Update: Microtouch The 8-bit Ipod Touch

January 31, 2011 by Chris Nelson 58 Comments

It looks like [rossum] and [Ladyada] have teamed up and been busy working on the microtouch. Since we covered it last year its had a few minor improvements like an upgrade to the ATmega32u4 microprocessor and some new software. The new and improved microtouch also features an accelerometer as well as some software to go along with it. Plus its now for sale on adafruit for about a quarter the price of an ipod touch (just in case you don’t feel like making your own).

For the unaware the microtouch is a lightweight AVR based ipod touch. It comes with a bootloader which allows you to download your “apps” to the microtouch without the need for an AVR programmer. While it may lack some of the computing power and features of the ipod touch (like music), the microtouch is definitely appealing for its open hardware/software and easy to use touch screen.

CES: Where Are They Now? CES Of Course!

January 7, 2011 by Greg R. Jacobs 10 Comments

CES is a time for showcasing the latest and greatest innovative products. While the crowd milled around the iLounge there was one company who stood out amongst the rest. [Mike] from CableJive is making his debut on the biggest stage for innovation this year. Many of you will remember [Mike] from a post back in 2006, where he was fed up of with all of the good docks being for the apple products exclusively. He set out to fix this and, when talking with him, attributes his success to the coverage Hack a Day did on his project. CableJive has become so popular that he has hired staff that help him produce his products. All detailed information for their products can be found at their website. The finished product is displayed after the break.

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IPod Nano 6g Closer To Being Cracked

December 29, 2010 by Mike Szczys 32 Comments

[Steven Troughton-Smith] figured out how to push signed firmware through to the iPod Nano 6g. This is accomplished by modifying iRecovery to recognize the device on the USB after forcing a recovery mode reboot. So no, this doesn’t mean that it has been cracked since it checks the firmware you push and reboots if it’s not approved. But if you can figure out how to craft a custom image that passes the check you can call yourself a jailbreak author.

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SmartLCD Makes Video For Microcontrollers Easy

November 21, 2010 by Mike Szczys 28 Comments

[Rossum] developed a host board that makes it easy to drive a TFT screen using an inexpensive microcontroller. He’s looked around at a bunch of LCD’s that are easy to get your hands on and decided that the iPod Nano 2G screens are the right balance of performance (176×132 TFT) and low cost ($1-$5). They’re not particularly difficult to talk to, but with 22 pins they’re a bit hardware hungry.

He takes us through the signal sniffing he used to figure out the communications process. From there he harness the power of an ARM Cortex M0 processor, which he’s worked with in the past, to drive the screen. His implementation results in a driver board called the SmartLCD that takes care of the screen’s parallel protocol, power, and backlight. From there it’s just four connections and you can use a small microcontroller like the Arduino seen above with ease. See what it can do after the break.

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New A4 Jailbreak Debacle Puts The Brakes On For IPad

October 10, 2010 by Mike Szczys 26 Comments

If you’ve been waiting in the wings for the next Jailbreak to be release you should know there’s been a bit of a speed bump. [ChronicDevTeam], which has been working on an exploit for A4-based iOS devices called SHAtter, tweeted last Thursday that the fully tested, untethered, and unpatchable package knows as greenpois0n would be released today. But on Friday [Geohot], who you may remember from the PlayStation 3 Hypervisor exploit, rolled out his own mostly untested and admittedly beta jailbreak called limera1n.

So where does that leave the situation? Because [geohot] used a different exploit, the [ChronicDevTeam] decided not to release greenp0ison. If they did, it would give Apple a chance to block two different exploits. Instead they are working feverishly to incorporate, test, and repackage using the same exploit as limera1n.

If you don’t want to wait, jailbreak now, but you risk problems with an unstable exploit method that is only available for Windows.

[via @ChronicDevTeam]

PS3 Jailbreak – Now In Apple Flavor!

September 25, 2010 by James Munns 23 Comments

Image courtesy of DanyL of psx-scene

The newest member of the PS3 jailbreaking tool crowd is the iPod family. More specifically, iPods running the open source media firmware Rockbox. Even better news, theoretically it should be possible to use this same method on any MP3 player running the Rockbox software. Right now the exploit package only works on select generations of the iPod Nano and iPod Classic line, but if the trend set by the PSX-scene forums continues, it would be worth checking back in the near future if your device is not already supported. Thanks to [shuffle2] for providing the hack, and [DanAdamKOF] for the heads up.

If Apple isn’t your device of choice, you can also check out some of your other jailbreaking options.

More Car Audio Input Hacking

August 15, 2010 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

[Dave] pulled the head unit out of his dashboard to add an iPod input. He took a much more invasive route than the other hack we saw a few days ago. He actually patched into the audio lines going from the Dolby reader head chip to the amplifier.

The first step was to trick the deck into thinking it had a cassette inserted. He scoped an enable pin on one of the chips to discover the timing and emulated that signal using a PIC microprocessor. From there he popped off the chip that reads the tape data, patching directly into the audio out traces. This presented some noise issues when charging the iPod but [Dave] fixed that with some decoupling capacitors.