IPod Peripheral: ISee360i Hacking

[James] has done some work reverse engineering the protocols for the iSee360i peripheral. This iPod addon is a media player housing that features a 3.6″ screen. It can be used to play video on iPods that don’t otherwise have the capability because it just uses them as a hard drive. He picked up the device at a discount chain for $15 and wanted to load his own videos directly from Linux without using the Windows-based software that comes with it. There’s the gotcha; even if you encode a video exactly the same as the device’s example video, it will be deleted the next time you fire up the iSee.

After some trial and error [James] reverse engineered all of the quirky requirements to load video manually. There are strict, case sensitive file naming conventions, every file must have a perfectly formatted thumbnail image, and an index file entry must be made for the video. He’s done the hard work of hammering out the details, now it should be easy to write a Python script to automatically format and copy your pre-encoded videos for use.

12 thoughts on “IPod Peripheral: ISee360i Hacking

  1. If it’s using the iPod as a mass storage device, does that mean it’s just a video player with USB host, support for mass storage devices, and an iPod dock connector? Sounds like a good deal for $15… especially with the firmware so accessible…

  2. a $15 LCD with video in, out of the box? Small and crappy for sure (couldnt find resolution) but might make for a really cheap lo-fi SD projector with USB host, great for playing Wii or other non graphic intensive uses. Provided you can get a ffc extension for it..

  3. Just got mine. The bad, doesn’t seem to allow using it as a dumb screen. Was hoping to use it as a small tv on my desk. Once I get my hands on a 3rs gen iPod, I’ll know more.

  4. I still marvel if we won��t see a flip in the ��publishing�� model, too, where, rather than the publisher essentially ��hiring�� a stable of writers, if we tend to won��t see a stable of writers pool their resources to hire an editor, marketer/publicist, and copyeditor/designer (and, presumably, some quite accountant).

  5. To answer a few questions: Yes, you have to have an ipod in it for it to work. If you have an Ipod video you can use it without the “adapter” because the dimensions are so close to other models. If you use the video mode of the isee, you can use it to watch videos like it is a tv. It might be possible to splice in an sd card, or tv input directly to the ipod doc connector. Sorry about the slow reply… been real busy. Got a Didj…

Leave a Reply to fooquestionmarkCancel reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.