltec V3 draining a battery overnight. The nRF52840 also has a designated port for 5 volt solar input, reducing the charge controller circuits needed. I’m currently testing the solar charge capabilities with two 18650 batteries in parallel connected to the battery port.