Building A Better 3D Scanner With An IPhone, And Making Art

July 14, 2022 by Lewin Day 14 Comments

Apple’s FaceID system uses infrared depth-sensing technology to authenticate people via their faces. It can also be used for simple 3D scanning, and [Scott Yu-Jan] found a better way to do that.

The main problem with using an iPhone as a 3D scanner in this manner is that the sensor is built into the front side of the device. It’s great for scanning your own face, but if you’re trying to scan an object, you can no longer see the iPhone’s screen. [Scott] solved this problem by slapping together a handheld 3D printed device to hold the iPhone along with an external monitor. This allowed Scott to scan while still seeing what was going on.

Having noticed that some of the 3D scanning apps produced strange, glitchy results when scanning faces, [Scott] decided to innovate artistically. He employed [Andrea] to model, took some scans, and Photoshopped the results into some impressive posters.

Overall, [Scott] demonstrates that it’s relatively easy to repurposed the iPhone for improved 3D scanning. With a simple design, he has a handheld scanner that works way better than just the phone on its own. Alternatively, consider getting into photogrammetry instead.

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Adding USB-C To An IPhone 13 Is Delicate Work

June 24, 2022 by Lewin Day 4 Comments

USB-C seeks to rule the roost when it comes to connectors, and even has Big Europe on its side. Apple hasn’t had to abandon Lightning just yet, but [Restore Technique] has put a USB-C port into an iPhone 13 to give us all an idea what it’s going to be like in the brave new future ahead of us.

The idea came about after disassembling the iPhone 13, and the project was locked in after seeing the first iPhone with a USB-C connector sell for $86,001 on eBay. The plan had to support fast charging, cable reversibility, and data transfer, without cutting out any functionality or compromising water resistance.

The concept is simple enough: take the C94 board from a Lightning to USB-C cable, and put it inside the phone along with a USB-C port. Of course, actually achieving that is the real challenge. Techniques from melting apart Lightning connectors to carefully peeling apart 0.5 mm pitch flex cables to fit 0.6 mm pitch pads.

It’s an impressive hack, and explained so well it’s actually tempting to try it at home for the sheer challenge of the thing. If you do pull off a similar hack yourself, drop us a line! Video after the break.

Continue reading “Adding USB-C To An IPhone 13 Is Delicate Work” →

iPhone 6 with Linux boot log on its screen

Boot Mainline Linux On Apple A7, A8 And A8X Devices

June 12, 2022 by Arya Voronova 10 Comments

[Konrad Dybcio] tells about his journey booting Linux on A7/8/8X processors, playing around with an old iPhone 5 he’s got in a drawer. It’s been a two-year “revisit every now and then” journey, motivationally fueled by the things like Linux on M1 Macs announcement. In the end, what we have here is a way to boot mainline Linux on a few less-than-modern but still very usable iPhones, and a fun story about getting there.

[Konrad]’s work is based on the Sandcastle project research, but he couldn’t quite figure out how to make their code work, and had to make sense of it as he went. At some point, he got stuck on enabling the MMU, which was the main roadblock for a while. Joined by another developer intrigued by Apple hardware, they were hacking away at it, developing tools and neat tricks on their way, but to no avail. With the framebuffer accessible and no other decent debugging methods in sight, he tells about a code snippet they wrote that printed register values as valid barcodes Continue reading “Boot Mainline Linux On Apple A7, A8 And A8X Devices” →

The Huge Apple Toolkit For Fixing Your IPhone

May 27, 2022 by Jenny List 71 Comments

It’s been a frequent criticism of Apple, that their products are difficult to repair. They’ve hit back with a self-repair program for iPhones, and should you wish to take advantage of it they will hire you a tool kit. Not the iFixit box you might expect, instead they give you two hefty suitcases that contain 36 Kg of tools and equipment. Yes, you can repair an iPhone, but they ensure that it’s not for the faint-hearted.

In the kit is an impressive array of everything you might need for your iDevice, including the proper heat plate and press for the job. None of that messing about with a hot air gun for your $49 rental cost and $1200 if you don’t return the tools, but it remains an impossibly difficult and expensive process for all but the most dedicated of Apple fanboy technicians.

The sense from the Verge article is that Apple have had their arm twisted to the extent that they must provide a repair option, but they’ve gone to extravagant lengths to make it something nobody in their right mind would pursue. There’s an attraction in the idea of playing with a fully-equipped Apple repair kit for a few days, but maybe it’s not worth the cost.

Even without the Apple toolkit, it’s still possible to upgrade your iPhone.

Thanks [Nikolai Ivanov] for the tip.

Make Your Own BLE-Enabled IOS App From Scratch

December 4, 2021 by Orlando Hoilett 20 Comments

Even those readers who are most skeptical of Apple products will like this Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)-enabled iOS app tutorial from [Akio].

With everything being “connected” these days smartphone applications are of course a ubiquitous part of our existence. We’ve seen plenty of examples connecting your Bluetooth-enabled projects to an Android device, but comparatively fewer tutorials for connecting to iOS devices. This mostly has to do with Android’s much larger market share and also Android’s more open-source friendly business model. Nevertheless, if you do much IoT development either as a hobby or professionally, then you probably find yourself interacting with Apple devices more than you like to admit.

[Akio’s] app is essentially updating a chart, in real-time, with data read from an Adafruit nRF52832 Feather board. He then walks you through all the basics of creating a user interface (UI) using Apple’s Storyboard interface, a simple drag-and-drop scheme similar to something you’ve probably used in many other contexts. [Akio] shows readers how to add buttons for allowing users to interact with the app, labels for displaying data to the user, as well as walks you through Apple’s odd methodology of connecting UI elements to code using IBAction and IBOutlets. The highlight of his tutorial is showing readers how to add charts to their iOS apps which seems to take a few more steps than you might imagine.

[Akio] does a really good job detailing all the relevant functions so that readers will hopefully understand what each piece of the code is doing. And we really enjoyed him adding individual video tutorials for some of the trickier programming steps. He also readily admits that some folks may opt to develop their UI exclusively in code as opposed to the Storyboard but he argues that the Storyboard is still important for beginners and is really handy when the UI is fairly simple.

Of course, in true open-source fashion, [Akio] provides all his code on his GitHub repository so you can clone the repo and run the code yourself as well as credit some of the resources he used while making his app. Two things we really love to see. Hopefully, [Akio’s] tutorial will make connecting to iOS devices seem much less onerous than it once was.

Why Wait For Apple? Upgrade Your IPhone With USB-C Today!

October 15, 2021 by Jenny List 22 Comments

Apple iPhones ship with the company’s Lightning cable, a capable and robust connector, but one that’s not cheap and is only useful for the company’s products. When the competition had only micro-USB it might have made sense, but now that basically all new non-fruity phones ship with USB-C, that’s probably the right way to go.

[Ken Pilonell] has addressed this by modifying his iPhone to sport a USB connector. The blog post and the first video below the break show us the proof of concept, but an update in the works and a teaser video show that he made it.

We’re a bit hazy on the individual iPhone model involves, but the essence of the work involves taking the internals of a Lightning-to-USB-C cable and hooking it up to the phone’s internal Lightning port. The proof-of-concept does it by putting the Apple flexible PCB outside the phone and plugging the cable part in directly, but it seems his final work involves a custom flexible board on which the reverse-engineered USB-C converter parts are mounted along with the USB-C socket itself. We see a glimpse of machining the slot in the phone’s case to USB-C dimensions, and we can’t wait for the full second installment.

It’s purely coincidental, but this comes against a backdrop of the European Union preparing to mandate USB-C on all applicable devices.

Continue reading “Why Wait For Apple? Upgrade Your IPhone With USB-C Today!” →

How To Drive Smartphone Screens Over HDMI

July 5, 2021 by Lewin Day 22 Comments

Compared to most small LCDs sold to makers, smartphone screens boast excellent color, brightness, and insanely high resolution. Unfortunately, driving them is rarely straightforward. In an attempt to make it easier, [peng-zhihui] set about developing tools to allow such screens to be driven from a simple HDMI feed. For those whose Chinese is a little rusty, the Google Translate link might prove useful.

The first attempt was using Toshiba’s TC358870XBG ASIC, capable of driving screens over MIPI DSI 1.1 from an HDMI input. [peng-zhihui] designed a simple test module for the chip based on the company’s evaluation board design, with [ylj2000] providing software to help get that solution off the ground.

However, for now that solution is imperfect, so [peng-zhihui] also experimented with the Longxun LT6911 HDMI to MIPI driver. While cheap, information on the part is scarce, and the company’s own source code for using the hardware is only accessible by signing an NDA. However, [peng-zhihui] made pre-compiled firmware available for those that wish to work with the hardware.

[peng-zhihui] has put these learnings to good use, building a power bank with a MIPI screen using what appears to be the Longxun chip. The device can supply power over USB and also act as an HDMI display.

While it’s early days yet, and driving these screens remain difficult, it’s great to see hackers getting out there and finding a way to make new parts work for them. We’ve seen similar work before, using an FPGA rather than an off-the-shelf ASIC. If you’ve found your own way to get these high-end displays working, be sure to drop us a line!

[Thanks to peterburk for the tip!]