Iphone Hacks: Pushing the Iphone and iPod Touch Beyond Their Limits - PDF Free Download (2024)

Add a Private Method to Your Application If you want to call a method on a private class, you need to import the class as described earlier. But what if you want to call a private method on a class that’s already declared in the official SDK? Once again, there are a few different ways to approach this. The first option is to replace the official class header with a class-dumped version. This is just like splicing a class-dumped class into your official headers as described previously, except that this time, you’re replacing one that already exists. For one thing, you’ll have to do it in multiple places. And you’ll also be discarding a lot of valuable type information about message parameters that was provided in the official header. You could also splice the additional method declarations from the class-dumped header into the official header, creating a merged header. This gets complicated, because you will have to find all the duplicates from the class-dumped section and delete them, and they will probably be scattered throughout the list and difficult to locate. And once again, you have to copy the merged file to all the other locations. But there’s a useful hack that allows you to call a private method without modifying headers and without causing compiler warnings. Because Objective-C allows classes to be augmented through the category mechanism, you can fool the compiler into letting you call additional methods by creating a fake category. Suppose that you want to be able to set your application’s icon badge to contain some arbitrary text. You can set the badge using the UIApplication class (Figure 11-48), but the only public method for setting the badge takes an unsigned integer, which is very limiting. A little digging in API Explorer [Hack #11.14] reveals that there is a private method, setApplicationBadge:, that looks more promising.

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HACK # 11.15 Figure 11-48. Set the badge using the UIApplication class

Checking the class dump for the UIKit framework, we can see that it takes an id and returns void: - (void) setApplicationBadge:(id)fp8;

A little web searching will make you confident that the argument is supposed to be an (NSString*). Unfortunately the limited type information stored in the compiled binaries makes it difficult to know in general what the expected object types are for private messages. You will have to rely on forum discussions and trial-and-error to figure it out. Armed with this knowledge of the method declaration, we can now write a fake category declaration to convince the compiler that this method really does exist: @interface UIApplication (FakePrivateMethods) - (void) setApplicationBadge:(NSString*)text; @end

The name of the category doesn’t matter, because you won’t be providing an implementation; as long as the name doesn’t conflict with any existing category name on that class, you’ll be fine. (You will seldom find real categories with the name FakePrivateMethods, so that should be a good choice.) And best of all, the compiler will never complain about the fact that your fake category has no implementation. So now the compiler is convinced that this method exists, and you can call it freely anywhere that it’s declared. (I suggest creating a header file for your project called PrivateMethods.h, and putting all your fake categories there so that you can #import your declarations easily in multiple files.) At runtime, when you invoke the call, the Objective-C runtime will look for an implementation that matches that selector—and it will find the implementation that already existed in the framework. Success! ——George Dean IV

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Run Linux on Your iPhone Because some people just can’t help themselves Even though most of Apple’s proprietary iPhone OS has been cracked open like an egg, there is still a strong desire in some circles to install a truly open OS on the iPhone. Enter the most popular open source kernel: Linux. It boots! But that’s about all it does right now (Figure 11-49).

Figure 11-49. openiboot

This effort has a long way to go—their own progress chart (Figure 11-50), at www.iphonelinux.org, tells the story.

Figure 11-50. iPhoneLinux.org’s progress chart

The “Make It Useable” work item is color-coded red, meaning that it’s unfinished and not yet even being actively pursued. Still, the work continues. It’s a huge challenge, because of all the hardware drivers that have to be reverse-engineered. It’s more of a proof-of-concept at this point (Figure 11-51).

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HACK # 11.15

Run Linux on Your iPhone, cont’d

Figure 11-51. Image courtesy of Salvatore Iovene, www.geekherocomic.com

Maybe you’re wondering why anyone would bother, when there’s already a generally wellliked OS on the device. It’s like Mount Everest. Somebody has to do it—because it’s there. ——George Dean IV

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12

Hardware Hacks In the future, everyone will have a personal computer with all their information on it, and they will carry it around in their pocket. That future is now, and the computer is called the iPhone. But just because all our data is on a little pocket computer doesn’t mean we can access it the way we want to. To a large degree, we’re relying on cloud connectivity—our data pushes up from our PCs or Macs, to the cloud, and down to our iPhone. We’re untethered, but still dependent upon the network and our home PC. What we need is a way to finish the transformation, and make it so we don’t even need a personal computer—make it so that everything is in the phone. That’s what the future holds—if you look. This chapter will go over the dozens of things you can do to enhance your iPhone-centric lifestyle with hardware and accessories. You’ll learn how to view your iPhone media on your home TV, in the car, and in the hotel room when you’re traveling, and how to keep it charged as you go. If you’re handy with a screwdriver and a spudger, this chapter will show you how to disassemble and reassemble all the iPhones and iPod touches. And if you’re the circuit builder type, you’ll learn methods for connecting and controlling almost any device—serial or otherwise—to your iPhone, without having to jailbreak it!

Hack 12.01:

Adapt Existing Headphones to Work with the Original iPhone

You can easily adapt hard-to-fit 3.5 mm plugs into a firstgeneration iPhone. If you’re using an original iPhone, you know that the headphone jack is recessed, making it harder to plug devices into it. There are countless adapters and splitters you can purchase to let you pull this recessed jack out and plug normal devices into it. Figure 12-1 shows an example from Boxwave (www.boxwave.com/products/iphoneheadsetadapter/index.htm).

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Figure 12-1. Boxwave iPhone 3G headphone adapters (picture courtesy of Boxwave.com)

Hacking the Wire To make other 3.5 mm plugs work, you simply need to hack away at the plastic sleeve to make enough room around them so they’ll fit in the hole. The technical problem that normally prevents most headphones from connecting is the plastic sheath at the base of the plug. The girth of this plastic piece is too wide to fit in the narrow recess surrounding the iPhone’s headset port. If you compare the plug of the iPhone headset to that of a standard set of headphones, you’ll notice the difference in thickness. To get the 3.5 mm plug of almost any standard pair of headphones to fit in your iPhone, you will need to shave off about 5 mm of the plastic sheath, as shown in Figure 12-2.

Figure 12-2. Hacked old iPhone headphones 5 mm

After shaving offPlastic originally 5 mm of plastic went out to here

Some headphones and cables have a large metal disk at the base of the plug, making it impossible to shave down without a metal grinder. Check for this before you start gouging the plastic cover. Although the alteration to your headphones is cosmetically irreversible, none of their functionality will be compromised. They still will work perfectly with any other device.

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Hack 12.02:

Make the Original iPhone Dock Work for the iPhone 3G

Even though the iPhone 3G didn’t come with a dock, you can shave an old dock to work. You can modify the iPhone dock that comes with the original iPhone to be compatible with and fit the iPhone 3G. Here are the tools you’ll need:

1. 2. 3. 4.

Clear packing tape Sharp tool (I used a cheap utility knife) Small flathead screwdriver 100-grit aluminum oxide sandpaper (found in the paint aisle of any home improvement store for about $2.50)

Step 1 Cover the male (inside cradle) and female (on back of dock, along with the line out plug) dock connectors with tape to insulate them. You don’t want plastic shavings to ruin the connectors! Step 2 Start carving out the inner sides and back of the dock with the sharp tool of your choice. Cover your desk with something to make it easy to dispose of all the shavings. Carve for 5 minutes at a time, and then take the tape off the male dock connector to test out your progress as you go. You can use the small flathead screwdriver to help take the tape off of the male dock connector. Don’t forget to recover the connector with tape after each test. Don’t worry about making your carvings even or smooth. (That will be addressed in the final step.) Step 3 Once you think the iPhone sits nicely, test out the connection to make sure that your iPhone 3G syncs (taking the tape off of the connectors, obviously). Step 4 Reapply the tape to the connectors. Step 5 Sand down your carvings with the 100-grit aluminum oxide sandpaper. This is pretty messy, so you may want to do this part over a trash can while you’re wearing safety glasses. Overall, this entire process should take around an hour, including the time going to the hardware store to get the sandpaper—depending on how far away your hardware store is! Figures 12-3 and 12-4 show the results.

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HACK # 12.03 Figure 12-3. Original iPhone dock modified to accept iPhone 3G

Figure 12-4. iPhone 3G resting in modified iPhone dock

Hopefully, this hack will help save the money it would require to purchase the new 3G dock! ——Matthew Drengler

Hack 12.03:

Make Noise-Cancelling iPhone Headset

You can use existing noise-cancelling headphones with your iPhone—or, better yet, improvise with the ones you have. Sometimes the person you’re calling can hear you just fine, due to the well-designed microphone, but you just can’t hear what he or she is saying because of the noise around you (Figure 12-5). You could always use a pair of noise-cancelling headphones (Figure 12-6). If you have an original iPhone you’ll have to either modify the plug [Hack #12.01] or use an adapter.

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Figure 12-5. What was that?

Figure 12-6. Bose QuietComfort headphones with an iPhone microphone adapter

There are many brands of noise-cancelling headphones on the market today. What you may not know is that over-the-ear noise-cancelling headphones work just fine over the headphones that come with your iPhone. If you own an original iPhone you’ll get the benefit of noise-cancellation, without having to buy an adapter (Figure 12-7). Figure 12-7. Noise-cancelling headphones over the iPod headphones

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HACK # 12.03 Now if you want that quiet stillness but you don’t have noise-cancelling headphones, there’s a very low-tech solution: ear protection gear from a hardware store. Any Home Depot or similar store should carry them (Figure 12-8).

Figure 12-8. Ear protection

Figure 12-9 shows a happy improviser understanding the other party, now that the distracting noises have been eliminated.

Figure 12-9. Improvised noise-cancelling headphones

——Damien & Matthew Stolarz

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Hack 12.04:

Use the iPhone Camera for Close-Ups

With the right lens, you can take sharp close-ups with your iPhone’s camera. The iPhone camera has a modest yet respectable 2 megapixel resolution, but no integrated optical zoom capabilities. It was designed for point-and-click simplicity with very little variability left to the user. As there is no user-adjustable focus, the iPhone is set at “infinite” focus, which is fine for just about anything but close-ups. Close-ups are important for a number of reasons. If you’re trying to use your iPhone to document fine details of objects that you’re working on, or scan bar codes on products to look up prices, or even to take a picture of a business card you’ve been given, you need close-up focus (often called macro mode), which the iPhone lacks. Fortunately, a number of pre-existing, new, and improvised products and tools can help alleviate this problem.

Physically Adjust the Focus of the iPhone’s Camera If you want to use your iPhone only for close-up shots, and you don’t want anything attached to your iPhone, then you can try the surgical approach: open the iPhone and change the focus. The process entails opening the phone up, isolating the camera unit, and using pliers to break the glue seal that holds it in the “infinite focus” position. You can see more details on this process as performed by Daniel Forsythe at www.eastrain.com/?p=73. You can see examples of a photo taken with this adjustment at www.flickr.com/photos/defor/sets/72157606981066775. You can learn about disassembling your iPhone in [Hack #12.10] and [Hack #12.11].

Use Camera Viewfinders Patrick Ng, a photography and gadget enthusiast used the viewfinders from Lomo cameras (available from http://shop.lomography.com) to achieve some interesting artistic effects, which he details here: I use my iPhone camera mostly for shooting objects, but I’m not going to limit my options by modifying the built-in camera as described earlier. So I decided to try using viewfinders from Lomo cameras to see what I could achieve (Figure 12-10). Figure 12-10. Lomolized iPhone camera

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HACK # 12.04 All these Lomo camera lenses have add-on viewfinders and they have great effects on the iPhone! The Diana+ wide-angle lens, LCA+ wide-angle lens, and Fisheye each create unique imagery. I carry my Diana+ wide-angle viewfinder with me all the time because I love the way I can hold it in front of my iPhone using its viewfinder holder (Figure 12-11). I can play with numerous analog effects: adding a prism in front, creating a pack film effect by painting/printing on a transparent film as filter, etc. I’m trying to find an easier way to put dozens of filters in front of the viewfinder so that I will be carrying only one gadget for a lot of different effects (Figures 12-12 and 12-13). By the way, the Diana+ viewfinder holder can actually hold any of these viewfinders.

Figure 12-11. Lomolized iPhone holding position

Figure 12-12. Lomolized iPhone Camera—Diana+ wide-angle viewfinder and painted film

Figure 12-13. Lomolized fisheye shots

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In addition to “Lomolizing” your iPhone, using the Diana+ wide-angle viewfinder as an iPhone addon lens not only improves close-up quality, but also even allows you to create a double-exposure effect (Figure 12-14) as well as a kaleidoscope effect.

Figure 12-14. Double-exposure effect

If you look at the Diana+ viewfinder closely, you’ll see a top window collecting light for the cross-hair seen through the viewfinder. By prying open the top window, you will be able to remove the crosshair film and replace it with anything you like, such as some negative/positive film or a painted transparent film, thereby creating an overlay or double-exposure effect when the viewfinder is used to take shots. Mobile Phone lenses There are several close-up lenses designed specifically for mobile phones—and the iPhone specifically. The eyeMobile KC-1 (Figure 12-15) is available at http://store.mouse. ne.jp/?language=en. The lens attaches to the iPhone with a wide circle clip. You can carry it on a keychain when you aren’t taking close-ups.

Figure 12-15. eyeMobile KC-1 close-up lens

For the second-generation iPhone, Griffin has created the Clarifi case, which includes an integrated, switchable overlay lens (Figure 12-16). See www.griffintechnology.com/products/clarifi.

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HACK # 12.04 Figure 12-16. Griffin Technology’s Clarifi 3G Case

Improvise a lens If you don’t want to break open your phone or buy viewfinders, you can get by with a simple magnifying glass. Figure 12-17 shows some of what Richard Dodd achieved with the magnifying glass from a Swiss Army knife. You can see the rest of the set at www.flickr.com/photos/cellodick/ sets/72157601804979593/detail.

Figure 12-17. Close-ups using an iPhone and a small magnifying glass (pictures courtesy of Richard Dodd)

——Damien Stolarz & Patrick Ng

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Hack 12.05:

Watch Your iPhone or iPod touch on a TV

Don’t pay $11.99 to rent a bad movie when you have your own personal entertainment already on your iPhone. If you’ve spent any time on the road, you know that hotels charge unconscionable fees for simple little things like ordering a movie. But you know that if you crack open your laptop, you’re likely to get distracted, not watch the movie, and thus tragically fail to chill out. And even if you get the movie started, the excessive lap heat generated by the whole laptop-in-bed thing might limit your reproductive life (depending on your gender, of course). So you try to catch up on that science fiction series on your iPhone screen, but your neck gets sore, your hands don’t want to hold anything, and you’re just not getting the relaxing audiovisual experience you needed. Luckily, there is a solution.

dd

Before you try this hack, check the television for audio (red and white) and video (yellow for NTSC or red/green/blue for component video) inputs. If the TV has those, then you can plug your iPhone directly into the TV (with the appropriate iPhone video cable or dock). See “Swanky Hotels,” at the end of this hack.

RF Modulation An RF modulator, or radio frequency modulator, is a very geeky term for a simple device: it makes the yellow-red-white audio/video output wires show up on channel 3 or 4. It’s that simple. If you had an Atari, Nintendo, or other video game systems of yore, with a correspondingly antique television, you may vaguely recall a little box that screwed into the back of the television and plugged into your game console. Well, amazingly, your video source is now smaller than the little box, but you can still buy those things and “hack” into the hotel television. What you’ll need:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

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RF modulator (Figure 12-18) Pliers and/or hands Apple composite A/V cable (Figure 12-19) Composite extension cables, so you can keep your iPhone right next to you and use headphones to listen (optional) Spare coaxial cable (to connect the RF modulator to the TV)

HACK # 12.05 Figure 12-18. RF modulator

Figure 12-19. Apple composite AV cable

Figure 12-20 shows the coaxial jack that you might find on the back of your hotel TV. If you can’t unscrew it from the TV, try finding the other end, where it comes out of the cable box or proprietary hotel-video-rental guest-exploitation-unit. Once you’ve unscrewed one end or the other, connect the TV to the output of the RF modulator. Note how everything was before you start, so you can put everything back the way you found it when you’re done outsmarting “the man.”

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Figure 12-20. Cable input on TV

Once you’ve got this connected, you’ll be able to watch any movie or video podcast in your hotel room. And if you have an iPhone 3G or an available Wi-Fi connection, you can probably buy a movie via iTunes for the price that it would cost to rent it from the hotel!

Swanky Hotels If you’re staying in a hotel that has a high definition flat-screen, chances are that the video inputs work—and chances are that you’re not trying to go cheap on the entertainment options, anyhow. But if the content on your iPhone is all you want to watch, you can also purchase Apple’s component A/V cable, which gives you the red-green-blue RCA cables for analog HD. Of course, video is not all you can do with your TV-out connection on an iPhone. And no, we’re not talking about viewing PowerPoint presentations [Hack #4.03]. You can use almost any iPhone application on the TV—see [Hack #12.06].

Hack 12.06:

with TV-Out

Mirror or Output the iPhone Screen

ScreenSplitr and TVOut do just what they say—to great satisfaction. Apple makes lovely cables (Figure 12-21) that plug into the bottom of the iPhone and iPod touch with the ubiquitous red-white-yellow RCA connectors on the end. They let you play movies on screens larger than 3 inches, and output audio to speakers. (There’s even a component version of the adapters if you want HD output.)

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HACK # 12.06 Figure 12-21. Pretty white Apple cables

But what if you wanted to give a Steve Jobs–style demonstration of a new app you made, with your iPhone screen mirrored on the monitor behind you? The iPhone won’t do this out of the box, but with the following two applications available on Cydia [Hack #1.04] you’ll be able to mirror your iPhone screen with TV-Out.

ScreenSplitr ScreenSplitr is a workaround (available via Cydia) that, when enabled, mirrors the video output of your entire device and all its applications. It has a simple one-button operation (Figure 12-22); tap the icon to toggle video-out. This app will transmit anything on the screen over the wire to your TV, and the image will stay on the iPhone’s screen so that you can control it easily. The disadvantage is that the frame rate on the external feed is noticeably lower than normal.

Figure 12-22. ScreenSplitr’s only real interface: the icon

TVOut TVOut, also available on Cydia, lets you toggle video output for each individual application (Figure 12-23). When an application is being sent to an external monitor with TVOut, it is not shown on the iPhone itself. Because of this, it can be hard to control (you can’t see the screen, which makes tapping/touching difficult), but the advantage is that it displays at full frame rate.

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Figure 12-23. TVOut’s list of application toggles

The high frame rate of TVOut allows you to easily play game emulators on external displays, with the iPhone as a controller. You can see an example of this in Figure 12-24.

Figure 12-24. Playing NES on a screen with an iPhone

Hack 12.07:

Connect the iPhone to a Car

There are many ways to enhance your drive with the iPhone. For the past hundred years, almost every type of audiovisual entertainment has eventually made it into the vehicle. Sure, the phonographs tended to skip a lot, but with tapes and CDs and DVDs, it’s worked out pretty well. So it was only a matter of time before iPod integration became a standard feature in the car. And because the iPhone honors its iPod heritage, many of the solutions for earlier iPods still work for the iPhone. And those few features that don’t work are remediable.

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Front-Seat Entertainment Connecting your iPhone or iPod touch to the vehicle is relatively easy and very satisfying. There are four basic ways to get iPhone audio to play through your car’s speakers:

1. 2. 3. 4.

Tape adapter Radio adapter Car stereo auxiliary input iPhone dock integration

The first two solutions are widely available at any big-box retailer, electronic store, RadioShack, or Apple Store: just connect them via the iPhone’s 3.5 mm headphone plug, and you’re up and running. The third, auxiliary input (if your car has it), is a fortunate development in automotive manufacturing, and simplifies the process greatly. All you need is a 3.5 mm male-to-male extender (the same cable that connects most PC speakers to the PC), and your iPhone can plug right in. The fourth option (Figure 12-25), an iPhone or iPod dock connector, is the slickest one, especially if you can get a car with it preinstalled.

Figure 12-25. iPod integration in a Lexus 400h

iPod/iPhone Integration One of the problems with iPod integration is that iPhone integration isn’t perfect. For one thing, the iPhone 3G won’t charge via many of the iPod integration systems, because they provide 12V to the FireWire pins [Hack #12.17] instead of 5V. Figures 12-26 and 12-27 show two adapters that solve this problem: one by Scosche (www.scosche.com/products/productID/1667) and the other by CableJive (http://cablejive.com/chargeconverter.html).

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Figure 12-26. Scosche passPORT 12V to 5V charging adapter

The CableJive adapter also has a mini-USB output if you have to charge some other device (your Zune, maybe).

Figure 12-27. 12V to 5V charging adapter

Even if you’ve adapted the power, you may not have enough reach to keep your iPhone accessible. As you can see in Figure 12-26, you now have a rigid, somewhat unwieldy 4-inch protrusion from the bottom of your iPhone. And unlike a traditional iPod, whose sole purpose in life is to play music, your iPhone also wants to make phone calls, and you may need it within reach to answer or place a call, or just to see who’s calling. For this, CableJive makes a dock extender (Figure 12-28).

Figure 12-28. CableJive’s dock extender

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HACK # 12.07 [Hack #12.17] shows you a couple more adapters that you can use to charge your iPhone—and even how to build your own.

Adding iPod integration If your car didn’t come with auxiliary input or iPod integration, don’t despair: there are hundreds of aftermarket options available that might match your car. Some leading aftermarket vendors of iPhone-car integration are www.pac-audio.com, http://peripheralelectronics.com, and www.pie. net. You can go to their sites and browse lists of their applications (i.e., a kit for a specific car). One unique product worth mentioning is iSimpleSolutions iPhone integration system (Figure 1229). It works with any late model car that is satellite radio–ready (which is a lot of them) and tricks the radio into thinking the iPhone is a satellite radio. You can browse the music collection, see track and artist names, and of course charge the iPhone while it’s plugged in (www.isimplesolutions. com/CES/Gateway.asp).

Figure 12-29. iSimple Gateway iPhone car stereo integration

Controlling Your iPhone/iPod touch The name of the game in driver safety is keeping your eyes on the road, hands on the wheel. Scosche also makes a clever device for controlling your iPod (Figure 12-30), which, though in this sense unsupported by Scosche, also happens to work for the iPod touch and iPhone (www.scosche.com/products/sfID1/210/sfID2/324).

Figure 12-30. Scosche IPNRFC iPod remote control

Rear-Seat Entertainment If you’ve got kids who ride in the car with you, you probably have learned about the “electric babysitter.” Putting screens in the rear headrests of your vehicle is the humane thing to do on long drives (unless you were thoughtful enough to buy a car just for its integrated DVD player).

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The Apple composite A/V adapter [Hack #12.05] easily plugs into the composite input of almost any in-vehicle screen (Figure 12-31), and can even drive multiple screens with a simple RCA jack splitter (Figure 12-32). Vizualogic (www.vizualogic.com) created the screens for this Dodge Caravan, and they sell screens to match the vinyl, leather, or fabric of almost any modern vehicle for a factoryintegrated look. If you don’t want to permanently install rear screens, you can get a pair that install quickly by hooking to the rear headrests at stores like Target, Wal-Mart, or Best Buy (in the United States).

Figure 12-31. Dual Video display from an iPhone

Figure 12-32. RCA splitter

Because the adapter has a USB plug as well, you can charge while playing. Automotive USB power adapters are available for $5–$10 at many electronics retailers. The one in Figure 12-33 is a doubleheaded adapter, so you can charge two devices at once.

Figure 12-33. Auto 12V power socket to USB adapter

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HACK # 12.07 If your screens in headrests come with wireless headphones, you can connect the white and red (left- and right-channel) RCA connectors to the headrest input. But if you want the sound to go through the stereo system, you may need to use an adapter (Figure 12-34) to convert the RCA back into a 3.5 mm stereo output.

Figure 12-34. RCA to 3.5 mm adapter

If your vehicle comes with a center console, you can do a clean, hidden install, where the iPhone or iPod touch is accessible to the front seat, and the power, audio, and video cables are tucked away (Figure 12-35).

Figure 12-35. Hidden away in your center console

There’s one issue that occasionally comes up that creates an annoying buzz in the sound. This is caused by signals from the car looping back through the ground connection of the device. A ground loop isolator (available from RadioShack and www.crutchfield.com), as shown in Figure 12-36, goes between the audio outputs and stereo input, and eliminates this noise.

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Figure 12-36. Ground loop isolator

In-Vehicle Internet If you have an iPhone 3G, then you already have near-broadband speeds in areas that are served by AT&T’s 3G network. But if you have an iPod touch or an original iPhone, you may feel out of touch on the road, unable to play network games and download movies. But there’s a solution to that, too. There are several devices that can help make your vehicle into a Wi-Fi hotspot. Portable wireless routers, such as the Kyocera KR-1, turn a Verizon or Sprint EV-DO mobile broadband card into a wireless hotspot (Sprint sells a portable router for $140 as well). CradlePoint (www.cradlepoint. com) also makes portable wireless routers (Figure 12-37). You can find a full list of similar devices at www.evdoinfo.com. All of these products provide Wi-Fi to any device you’ve got, so if you’re trying to make sure that you’re almost always online, these are an essential addition to your arsenal of gadgets.

Figure 12-37. CradlePoint portable wireless router

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Hack 12.08:

HACK # 12.08

Use Your iPhone with Gloves On

You can keep your hands warm and still use your iPhone. The iPhone has a capacitive touch screen. That means it’s registering the presence of a conductive object, such as your finger, and not the pressure of your touch as you might expect. If you’re curious, get a piece of carrot and try to use your phone with that. You will find that it works just as well as your finger. When you’re wearing mittens or gloves in colder climates, it’s uncomfortable and inconvenient to keep taking them off and on in order to operate a touch device like the iPod. While some gloves have fingertip caps that you can open, it is at times too cold to comfortably do this. What you need is a way to make your fingers work right through the glove. There are several approaches to making the fingertips of your gloves conductive: • • • •

Put conductive glue on the fingertips Sew conductive thread into the fingertips Attach rivets Buy ready-made conductive gloves

DIY Conductive Glue To make conductive glue, grind mechanical pencil leads (Figure 12-38) into a fine powder and mix the graphite powder with a minimal amount of Elmer’s rubber cement (Figure 12-39). Glue should be added one drop at a time while stirring, until you get a paste-like consistency. At first you just get gooey balls of graphite, but as soon as you’ve added enough glue, it turns into a black sludge. Then put the glove on your hand, and dip your thumb and index finger in the bowl. You have to be moderately quick, because it will dry quickly. Also, it’s pretty messy. You will get graphite on your hands, and probably any surface you are working on. It goes without saying that although graphite isn’t poisonous like lead, you probably don’t want to use your nice cooking pestle and mortar set to do the grinding. Surprisingly, this actually works, and it works well. It gives a natural feeling, and good control. You don’t have to layer it on too thickly for it to work; you might just try a dot of glue, or a thin coating. The drawback of this solution is that sometimes you may leave graphite smudges on things, but these can be wiped off.

Figure 12-38. Mechanical pencil lead, ready for grinding with a pestle

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Figure 12-39. Rubber cement mixed with powdered pencil graphite

Rubber cement costs about $5 and you’ll probably spend another $5–$10 for the pencil lead. So at $15, the glue option is the cheapest, easiest, and quickest to apply, and gives the best control over the phone. The price of pencil leads is usually the same regardless of the thickness of lead, so you get slightly more for your money if you buy the thickest pencil lead you can.

Conductive Thread Conductive thread (Figure 12-40) works well, and can be made to look nice, depending on your sewing skill levels. Both finger and thumb work fine, but the stitching on the index finger (Figure 12-41) gives more control than the thumb. Although more thread works better, experimentation showed that a minimal amount of thread was still functional (Figure 12-42).

Figure 12-40. Conductive thread

Conductive thread can be purchased from SparkFun Electronics (www.sparkfun.com, part number DEV-08549). In this hack, 4-ply thread was used, but 2-ply would probably also work well, and might be more attractive. The price is currently about $20 a spool plus shipping, but one spool could easily do multiple pairs of gloves and be used for other projects.

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HACK # 12.08 Figure 12-41. Conductive thread stitching on the index finger

Figure 12-42. It works just fine!

Premade Solutions An inexpensive, already conductive solution for the problem of cold hands and iPhones is made by DOTS (Figure 12-43): the iPhone Glove.

Figure 12-43. DOTS iPhone Gloves

——Christopher Kurpinski

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Hack 12.09:

Peek Inside Your Device

Whether you’re replacing the battery or replacing the screen, this hack will introduce you to the delicate steps of iPhone surgery. There is a wonderfully macabre portion of the iPhone and iPod touch community that can’t help but recklessly disassemble and document each new model as soon as they come out. They revel in unveiling the inner workings and most secret physical components of each soap-bar-like device. This process is often very well documented and of great help to anyone who wishes to modify, repair, or simply torture their device. This hack will focus on modifications and repair, with images helpfully provided by our disassembler friends over at iFixit (www.ifixit.com), which is also a great source for any of the parts you might need in the repair of your device.

dd

Most disassembly instructions for devices will drop a bomb on you right at the end of the instructions that “reassembly is the opposite of disassembly” or “reverse these steps to reassemble.” At that point, you may suddenly realize that you haven’t exactly been keeping track of which screw goes where, or even taking care not to lose the screws. Here we’ll warn you ahead of time. So find some shotglasses or plastic food storage containers, such as ice cube trays, to save the screws (Figure 12-44), and pay attention to the steps, thinking about them backward as well as forward so that reassembly will be as easy as possible. If you keep a camera handy to take photos of your work at each critical step, it will make it way easier to backtrack.

Figure 12-44. Screws saved in a shotglass

Tools Spudgers are the most generic-seeming yet most crucial tool for disassembly of tightly constructed devices such as the iPhone (Figure 12-45). They’re sticks of plastic or metal with different tips. Often they have wedges, hooks, or points. Devices like the iPhone aren’t like toy guns, in that they don’t have lots of loose plastic that can simply be screwed together. They use systems of internal clips and wedging, the disassembly of which requires specific spudgers if you want it done right—and without serrated butter-knife marks on your casing. The steps in the this hack will reference specific kinds of spudgers, as well as a special tool called the iPod Opening Tool. Next is a rundown on the specific spudgers and other tools.

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HACK # 12.09 Figure 12-45. Using a metal spudger to remove the screen from an iPod touch

The simple spudger (Figure 12-46) has a wedge with a hook on one end, and a pencil-like point on the other end. It’s made of tough and antistatic plastic. It is used in prying, lifting up connectors, and at one point in this disassembly, scraping away glue.

Figure 12-46. The spudger

The heavy-duty spudger (Figure 12-47) has a thicker wedge and thicker point. It does the “heavy lifting” as it were. It is plastic, like the regular spudger.

Figure 12-47. The heavy-duty spudger

The metal spudger (Figure 12-48) is even sturdier, because it is metal. It’s used in the prying of certain edges as well as in the removal of the original iPhone’s antenna cover.

Figure 12-48. The metal spudger

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The iPod Opening Tools (Figure 12-49) are specially made for prying up the edges of iPods and iPhones without damaging them. They are made of a lighter material than that of the iPod, and thus are prone to damage if not used properly. Too many failures could result in them being unusable, in which case a thin metal blade or guitar pick would work as a replacement.

Figure 12-49. The iPod opening tools

The #00 Phillips screwdriver (Figure 12-50) is a very small screwdriver, used for the kinds of tiny screws that you’ll find in small precision devices like iPhones.

Figure 12-50. The Phillips #00 screwdriver

To whet your appetite for disassembly fun, here are four grand reveals of iPhone and iPod touch insides. Figure 12-51 shows a disassembled original model iPhone—the same model that is pictured partially nude on the cover of this book as a teaser.

Figure 12-51. You can tell it’s the original iPhone from the black plastic antenna cover portion.

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HACK # 12.09 Figure 12-52 shows a dismembered iPhone 3G, with all the fixins.

Figure 12-52. The iPhone 3G, which comes with all that you see here

Figure 12-53 shows a filleted original iPod touch. It looks simpler than the iPhone, because it is: no SIM card, camera, or microphone.

Figure 12-53. The original iPod touch

Figure 12-54 shows a splayed iPod touch 2G. It’s like the original version, but rounder.

Figure 12-54. The opened-up original iPod touch

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The following four hacks will give you disassembly instructions for both generations of iPhone and iPod touch. By the time you’re done reading, you’ll feel like you could disassemble anything.

Hack 12.10:

Disassemble and Reassemble Your Original iPhone

Master the skill of disassembling and reassembling your iPhone. Taking apart the first-generation iPhone is quite different from taking apart the iPhone 3G.

The advanced stages of this hack require soldering experience. If you don’t have

experience soldering, check out the Learn to Solder Bundle from MAKE, available at www.makershed.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=MSBUN1.

The first thing you’ll want to do before you start taking apart your phone is to remove the SIM card tray by inserting a paper clip into the hole on top of the iPhone and sliding the tray out (Figure 12-55). If you don’t do this, you’ll likely bend or break your SIM card tray at some point in disassembly.

For tips on reassembling the device, as well as an overview of the tools used here, see [Hack #12.09]. Figure 12-55. Popping out the SIM card tray

The next part necessary in any iPhone disassembly is removing the black plastic antenna cover (Figure 12-56). It has four tabs that you need to pop open with a metal spudger and an iPod opening tool. First, release the tabs near the dock connector by sliding a metal spudger in-between the dock connector and the antenna cover (Figure 12-57). Make sure that you’re actually sticking it between those two pieces and not simply sticking it in the dock connector. Next, insert the wedge of the iPod tool between the front metal bezel and the antenna cover (Figure 12-58). The wedge should be facing the antenna cover. Slide the iPod tool up and around the corner to unhook the side tabs. Do this once for each side. Next, grab the panel by the sides, lift it away, and slide it off the iPhone (Figure 12-59). This might take some force. If it doesn’t seem to be coming off, make sure you’re lifting it out from the iPhone before you slide it off down the bottom.

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HACK # 12.10 Figure 12-56. The antenna cover

Figure 12-57. Putting a metal spudger in-between the dock connector and antenna panel

Figure 12-58. Sliding an iPod tool between the metal frame and antenna panel

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Figure 12-59. Removing the antenna panel

Next, the metal rear panel is the object of our deconstruction. You’ll want to unscrew the three Phillips #00 screws that attach the panel to the rest of the phone (Figure 12-60). Make sure to note where these were (check the photograph for help) and tuck them away safely. Now, this panel is rather hard to remove, so don’t get discouraged or angry at it, or you may damage it more than you intended to. Now you’ll need to do more prying. Start with the side that doesn’t have the volume buttons, as whichever side you tackle first is going to be the hardest to get, and then you won’t risk damaging those buttons. Insert the point of a heavy-duty spudger into the gap between the rear panel and the area around where you removed the screw (Figure 12-61). Gently pry the frame upwards until you can insert an iPod tool in the gap between the bezel and rear panel. Slide the iPod tool along the side of the case and pop the four tabs open (Figure 12-62). Make sure during the remaining steps that you don’t squeeze the case and repop the tabs back into place. Now repeat the same pry-and-pry procedure on the button side (Figure 12-63), which only has 3 tabs. Now you can lift off the rear panel. But don’t yank it off, as you still need to use a spudger to disconnect the headphone jack cable from the logic board (Figure 12-64).

Figure 12-60. Unscrew three Phillips #00 screws

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HACK # 12.10 Figure 12-61. Insert heavy-duty spudger

Figure 12-62. Slide iPod tool along case

Figure 12-63. Slide iPod tool along other side of case

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Figure 12-64. Disconnect the headphone jack cable from the logic board

It’s Open! Now your iPhone is opened up, and you can access nearly everything from this point. The rest of this section will cover removing the battery, a common maintenance procedure. More removal instructions can be found by poking around with spudgers and screwdrivers yourself, or through the guides available on www.ifixit.com.

Removing the Battery Use the tip of a spudger to remove the cloudy white glue covering the battery contacts, as shown in Figure 12-65.

Figure 12-65. Remove glue from contacts

Working from the edge opposite the battery connectors, insert a spudger between the battery and the plastic frame and pry up (Figure 12-66). The battery is attached to the casing with an adhesive, but should slowly come free.

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HACK # 12.10 Figure 12-66. Pry up battery

We’re now ready to begin the soldering process. You’ll need a soldering iron, solder, and desoldering wick. You should be able to find these items at a RadioShack, if you don’t already have them. Clean the soldering iron by melting a small amount of solder directly onto the soldering iron’s tip (as shown in Figure 12-67) and then wiping the tip of the soldering iron on a damp sponge.

Figure 12-67. Cleaning soldering iron tip with solder

Now, you need to disconnect the battery:

1. 2. 3.

Place the desoldering wick on top of the solder ball as shown in Figure 12-68. Place the soldering iron on top of wick above the solder ball. Hold the soldering iron in place until the solder melts into the wick.

Repeat this procedure on the remaining two connectors. Lift the old battery out of the iPhone. Be sure that all the solder has been removed before pulling the wires away from the board. The wires should come free with little to no resistance.

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Figure 12-68. Desoldering the battery from the board

Clean the exposed surface of the board with a soft lint-free cloth or sponge and a small amount of rubbing alcohol.

Replacing the Battery Melt a small solder bead directly onto the metal connector on the board by placing the soldering iron onto the metal connector and then pressing solder against the tip and the board. Once a small amount of solder has melted onto the board, lift the solder away first and then the soldering iron. See Figure 12-69.

Figure 12-69. Prepare soldering area

The solder bead should look like a small dome or hemisphere (Figure 12-70). If it is flat or jagged, simply place the soldering iron back on the solder to remelt it and then pull the soldering iron away. It may require a little more solder if this does not work.

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HACK # 12.10 Figure 12-70. Good solder beads

Place the wire from the new battery onto the new solder bead. Press the tip of the soldering iron onto the solder bead until it melts, as shown in Figure 12-71. Slide the wire lead into the liquid solder until it is in the center of the bead, then remove the soldering iron. Continue with the other two connections the same way, taking special care not to solder two of the connectors together. That would make for major iPhone sadness.

Figure 12-71. Soldering a battery wire

If you’ve successfully followed all these steps, congratulations! You’ve taken apart the most complex of the four devices covered in this chapter. The more Apple has redesigned these soap bars, the better the insides have become to dig around in. ——iFixit.com & Adam Stolarz

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Hack 12.11:

Disassemble and Reassemble Your iPhone 3G

Master the skill of disassembling and reassembling your iPhone. The iPhone 3G is quite an upgrade from the original iPhone. The case is made of fewer parts, and all in all, the device is easier to deconstruct. Apple has even included numbered stickers to indicate what order to detach various cables. To get started, remove the two Phillips #00 screws from the dock-connector end of the iPhone, as shown in Figure 12-72.

For tips on reassembling the device, as well as an overview of the tools used here, see [Hack #12.09]. Figure 12-72. Remove the two Phillips #00 screws from the dock connector

There is a fragile rubber gasket between the silver front bezel and black display assembly. Keep your tool as close to the silver front bezel as possible to prevent damaging the gasket. A metal spudger is recommended for this task (Figure 12-73), but an X-Acto knife should also work—just be careful not to slip. Insert a metal spudger into the seam between the silver front bezel and the black display assembly on the edge closest to the home button. Gently pry the display assembly up from its bezel.

Figure 12-73. Opening the bezel with a metal spudger

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HACK # 12.11 If necessary, insert the metal spudger in the same manner on the side of the iPhone and continue to pry up gently, as shown in Figure 12-74. Stop using the metal spudger once the display assembly is up enough that you can lift it up with your fingers.

Figure 12-74. Going along the side

The display assembly is still connected to the iPhone by several cables, so don’t try to remove it entirely just yet. Lift the free edge of the display assembly up until it is at an angle of approximately 45 degrees, as shown in Figure 12-75.

Figure 12-75. Lifting the display

Continue to hold the display assembly with one hand, and use your other hand and a spudger to disconnect the black ribbon cable labeled “1” inside the iPhone, as shown in Figure 12-76.

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Figure 12-76. Detaching cable 1

Lift the display assembly up until it is roughly vertical. This will allow you easier access for disconnecting the remaining cables. Use a spudger to disconnect the black ribbon cable labeled “2” inside the iPhone, as shown in Figure 12-77.

Figure 12-77. Detaching cable 2

Use a spudger to flip up the white plastic tab holding the third ribbon cable in place, as in Figure 12-78. The white tab will rotate up 90 degrees, releasing the ribbon cable. Slide the black ribbon cable out of its connector, and remove the display assembly from the iPhone.

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HACK # 12.11 Figure 12-78. Detaching cable 3

Insert your SIM eject tool or a paper clip into the hole next to the headphone jack as shown in Figure 12-79. Press down on the tool until the SIM card tray pops out. Grasp the SIM card tray and slide it out of the iPhone.

Figure 12-79. Removing the SIM tray

Use a spudger to disconnect the ribbon cable that is labeled “4” inside the iPhone (Figure 12-80).

Figure 12-80. Detaching cable 4

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Use a spudger to disconnect the ribbon cable that is labeled “5” inside the iPhone, as shown in Figure 12-81.

Figure 12-81. Detaching cable 5

Use a spudger to disconnect the ribbon cable labeled “6” (Figure 12-82).

Figure 12-82. Detaching cable 6

Carefully peel up the small sticker labeled “Do not remove.” Isn’t Apple nice? They tell you exactly what to do and then tell you to turn around and go home. See Figure 12-83.

Figure 12-83. Removing the sticker

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HACK # 12.11 Next, remove the following eight screws, which are circled in Figure 12-84: • • •

Five 2.3 mm Phillips #00 screws with partial threads securing the logic board to the rear panel. Two 2.3 mm Phillips #00 screws with full threads securing the logic board and camera. One 2.9 mm Phillips #00 screw from beneath the “Do not remove” sticker.

Figure 12-84. The screws

Use a spudger to gently pry the camera up and out of its housing in the rear panel, as shown in Figure 12-85. The camera cannot be removed entirely yet, because it’s connected to the bottom of the logic board.

Figure 12-85. Prying up the camera

Use a spudger to gently pry up the end of the logic board closest to the dock connector as shown in Figure 12-86. If the board won’t lift up, double check to make sure that all the screws securing the logic board have been removed.

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Figure 12-86. Spudging the logic board

Slide the logic board toward the dock connector and out of the iPhone (Figure 12-87).

Figure 12-87. Sliding it off

At this point, you are within a few steps of taking out anything in the phone. Whatever you can identify should be a few screws away from being uninstalled.

Replacing the Battery For those replacing their battery, here’s the best way to remove it. The battery is attached with an adhesive strip around the perimeter of the battery. Use a spudger (Figure 12-88) to pry the battery up from the rear panel (to prevent the battery from bending during the removal process, we recommend against using just the plastic pull-tab). Honestly, it is that easy. As you can see, it is not soldered on like the early iPhones [Hack #12.10].

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HACK # 12.12 Figure 12-88. Prying the battery

Now your phone is open, as shown in Figure 12-89, and you can mess with it as you see fit. You shouldn’t have any problems from here on out, particularly if you remember that the labeled wires should be reassembled in reverse order: 6-5-4-3-2-1.

Figure 12-89. The nonwire battery connector

——iFixit.com & Adam Stolarz

Hack 12.12:

Disassemble and Reassemble Your Original iPod touch

Master the skill of disassembling and reassembling your iPod touch. The iPod touch’s interior was clearly designed for ease of maintenance. Some lessons were learned in designing the iPhone that make the first-generation iPod touch simpler inside. And it helps that it doesn’t have as much stuff crammed in it as the iPhone does.

For tips on reassembling the device, as well as an overview of the tools used here, see [Hack #12.09].

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Opening the iPod touch is similar to opening an iPhone [Hack #12.10] and [Hack #12.11]. Run a metal spudger along the sides and separate the metal tabs. The iPod touch doesn’t need a large speaker or microphone, so the battery occupies a larger portion of the internal space than the iPhone’s battery, as shown in Figure 12-90.

Figure 12-90. The cracked-open iPod touch case

There are no wires connecting the rear panel to the iPod. Apple used an elegant contact connection to make assembly and disassembly easier, as shown in Figure 12-91.

Figure 12-91. The contact connector

The large battery is soldered to the logic board, like the early-model iPhone and many of Apple’s recent iPods. You can lift it up using a simple spudger, however, as shown in Figure 12-92.

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HACK # 12.12 Figure 12-92. Lifting up the battery

The huge touchscreen lies beneath the battery. The logic board is beneath the metal shield (Figure 12-93).

Figure 12-93. Under the battery

The metal case opens easily by prying the right side, which reveals the logic board (Figure 12-94).

Figure 12-94. The logic board

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Nearly everything in the iPod touch lifts up easily (Figure 12-95).

Figure 12-95. Lifting out the board

You can pry the logic board up and off fairly easily with a spudger (Figure 12-96).

Figure 12-96. Prying the logic board

The display attachment is completely different from the iPhone’s. The display is attached to the front of the iPod by 16 Phillips #00 screws. On the iPhone, the display and front bezel are fused together with very strong adhesive, which makes it impossible to separate the display from the glass. But the iPod’s design is better for repairs, as removing the display is very doable. The LCD just comes right out after you remove the screws, as shown in Figure 12-97.

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HACK # 12.13 Figure 12-97. Removing the plate

As you can see in Figure 12-98, compared to the early-model iPhone, the first-generation iPod touch is a dream to disassemble. Self-repair and part replacement is relatively easy compared to other models.

Figure 12-98. Detached bezel and screen

——iFixit.com & Adam Stolarz

Hack 12.13:

Disassemble and Reassemble Your SecondGeneration iPod touch

Take apart the easiest iDevice yet. As with the first generation of the iPod touch [Hack #12.12], the second-generation iPod touch benefits from a similar ease of disassembly. The second-generation iPod touch does not have a two-piece shell like the first generation. Instead, you start by prying up the glass screen cover itself. In Figure 12-99, a metal spudger is shown. Of course, be careful not to damage the edge of the glass or the case.

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Figure 12-99. Prying the display

There are no screws securing the LCD (Figure 12-100). Instead, it’s held in place with a little doublesided tape.

Figure 12-100. Screen without covering bezel

Lifting it up reveals a metal plate hiding the goods (Figure 12-101), but that’s nothing a #00 screwdriver won’t solve.

Figure 12-101. Lifting off the screen

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HACK # 12.13 The battery is held to the plate with two strips of light adhesive, but peels off easily, as shown in Figure 12-102.

Figure 12-102. Under the metal

Disconnect the display data cable with some simple spudging as demonstrated in Figure 12-103. Note the residue from the glue holding the battery to the metal backing.

Figure 12-103. Prying off the battery connector

The battery and all the remaining parts can be lifted out easily now (Figure 12-104).

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Figure 12-104. The remaining pieces

Simplicity of design, with little guesswork and a small handful of screws to remove means that you can easily replace anything in the second-generation iPod touch (Figure 12-105).

Figure 12-105. The touch, splayed

——iFixit.com & Adam Stolarz

Hack 12.14:

Learn the Pinouts of the iPhone and iPod touch

To connect hardware to your iPhone, you need to know its interfaces. The iPod created a whole aftermarket and third-party industry around its dock connector standard. This standard has made its way into countless speakers, charging kits, and automotive integration systems. In addition to the dock connector, though, Apple has continually experimented with various interfaces on the top of the device. The early iPods had a wired remote control connector on the top, with which you could play, fast forward, and rewind while the iPod was in your pocket. The latest family of devices (the iPhone and iPod touch) have continued this experimentation, and have added a 4-wire or “4-pole” connector for microphones and headphones.

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HACK # 12.14 Because many computer wires and plugs have traditionally involved many pins plugging into some sort of receptacle, the term for a chart showing what wire goes to which pin is called a pinout. In order to hack new devices into communication with the iPhone, we need to know the pinouts—the purpose of each wire or physical electrical contact—and thus what we can and cannot connect to it.

The Headphone Connector Pinouts The iPhone headphone system is pretty clever. Most audio-type jack plugs (male connectors) have a convention for naming the contacts called the “tip-ring-sleeve” (TRS), as shown in Figure 12-106. In most headphones, the three contacts are (from the tip to the sleeve) left-right-ground. The ground contact is twice as long as the right channel, and the jacks (female sockets) that receive them have three poles, or contacts. Many jacks have a feature that allows the computer or device to detect when something is plugged in or not.

Figure 12-106. Tip-ring-sleeve conventional 3.5 mm headphone jack. The iPhone jack is slightly different.

In the iPhone headphone, there are two rings (TRRS). The very tip of the iPhone headphone connectors is the left audio channel, and the ring after this is the right audio signal. The next ring is the conventional “ground” or return wire, and those three pins alone constitute the listening part of the headphones. In addition, there is a fourth contact, the sleeve, which is connected to the iPhone microphone (Figure 12-107).

Figure 12-107. The iPhone headphone jack plug pinout

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The microphone has a resistance of about 1K (1 kilo-ohm), which is used by the iPhone to detect whether a microphone is plugged in. If conventional headphones are plugged in, you can see that the sleeve would bridge both the microphone and ground pins. Thus, the iPhone senses zero ohms, indicating that only headphones are connected. If it senses 1K, it means that microphone is present as well. You can see an opened-up 4-pole connector in Figure 12-108.

Figure 12-108. Freshly soldered iPhone 4-pole plug

Ring (Ground/Common) Ring (Right)

Sleeve (Microphone)

Tip (Left)

Because of this ability to sense the resistance of the ground-mic connection, the iPhone headphones also do a couple of additional clever things. The iPhone microphone doubles as a switch (Figure 12-109) that can play and pause music, and answer or hang up a call. If you “double click” (squeeze two times fast) during music playback, the iPhone or second-generation iPod touch will skip to the next song. Monster makes an adapter that adds a microphone and switch to existing headphones, which you can see cracked open in Figure 12-110.

Figure 12-109. The iPhone microphone-switch

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HACK # 12.14 Figure 12-110. Inside the Monster adapter

Using the Headphone Jack Because we know how the iPhone microphone circuit works, we can now begin to attach our own devices. Here’s some things we can build:

1. 2. 3.

An auxiliary audio input port, so we can plug in things we want to record instead of using the microphone Hands-free car integration via a wired microphone, and a button that shorts out the mic/ ground so that we can skip songs [Hack #12.07] Nonaudio devices—such as microcontrollers, serial devices, or keyboards—that we can “listen” to by transforming their output into audio pulses [Hack #12.21] and [Hack #12.22]

Figure 12-111 shows two views of an iPhone microphone and headphone splitter. It separates out a pair of microphone and audio jacks so you can record directly from another audio device. You can see it in action with a pair of headphones and an in-vehicle microphone [Hack #12.07] in Figure 12-112.

Figure 12-111. An iPhone jack input/output splitter

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Figure 12-112. An iPhone jack input/output splitter in use

Finding a source for the 4-pin jack plugs, especially small ones that fit in the original iPhone recessed jack, can be challenging. You can purchase 4-pole plugs (Figure 12-113) from Maplin (www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?moduleno=29686). You can also scavenge them from the 4-pole cables used for camcorders from vendors like www.allelectronics.com (part number CB-218 is shown in Figure 12-114).

Figure 12-113. Maplin 4-pole plug

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HACK # 12.14 Figure 12-114. AllElectronics.com 4-pole cable part number CB-218

One of the better sources of a 4-pole adapter plug is a 4-pole Y-splitter from Radtech (part number 13757 from http://radtech.us/products/iPhoneCables.aspx), the ProCableAudio Y Cable Splitter 3.5 mm. This cable can be cut and spliced so that you can connect to the headphone port (Figure 12-115). When you cut the wires, you’ll see that they are coated in colored insulating paint. Sometimes you can just solder it and the coating will melt off, but to make sure that your connection is good, you can lightly sand this paint off (including the clear copper wire) without ripping the wire. Figure 12-116 shows a quick-and-dirty splice to heavier-duty wires that was used as we worked on [Hack #12.20].

Figure 12-115. Radtech 4-pole Y-splitter

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Figure 12-116. Radtech 4-pole splice

The Dock Connector Pinouts The bottom dock connector has changed over time in terms of the features that it exposes. Video out, audio in and out, 12V charging, 5V charging, FireWire and USB syncing, and various custom communication protocols have come and gone over the years. But because the iPhone remains the flagship iPod, it retains compatibility with the majority of in-market iPod dock–based hardware. Figure 12-117 shows a PodBreakout from SparkFun Electronics (www.sparkfun.com, part number DEV-08295) that is available for less than $20. Figure 12-118 shows the dock connector close up.

Figure 12-117. PodBreakout (picture from sparkfun.com)

Figure 12-118. iPod dock breakout cable: pin 1 is on the far right, pin 30 on the left (picture from sparkfun.com)

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HACK # 12.14 The pinout of the iPod dock connector has been pretty consistent since it was released; some pins get repurposed, or dropped, depending on the device and the accessory in question. A recent change between the first-generation iPhone and the iPhone 3G is that support for FireWire charging (pins 19, 20, 29, and 30) was dropped. A selected list of pins relevant to the iPhone is shown in Table 12-1. Additional pins for all models of iPod and iPhone can be found at http://pinouts.ru/PortableDevices/ipod_pinout.shtml and http://datacables.ws/iphone. Table 12-1. Interesting iPhone pins

Pin

Description

1

Video ground

2

Audio ground

3

Right channel audio out

4

Left channel audio out

8

Video out (composite, yellow plug) or Pb channel (component, blue plug)

9

Video Y channel (component, green plug)

10

Video Pr channel (component, red plug)

11

3.3V TTL (not RS232) serial ground [Hack #12.18], [Hack #12.19]

12

3.3V TTL (not RS232) serial transmit (TX)

13

3.3V TTL (not RS232) serial receive (TX)

15

Ground

16

USB ground

18

3.3 volt power output

21

Accessory indicator. Depending on the resistor connected between ground and this pin, the iPhone or iPod touch will believe that a certain device is connected, such as a car interface, dock, photo dock, and so on. For an example, see [Hack #12.19]

23

5V USB power input

24

USB data (minus connection)

27

USB data (plus connection)

dd

Although pins 8, 9, and 10 provide video output, the iPhone requires the proprietary iPhone cable [Hack #12.06] to enable the video, so you can’t just make your own dock.

Pins 11, 12, and 13 support the serial protocol that can be spoken by the iPhone to devices via the

iPod dock protocol [Hack #12.19], such as in-vehicle integration. Although it is a serial connection, it isn’t the relatively high-voltage 12V to –12V RS-232 serial connection on the back of many older computers, but rather a TTL (transistor-transistor logic) connection that goes from 0V to 3.3V to indicate ones and zeros. [Hack #12.18] shows how to adapt between 3.3V TTL and RS232 serial (as well as USB) so that you can communicate with your iPhone via a serial port.

Pin 21, the accessory connector, is part of how the iPhone detects what is connected. With various resistor settings, you can trick the iPhone into different modes, and a few of the hacks such as [Hack #12.17] and [Hack #12.19] will demonstrate this.

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If you’re trying to make a device to connect to the dock connector, you don’t have to buy a breakout card. In fact, with the proliferation of under-$10 iPhone connectivity gadgets, you can probably find a hackable donor dock connector from a device that you already own and don’t need, or something at your local electronics store. For instance, in [Hack #12.15] an iPhone flashlight is scavenged from a charging cable (Figure 12-119).

Figure 12-119. Old iPhone/iPod dock connector

The item you’re most likely to have already is a USB sync cable, so we’ll show how you can adapt this connector to your needs. However, if you plan to do a lot of dock connector hacking, you’ll find the PodBreakout cable from SparkFun (www.sparkfun.com; part #DEV-08295, Figure 12-125) very useful. The first task is to rewire the USB sync cable so it uses the pins you want, rather than the USB pins. Not all the pins are populated, so you’ll need to move them around for the ones you use. To do this, you will have to open up the iPhone plug using a spudger (Figure 12-120). Inside the plastic layer, you will find an additional metal layer for shielding radio frequency emissions. It should look like Figure 12-121.

Figure 12-120. Opening the connector

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HACK # 12.14 Figure 12-121. Opening an iPhone dock connector plug

You attack this layer from the side. There are two little tabs that catch at the rear. Pry them out, as shown in Figure 12-122.

Figure 12-122. Removing the iPhone plug shielding

Eventually you will remove all the metal shielding and will wind up with just the plastic plug, wires, and pins, as shown in Figure 12-123.

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Figure 12-123. Shields off

Leave the shielding wire soldered if you can, but if it comes off, you may find that your cable leaks some radio noise. Some places sell cables that have the wires glued into the connector. If you bought one of these, you need to purchase them from another vendor; otherwise, you will have a lot of difficulty trying to pull the pins out and reinsert them (http://allelectronics.com sells suitable connectors, part #IPD-3). Speaking of which, your next step is to use a pair of needle-nose pliers to remove the pins from their existing seats and push them back into the pins that you need to access—see Table 12-1. Pins can be pulled and reinserted with your fingers, or with needle-nose pliers, as shown in Figure 12-124.

Figure 12-124. Rearranging the pins

Once you’ve rewired and double-checked all your pins to make sure that they’re correct, you can reassemble the shielding and plastic casing.

Finding Pins It’s important in any electronics, especially with a $300 iPhone, to get the pins right. Figure 12-125 illustrates the position of the dock pins on an iPhone. Looking at Figure 12-125, pin 1 is the farthest

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HACK # 12.15 to the left. You can find pin 1 by holding your iPhone in your left hand face up. The pin closest to your left hand is pin 1. Pins 2, 3, and so on are found by counting away. Pin 30 is the farthest to the right.

Figure 12-125. Pin 1 is on the left, pin 30 is on the right

There’s a lot you can do with the dock connector. [Hack #12.15] shows you how to make a flashlight, [Hack #12.17] shows you how to build an iPhone charger, and [Hack #12.18] shows how you can turn a USB-to-dock connector iPhone cord into a serial-to-dock connector by rearranging its pins as shown in this hack. ——Damien Stolarz & Zack Gainsforth

Hack 12.15:

Make an External Camera Illuminator for Your iPhone

An iPhone-powered LED flashlight can help you take better photos. Getting your iPhone to take a good picture in a badly lit area is nearly impossible, especially as the iPhone has no built in flash. So the next best thing is to make your own external illuminator, as shown in Figure 12-126!

Figure 12-126. External Camera Illuminator

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When the iPhone’s initial specs were released by Apple, many users complained about its lack of a camera flash. Using a USB connector, four white LEDs, and a tactile switch, you can build a removable flash unit. The parts you’ll need to make a camera flash are: • •

• • •

• • •

An old iPhone/iPod dock connector [Hack #12.14] A couple of LEDs (3 mm or 5 mm super-bright white LEDs are preferable), SparkFun part COM00531 (www.sparkfun.com), RadioShack part 276-017 Insulated wire that can handle a 3.3V current such as 30-gauge wire Tactile switch (Figure 12-127), SparkFun part COM-00097, RadioShack part 275-002 10 ohm resistor (optional, but if you want to play it safe you should use it), RadioShack part 271-1301 Soldering iron and solder Dremel or similar rotary tool Super Glue

Figure 12-127. Tactile momentary switch

First, pop open the dock connector, and examine the wires connected to its pins. You should review [Hack #12.14] to familiarize yourself with the dock connector’s 30 pins and their functions. There should be a black ground wire attached to pin 29 or 30. Cut all the other wires, except the ground, as close to the pins as possible. Then cut the ground wire at a farther point so a portion of it is still hanging from the dock connector pin that it’s attached to. Now attach one end of an insulated wire to pin 18. Some dock connectors don’t have pins in all 30 positions, so you will have to slide a pin out from a different place, and insert it into position 18. To configure the remainder of the flash refer to Figure 12-128, using solder to connect each wire to its appropriate component.

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HACK # 12.15 Figure 12-128. Schematic for LED Illuminator

Dock Connector (view from back) GND (pin 30/29) +3.3v (pin 18) Optional Resistor

3.5 mm White LEDs Tact Switch

With the guts of the flash assembled, use your Dremel to drill holes in the dock connector’s shell for the LEDs to stick through. Once the LEDs are in place use some Super Glue to secure them. Next, Super Glue the tactile switch to the bottom of the dock connector shell where the wires used to be. Solder everything together. Finally, Super Glue the dock connector back together. Your custom light is complete! Plug it into your iPhone’s dock and press the tact switch on the bottom of the connector (Figure 12-129) to turn the LEDs on whenever you need some extra lighting for a picture (Figure 12-130) Figure 12-129. Light plugged into bottom of iPhone

Figure 12-130. Bright light

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Figure 12-131 shows a pair of before and after shots with the illuminator.

Figure 12-131. Before (top) and after (bottom) pictures using the iPhone flashlight

——Joe Vennix

Hack 12.16:

Control the Physical World from Your iPhone

By combining an iPhone app, Arduino, and a few transistors, you can control lights—and even an R/C car—with your iPhone. By plugging an Arduino electronics prototyping board into a network-connected computer, installing an app from the App Store, and wiring things up, you can turn your iPhone into a remote control for the physical world. This hack sounds complex, but it’s not that hard. Once you’ve gotten all the parts, it only takes about two hours to make—and the results, as shown in Figure 12-132—are worth it.

Figure 12-132. iPhone-controlled R/C Car

In this hack, you’ll start out simple: using the iPhone to make an LED blink. From there, you’ll move up to controlling a remote control (R/C) car. The system for this is pretty simple. The iPhone sends 412

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HACK # 12.16 data (button presses and the iPhone’s accelerometer data) over Wi-Fi to your computer, where you can perform some computations and finally send data to an Arduino board, which controls the car’s remote control (which, in turn, controls the car’s motors). First, you have to get data from your iPhone to your computer. The easiest way to do this is an application that is normally intended to be used by a DJ or musician, such as TouchOSC or OSCemote. Both of these applications use the OSC (Open Sound Control) protocol, which is pretty easy to work with. You can emulate button presses with it and even send accelerometer data. After data is transmitted to your computer over Wi-Fi, you have to write a simple application to process it. I chose to use the rapid prototyping tool Max/MSP (www.cycling74.com). The free PureData (http://puredata.info) would also have worked. Both of these can handle the OSC protocol. The output of this application will be a few commands such as “Turn right,” “Turn left,” “Go forward,” “Go backward.” It’s completely up to you what commands you implement, as it depends on the type of your R/C car (see “Hacking into the R/C Controller,” later in this hack). In this hack, we used a continuous track (steers like a tank) R/C car. You also have a choice as to how you want to drive the car: button presses or the motion of the accelerometer. The application will need to send its commands to a microcontroller. I chose an Arduino controller, which is very popular and has a large community for support. To talk to Arduino, the application uses a USB connection and sends commands as strings using a USB serial port protocol. The Arduino program (called a “sketch”) then sets voltage on some of its pins, depending on which command it receives. For example, the Arduino program has a variable named “Go forward,” which corresponds to a particular pin on the microcontroller. If “Go forward” is set to true, the microcontroller will set the associated pin to HIGH (+5V). If it is false, the pin will be set to LOW (0V). Using this with a transistor, we can emulate button presses on the R/C car’s controller. Even though there are joysticks on many R/C controllers, joysticks are nothing more than a set of buttons. For example, left and right are simply controlled by a pair of buttons (as are forward and backward). Here’s the list of parts you’ll need: • •

• • •

Cheap R/C car (we used an old Tyco Rebound 4x4) Arduino USB board such as the Duemilanove (available from MAKE at www.makershed.com/ ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=MKSP4 or from http://arduino.cc) Wi-Fi-enabled PC or Mac 4 NPN transistors (we used C547C) A few wires

Make sure that your iPhone and your computer are on same Wi-Fi network. Download the OSCemote (Figure 12-133) application from the App Store ($5). Run OSCemote, tap More, then Settings, and enter your computer’s IP address (its Bonjour hostname may also work) as the OSC Host, and 7000 as the port (Figure 12-134).

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Figure 12-133. OSCemote

Figure 12-134. OSCemote settings

To run the sample application, you’ll need the latest Max5 Runtime, which is available for free (http://cycling74.com/downloads/max5) for your platform. Go to http://code.google.com/p/ iphonerccar/downloads/list and download and unzip the latest copy of the remote control software. Run either Continuoustrack.maxpat or Standarttype.maxpat, depending on the type of your R/C car. Continuoustrack.maxpat is for tank-style cars, where each side is independently controlled, and Standarttype.maxpat is for cars that have steering and acceleration.

While you are playing with this hack, you might want to disable Auto-Lock on your iPhone

(otherwise, it will keep switching off and dropping the connection between OSCemote and Max/MSP). Go to the iPhone Settings, tap General, then Auto-Lock, and set it to Never. You probably want to re-enable Auto-Lock when you are done using OSCemote.

Set the input port to the same value that you set in OSCemote (7000). Now you should see some movement in the accelerometer area. You can test it by switching to the Buttons screen on OSCemote and tapping buttons. The symbols in the lower-left corner will blink, based on how you move the controls. You can also switch to the Accel screen, toggle the accelerometer on, and then wiggle the iPhone. The control scheme is shown in Figure 12-135.

If you tried out the accelerometer feature, please turn it off for now, as it will interfere with the input messages coming from the buttons.

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HACK # 12.16 Figure 12-135. Controller scheme

Now you need to download SimpleMessageSystem for Arduino. It’s available from www.arduino.cc/ playground/Code/SimpleMessageSystem. Download it and install it. Note that the read_me.pdf file included with the download is out of date. Instead of copying the SimpleMessageSystem folder into the lib/targets/library/ subdirectory of the Arduino installation, put it into hardware/libraries/. After you’ve installed SimpleMessageSystem, open the Arduino.pde sketch in the Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Upload the sketch to your Arduino over USB. Close the Arduino IDE, but leave the Arduino connected to your computer. Return to Max/MSP and choose the serial port to connect to your Arduino (Figure 12-136).

Figure 12-136. Set the serial port (Windows shown to the left, Mac OS X to the right)

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Now, rotate the iPhone so that the Home key is to your right and the top of the phone to your left (look ahead to Figure 12-141). Using OSCEmote, switch to the Buttons view, and tap the upper-left button. You should see the LED next to pin 13 blink on the Arduino. If it blinks, you’re good (Figure 12-137). If you want to see more light, slide an LED into the Arduino: short lead (negative, cathode) goes to GND, long lead (positive, anode) goes to pin 13. If it does not blink, make sure that the Arduino is really communicating with Max/MSP (blinking RX and TX). Make sure that you closed the Arduino IDE (because it locks the port for its own use) and try reselecting the serial port in the Max/MSP patch. If you still have problems, you can open a ticket on Google code at http://code.google. com/p/iphonerccar.

Figure 12-137. LED near pin 13

Hacking into the R/C Controller Prepare all four NPN transistors by soldering 10-inch wires to their base pins (this is the center pin labeled “B” that’s bent up, as shown in Figure 12-138). Use 22 AWG wire (often called hook-up wire), because you need it to slip securely into the Arduino pins. Strip the other end of the wires, leaving about 3/4 of an inch exposed.

If you don’t have an R/C car, you might be tempted to use LEDs for all four pins just

to try this hack out. If you do that, be sure to put a resistor (220 ohms or more should be fine) in series between the LED and either the GND or the pin you are using. You do not need a resistor for pin 13 because one is built in to the Arduino board.

Open your R/C car’s remote controller and find switches that are triggered by the joystick controllers. Now, you’re basically going to replace the original switches with transistors. In fact, you don’t have to replace them: it’s possible to have both the transistors and original switches working in parallel, but that depends on you and how clever you feel like being. In the pictures that follow, you can see that I opted to just replace the buttons. The collector pin of each transistor should be soldered to negative (ground) and the emitter pin to positive side of each switch (Figure 12-139).

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HACK # 12.16 Figure 12-138. NPN transistor pinout

C

B

E

Figure 12-139. NPN transistor

Find a suitable place to solder one wire to the controller’s ground, because we need a common ground between Arduino and the controller. Because this will go into the Arduino, use a 22 AWG wire that is at least 10 inches long and strip the other end to about 3/4 inch. You can see the four transistors soldered to replace the switches in Figure 12-140, along with one wire coming from each switch (you will connect these to the Arduino digital pins shortly). The wire at the top is the antenna, and the wires at the bottom are the connection to 9V battery (red and black wires), with one wire (white-brown) to make a common ground with the Arduino.

Figure 12-140. Transistors replacing each button

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Now, connect the Arduino, with the ground wire going to the ground pin on the Arduino. Again, your choice of pins depends on the type of remote you have (continuous track, on which the left and right motors are controlled independently to steer) or standard (which has a steering control and a forward/reverse control). Figures 12-141 and 12-142 show the two controller configurations for OSCremote. Here’s how to hook the Arduino to a continuous-track controller: • • • •

Left side, forward—Arduino pin 13 Left side, backward—Arduino pin 12 Right side, backward—Arduino pin 11 Right side, forward—Arduino pin 10

Figure 12-141. OSCremote—continuous control

Here’s how to hook the Arduino to a standard controller: • • • •

Turn left—Arduino pin 13 Turn right—Arduino pin 12 Go forward—Arduino pin 11 Go backward—Arduino pin 10

Figure 12-142. OSCremote—standard control

Figure 12-143 shows the final continuous-track circuit wired to the Arduino microcontroller board.

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HACK # 12.17 Figure 12-143. Completed wiring

You are ready to power on the remote controller and power on your car. You should be able to control it by your iPhone!

Hacking the Hack Now it’s up to you what you can do with it. If your car supports changing shape or some other button-press function, you can add one more transistor to the original remote control, then change the Max/MSP patch slightly, and you can control that, too. If you’re a more experienced hacker, you can see possibilities other than just controlling an R/C car. If you use relays instead of transistors, you can control lights in your house, or whatever you want. I’ve tried to make the software for the computer as simple as possible—this is just a small taste of what you can do. You can upload your modifications to Google Code for others, if you want, too. You can see videos of the car and other projects using the iPhone at http://josef-prusa.eu/obsah/ blog/iphone-controlled-rc-car-eng.html.

Hack 12.17:

Charge Your iPhone from (Almost) Any Source

Charge your iPhone and iPod touch with any USB port. You may have noticed that some older iPhone chargers (particularly the cheaper models) won’t work with the iPhone 3G. If your charger used the FireWire pins, you’ll be disappointed to know that FireWire has been discontinued in the iPhone 3G and your charger will not work (unless you hack it; read on). This is commonly the case with car chargers, because the car battery supplies a voltage very close to the voltage needed by FireWire, which greatly simplifies the charging electronics. If yours was a USB charger and it now fails to charge your iPhone, it probably wasn’t built to use the signaling protocol that Apple requires from USB chargers, starting with the iPhone 3G. You might think there’s a standard USB charging specification: all chargers should have certain characteristics so that any device built to spec should work with any charger built to spec. While such a specification exists, don’t waste your time on it. The fact is that most device developers do not follow the specification, but instead design their own protocols—and this includes Apple. chapter 12 - Charge Your iPhone from (Almost) Any Source

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The first-generation iPhone was very forgiving: if there was power on the USB cable, it charged. The iPhone 3G is more discerning. The pins typically used for transferring data (D+ and D–) [Hack #12.14] need to have specific resistors attached that tell the iPhone that this is an Apple-compliant charger. If you are stuck with one of the old incompatible chargers, you still have a few choices, which are conveniently described in this hack.

Buy a Universal Charger with a Dock Connector Passthrough The Kensington 4-in-1 universal charger and Ridax Dock Connector both provide a way to charge from USB while providing a passthrough to the dock connector for the audio and control connections (Figure 12-144).

Figure 12-144. Kensington 4-in-1 universal charger

Buy an Adapter for Your Existing Charger Iogear and Boxwave both make USB adapters that allow the iPhone to charge from any source (Figure 12-145). Scosche makes an adapter that connects to the iPhone dock and accomplishes the same thing [Hack #12.07]. Just add these adapters between your charger and your iPhone, and you should be able to use your charger again. They aren’t too expensive.

Figure 12-145. Boxwave iPhone charging adapter

Build Your Own Adapter You can build your own adapter using a few resistors and a touch of USB cable splicing. The way you charge the iPhone is to feed it 5V on pin 23, ground on 16, and resistors to D– (25) and D+ (27). D+ and D– are the pins that normally carry the USB data transmission [Hack #12.14]. There

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HACK # 12.17 are two valid voltage dividers that you can connect to D+ and D–, depending on how much current you want your iPhone to draw from your charger:

1. 2.

Two resistors, 500 mA (0.5 ampere) Four resistors, 750 mA (0.75 ampere)

Method 1 is the cheapest, easiest, and most compact. It only requires two resistors set up in the network as shown in Figure 12-146. This method gives you a current of 500 mA.

Figure 12-146. 500mA sense resistors

You need to choose values for R1 and R2 between 50K to 100K (50 to 100 kilo-ohms—each, not combined). Varying resistor sizes will work, as long as R1 and R2 are the same—and if the resistance is not too great or to small, you should be OK. Method 2 is to use a four-resistor network configured as shown in Figure 12-147, which gives you a current of 750 mA.

Figure 12-147. 750mA sense resistors

In this case, R1 and R2 must be 50K, R3 must be 150K, and R4 must be 100K. This tells the iPhone to draw up to 750 mA amps of current from your charger. If your charger cannot handle that much current, then you may want to use the first method, which consists of two resistors. But what if your charger doesn’t supply 5V? (You’d have this problem with a FireWire charger.) Read on for a solution.

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Make a 3G Adapter Cable to Charge via FireWire The goal of adapting the FireWire cable is to convert the FireWire voltage (often 12 volts) to the 5 volts needed for USB. This technique works for many chargers and power sources, including battery backups and the like. Your goal is to obtain a smooth and stable 5-volt source, and then add the resistor network described previously to the end of it. Voltage regulator chip By far, the simplest and easiest method is to use the LM7805 chip. Available from any electronics supplier, including RadioShack, it can take any voltage up to 35V and reduce it to a very steady stable 5V. It will supply up to 1 amp of current, which is more than enough for the iPhone. It’s a dream, right? Well, there is a catch. The 7805 wastes all the extra juice: if you feed it 12–15V from a car battery through the cigarette lighter adapter, that means 1/3 of the juice goes to your iPhone, and 2/3 goes into heat. This also means your 7805 chip can get very hot, to the point of becoming a fire hazard. To avoid that danger, you’ll have to install a heat sink to dissipate the heat. You’ll also need to ensure that your chip never gets above 150˚C (300˚F), and it would be best to stay below 100˚C (212˚F). That might mean quite some heat sink. This is a quick and dirty source of power and isn’t really practical, but it does make a great demonstration. The circuit is shown in Figure 12-148, using the iPod breakout board to demonstrate. If you don’t have a breakout board handy, you can use an iPod dock connector if you have one lying around [Hack #12.14].

Figure 12-148. Charging the iPhone 3G with 12V

GND

12V PodBreakout dock connector breakout board

.75 A resistor network 7805 voltage regulator with heatsink

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HACK # 12.17

Hacking the Hack Once you have the tools described in this hack under your belt, there are myriad combinations you can apply in order to power your iPhone in any environment—even from solar cells. We’ll run through one last example of crossing a “wall wart” FireWire charger with a 3G USB car charger to create a wall wart charger for your iPhone 3G. This hack will require some soldering skill and isn’t for the faint of heart. You’ll need the following: • •

•

A soldering iron and some solder. A USB car charger. Make sure that it works before beginning by charging your iPhone in the car. You might want to use a charger that provides multiple USB outlets. You can modify one output for the dock cable, and keep the other outlet for charging other USB devices. A dock extender cable. A number of companies produce dock extender cables. CableJive and Ridax both sell dock extender cables on their websites. Make sure that the cable you order has all the connections you want. For example, the CableJive cable doesn’t provide audio inputs to the phone. If you need only audio out and iPod control, both cables should be fine. We’ll use the Ridax cable for this example, because it has all the connections we want; plus, the flat-pack cable will make it easier to determine which wires to cut.

The basic idea here is to take the 12V source from the original FireWire pins and run it through the USB charger to produce a 5V output. (Internally, the USB charger most likely has a switched-mode power supply.) We can then run the 5V power to the USB pins on the output side. Essentially, we’re going to hard-wire the USB conversion into our adapter cable, while making sure not to change the audio or control wires. It’s probably a good idea to remove the cable before attempting any data transfers or sync operations. First, find and cut the following wires: • • • • • •

FireWire power (pins 19 & 20) FireWire ground (pins 29 & 30) USB power (pin 23) USB Data + (pin 27) USB Data – (pin 25) USB Ground (pin 16)

dd

More pinout information can be found at: http://pinouts.ru/Devices/ipod_pinout.shtml and [Hack #12.14]

Open the casing on your USB charger, then follow these steps:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Desolder the original power wires, noting which spot was connected to power (the tip of the charger) and which was connected to ground (the side prong). For now, we’ll reuse the charger casing, but you may want to put it in a different housing if it’s too bulky. Cut the FireWire power (19, 20) wires on the dock cable. Solder the wires coming from the female end to the 12V input on the charger. Cut the FireWire ground wires (29,30) on the dock cable. Solder the wires coming from the female end to the ground input on the charger. Make sure that the USB charger power and ground are connected to the female dock connector. At this point, you might want to test your cable. Connect the female end to your iPod connector, and attach your iPhone or a USB device to the charger output. Make sure that the USB output is working properly, and recheck your work if it isn’t.

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dd

If necessary, add the USB voltage divider described earlier in this hack to the USB output of the charger. You may need to remove the USB connector to make room for the new wires.

7. 8. 9. 10.

Cut the USB power (23) and ground (16) wires on the dock cable Solder the wires coming from the male ends to the USB power (1) and ground (4) pins on the charger. Cut the USB D+ (27) and D- (25) wires on the dock cable Solder the wires coming from the male end to the D+ (3) and D- (2) pins on the charger USB output.

Now you need to seal the USB wires coming from the female dock connector, making sure that none of them are touching each other. If you plan on using your cable year ’round, or in a humid environment, you might want to use something that will form a watertight seal. Optional: ground the remaining FireWire wires coming from the male connector. This will ensure that the iPhone doesn’t see any floating signals on the unused FireWire pins. If you chose not to ground these pins, make sure that they are sealed. Now it’s time to wrap it up:

11. 12.

Close the charger case, making sure not to crimp the new wires. Secure the new wires to the connector to make sure that they do not get pulled out, and make sure that there are no exposed connections.

Plug the adapter into your original dock connection, and connect your iPhone to the other end. Verify that it is charging, and that your audio and control connections still work. If you used a dual-outlet USB charger, you should be able to charge other USB devices from your adapter cable as well. ——Zack Gainsforth & Christopher Kurpinski

Hack 12.18:

Connect Your iPhone to a Serial Port Using a Dock Connector

With the right adapter, your iPhone can talk to serial devices via the dock connector. Serial has been the staple low-speed communications protocol for decades. Because the iPhone is the new overlord of connectivity, obviously you’ll want to add RS-232 to its repertoire (or USBSerial if your computer does not have legacy ports). The problem is that the iPhone has only a 3V TTL connection built into the base. However, a bit of fancy adaptation allows you to conjure up a serial connection anyway. You’ll need your wire strippers as well as a converter cable. If your serial device doesn’t draw too much power, you can even power it from the iPhone! The parts you’ll need are: •

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A 3.3V TTL-to-RS-232 cable, part number MCU-026-172 from www.superdroidrobots.com or a 3.3V TTL-to-USB cable, such as part number 768-1016-ND from www.digikey.com. If you’re connecting to another 3.3V TTL device—such as a microcontroller—this is not needed.

HACK # 12.18 •

•

An iPod USB sync cable, such as part number IPD-3 from All Electronics www.allelectronics.com or the PodBreakout from SparkFun Electronics (www.sparkfun.com, part number DEV-08295) Spudgers for opening the cable plug [Hack #12.09]

The first task is to rewire the USB sync cable so that it uses the iPhone’s serial pins rather than the USB pins [Hack #12.14]. To do this, you will have to open up the iPhone plug using a spudger, as shown back in. There you’ll also see the process of rearranging the pins in a dock connector. Once you have completed the steps in [Hack #12.14], your next step is to use a pair of needle nose pliers to remove the pins from their existing seats and push them back into the pinout, as listed in Table 12-2. Table 12-2 iPhone serial and power pins

Pin Number

Color

Purpose

1

White/Yellow

Ground

12

Black

iPhone Serial TX

13

Green

iPhone Serial RX

18

Red

iPhone 3.3V power

Pin 1 is the pin farthest to the left. You can also find pin 1 by holding your iPhone in your left hand face up, and then plugging in the cable with your right hand. The pin closest to you is pin 1. Pins 2, 3, and so on are found by counting away. Pin 30 is the farthest to the right. Pins are pulled and reinserted with your fingers, or with needle-nose pliers, as in Figure 12-149.

Figure 12-149. Rearranging the pins

Next, snip the USB end off the sync cable and strip the wires. Then snip the end off the RS-232 cable (if you are using the USB/TTL cable, it should come with stripped ends) and place a section of heat-shrink tubing over one of the cables. Next, solder the cables together, matching wires by

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color. Note that yellow matches with white. If you have any doubt about which wire goes with which, you can consult the datasheet for the RS-232 or USB/TTL cable. It is helpful to snip the RS-232 or USB/TTL cable at the very end, as you may encounter unused wires (with different colors), which can be mildly confusing. After soldering, wrap each wire with electrical tape so that they don’t short out against one another. Pull the shrinkwrap over the joint, and heat it up with a hot air gun. Your final result should look like Figure 12-150.

Figure 12-150. iPhone serial to RS232

Talking to the iPhone Once you’ve done all this, you’re going to need some software to talk to it. To write programs to work with the serial port on an iPhone, you’ll need the source code at http://devdot.wikispaces. com/Iphone+Serial+Port+Tutorial, which you can build with one of the development environments in Chapter 11.

Hack 12.19:

Remote Control Your iPhone or iPod touch with the Dock Connector

Make an iPhone- and iPod-compatible docking station. Ever since the second generation of iPods, there has been the option to control the iPod through an external interface so that you could remotely skip songs and use other functions. This feature still exists in today’s iPhone. In order to control your iPhone externally, we’re going to use the serial port pins that you learned about in [Hack #12.14] and [Hack #12.18] in the dock connector. This time, though, we’re going to emulate one of those iPhone docking stations that you find in boomboxes or cars. The iPhone is smart, in that it detects when it is being controlled serially, and switches the audio output from the 426

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HACK # 12.19 headphones to the bottom plug. This feature is useful for docking stations, because you just set your iPhone on the station and it handles both communication and audio (and charging too).

If you want to try adapting this hack for use with a microcontroller, be careful that you

match voltages correctly, or something will fry. Because the iPhone exposes TTL serial, you could bypass the TTL-to-RS-232 or TTL-to-USB adapter entirely if you connect the iPhone directly to your microcontroller. However, the iPhone uses 3.3V signaling, so if you are using a microcontroller that uses 5V (or 1.8V), you’ll need a level shifter such as the $1.95 Logic Level Converter from SparkFun Electronics (www.sparkfun.com), part number BOB-08745.

You’ll need the following: • •

•

• • • • •

An PodBreakout breakout board, part number DEV-08295 from www.sparkfun.com A 3.3V TTL-to-RS-232 cable, part number MCU-026-172 from www.superdroidrobots.com, or a 3.3V TTL-to-USB cable, such as part number 768-1016-ND from www.digikey.com An audio jack such as part number 274-141 from RadioShack, www.radioshack.com, or part number PRT-08032 (3.5 mm jack) and PRT-08827 (audio jack breakout board) from SparkFun A breadboard. A 500K (500 kilo-ohms) resistor, or multiple resistors that add up to 500K 22-gauge wire A soldering iron Serial debugging software, such as wSHDCOM on Windows (http://wshdcom.exor.hr); you can use any serial comm/modem program, as long as you can paste and send binary strings.

You are going to assemble the setup shown in Figure 12-151.

Figure 12-151. iPod dock remote control

The first step is to solder up your PodBreakout board. Using 22 gauge wire, strip 1/2 inch or so from each end, and solder one end into pins 1-4, 11-13, 18, 21, and 30. You can also solder other pins if you wish to use the same PodBreakout for other projects such as the USB charger [Hack #12.17]. As an alternative to making your own wires, you can purchase breadboarding jumper wires and use them instead. These are just 22 gauge wires, precut and prestripped. Now you need to connect everything on the breadboard, as shown in Figure 12-151. Connect the serial ground to the iPhone breakout ground (pins 1 and 11). Leave pin 2 separate, as that is audio ground and does not need to match the other grounds. You will obtain better audio quality this way.

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Connect the serial cable into pins 11–13 and 18. The pinout for the RS-232 and USB TTL cable is shown in Table 12-3. Table 12-3 Cable pinouts

PodBreakout Pin Number

USB/TTL Cable Color

RS-232 Cable Color

Purpose

11

Black

White/Yellow

Ground

12

Yellow

Black

iPhone Serial TX

13

Orange

Green

iPhone Serial RX

18

No Connection

Red

iPhone 3.3V power

Audio The audio jack connects to pins 2–4. You will need to open up your jack and solder 22 AWG wire to it. Then you can plug these wires into the breadboard according to the pinout in Table 12-4. Table 12-4 Audio pinout

Pin

Purpose

2

Audio ground

3

Audio left ear

4

Audio right ear

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Old iPods know when they are connected to a docking station, because of a 500K resistor placed between pins 21 and 30. This resistor is not strictly necessary for your iPhone, but if you add this, then your docking station will be fully backward-compatible with iPods, too. If you don’t have a 500K resistor, you can usually find a combination of two resistors that produce the required value.

Because this is an iPhone and not an iPod, as soon as you plug it in, you will get the message shown in Figure 12-152. You can choose “Yes” or “No” as you see fit. Rest assured: the protocol works fine on the latest iPhones. We usually select “No;” it will still work.

Figure 12-152. Just say “No”—it will still work

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HACK # 12.19

Schematic Putting everything together, this is the electrical schematic you should build (Figure 12-153). Note that the TX and RX are from the perspective of the iPhone; you can verify the pinouts at [Hack #12.14]. Thus, TX (pin 12) goes to the RX of the PC or device you’re connecting to, and RX (pin 13) goes to the TX of the PC or device you’re connecting to.

Figure 12-153. iPhone dock remote schematic

Serial commands OK, so now you’ve built it. How do you control it? First, you need a serial program that allows you to send hexadecimal sequences to your serial port. One example is wSHDCOM, which works under Windows. Next, configure it to run at 9600 baud, 8N1. Now you’re going to use serial commands to control it. The protocol is nicely documented at http://stud3.tuwien.ac.at/~e0026607/aap/ipod_aap.html, but just to get you started, we’ll give you here the sequence to start playing whatever music happens to be on your iPhone. First, switch to accessory mode: FF 55 03 00 01 04 F8

You should get no apparent response from the iPhone except that if the screen is still lit, you will see a display that says “Accessory Attached.” So, just to make sure everything is working, ask for the iPhone name: FF 55 03 04 00 14 E5

You should get a response containing an ASCII string with your iPhone name in it. In my case: FF 55 0A 04 00 15 69 53 6D 61 73 68 00 78

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If that passes, you now give it a command to select playlist #0, which contains all songs on the iPhone: FF 55 08 04 00 17 01 00 00 00 00 DC

You should get a response: FF 55 06 04 00 01 00 00 17 DE

Now tell it to switch to the playlist that you selected and start playing: FF 55 07 04 00 28 00 00 00 00 CD

You should get a response: FF 55 06 04 00 01 00 00 28 CD

And music should start playing! One last command you might want is the play/pause command: FF 55 04 04 00 29 01 CE

Now that you’ve made the connection, you can write programs on your computer—or microcontroller—that control the iPhone by sending commands like these over the serial port.

Hack 12.20:

Read Signals from an Infrared Remote Control— Without Jailbreaking!

You can receive infrared input on your iPhone without jailbreaking, using the audio input jack. Although numerous one-off hacks connecting all sorts of devices to the iPhone have been posted on blogs and YouTube, the problem with these approaches is that they usually use the dock connector [Hack #12.18] and thus cannot be reduced to commercial products until the iPhone 3.0 operating system is released. However, there is an I/O (input/output) port on the iPhone just waiting to be used: the headphone/ microphone port [Hack #12.21]. If you think about it, people have been squeezing over 50Kbps (kilobits per second) out of phone lines, and they have far less fidelity than the iPhone’s sound chip. And Apple’s SDK works fine with audio input and output...no jailbreaking required!

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You can find the source code for the application as well as the schematic at http://perceptdev.com/labs/iphonehacks.

For this demonstration hack, we’ve wired up a simple circuit that takes infrared pulses and converts them to a sound wave. Then we’ve written code to recognize the signals from a well-known remote: the IR (infrared) remote that comes bundled with most Macs.

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HACK # 12.20 What you’ll need: • • • • • • •

A 38kHz infrared receiver (Figure 12-154), part number PCM-1 from www.allelectronics.com A 1K (1 kilo-ohm) resistor (color code: brown-black-red) A 220K resistor (color code: red-red-yellow) One electrolytic (cylinder) capacitor in the 47–220uF range One electrolytic capacitor around 10uF One 4-AA battery holder Four 1.2V AA rechargeable batteries

Figure 12-154. A 38kHz infrared receiver

Figure 12-155 shows the pinouts of the IR receiver. It is quite simple: you connect it to 5V (pin 2) and ground (pin 3), and it will output a signal on pin 1.

Figure 12-155. IR pinout

Figure 12-156 shows a close-up of the breadboarded circuit for this hack. Pins 2 and 3 of the IR receiver are connected to 5V and ground, respectively. A capacitor (I used 10uF) is put across ground and 5V to stabilize the input from the batteries. When you point a remote at the IR receiver and press its buttons, this creates a signal in the 5V range on pin 1 of the IR receiver, which is much too hot for the iPhone microphone circuit. So we pass pin 1 (row 2) of the IR receiver through a 220K resistor (rows 2 and 8), to the 1K resistor (rows 8 and ground), which then goes to ground. Where these two resistors meet (shown as row 8 in Figure 12-156), they join a 47uF capacitor. The other side of the 47uF capacitor provides the lowered signal that can be safely put into the microphone port of the iPhone.

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Figure 12-156. Close-up of the breadboarded infrared circuit

You’ll need an audio splitter [Hack #12.14] and a battery pack (four 1.2V rechargeables will give you 4.8V, which should work). You can see the complete circuit in Figure 12-157.

Figure 12-157. The completed IR circuit

Figure 12-158 shows the demo application. The source code for this application and libraries that you can incorporate in your own application can be found at http://perceptdev.com/labs/ iphonehacks. When you press any button on the IR remote while it’s aimed at the IR receiver, the corresponding button will light up (Figure 12-158).

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HACK # 12.20 Figure 12-158. Pressing the middle button

If you click the pulse log button shown in Figure 12-159, you’ll see a numerical readout of the different pulses. If you use a different remote control, you can watch those numbers to “learn” new remotes and alter the source code to recognize your new remote (Figure 12-160).

Figure 12-159. Pulse log

Figure 12-160. Pressing middle button

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You can find out more ways to capture signals in the world with the microphone from similar hacks at:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Measure http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Measure/Start#How_to_connect_sensors_.28

Hack 12.21:

Connect a Serial Device to Your iPhone— Without Jailbreaking!

Connect all kinds of hardware to an iPhone using the headphone jack as a serial port. The iPhone has a modem. Did you know that? Well, not quite, but when you’re done with this hack, it will. With a little hardware wrangling, you can build a device that interfaces with your iPhone via the microphone/audio jack and can send 1200 baud serial data both ways. Although there are a number of ways to get data into and out of the iPhone—the dock connector, Bluetooth, the camera and screen, and Wi-Fi—none of these are well suited for simple, low-speed bidirectional communication with inexpensive components. Plus, several of these are simply inaccessible from Apple’s SDK. The audio port, however, is accessible from the SDK—both playing audio and recording it—and thus does not require a jailbreak. The demo applications and source code for this hack can be downloaded from www.perceptdev.com/labs/iphonehacks and built by any registered iPhone developer. We start with a souped-up microcontroller, the Cypress PSoC (Programmable System on a Chip). It exposes a UART (serial port) on one side, and talks to your iPhone using FSK (frequency-shift keying), the same technique used on some of the first modems (like the old 300 baud modems). Frequency shift keying is a system that uses alternating analog signals to send information: for example, in binary FSK, a tone of 8000 Hz (hertz) might signify a digital 1, and 4000 Hz digital 0. We chose these two frequencies for this project because:

1. 2.

Our sound must be easily played and recorded through the iPhone audio circuitry. If we choose harmonic frequencies (8000 Hz = 2 * 4000 Hz), then we can use a simple method to decode the signals and make this a weekend hack instead of a weeklong hack.

The Circuit You’ll need the following electronic components. Most of the components cost less than $20; the 5V UART is the most expensive part, at around $30: • • • • • • • • •

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Cypress PSoC: CY8C29466-24PXI (http://mouser.com or www.digikey.com part #428-1586-ND) Cypress PSoC MiniProg USB programmer: CY3217 (http://mouser.com or www.digikey.com) Breadboard (a solderless breadboard would work) Three 1K resistors (color code: brown-black-red) One 220 K resistor (color code: red-red-yellow) One 0.1 uF (microfarad) ceramic capacitor (should be labeled “104”) One 0.2 uF capacitor; two 0.1uF (104s) in parallel will work A pair of iPhone headphones that you don’t mind destroying 5–9V power source (a 9V battery is fine)

HACK # 12.21 •

• •

LM7805 voltage regulator, unless you are using a steady 5V power source (Digikey part# LM340T-5.0-ND) 5-pin male 0.100 K.K. header (Digikey part # WM4203-ND) A 5V UART such as the TTL-232R cable (www.ftdichip.com/Products/EvaluationKits/ TTL-232R.htm)

Build the circuit pictured in Figure 12-161. You should get the results shown in Figures 12-162 through 12-165, which show the project from several angles.

Figure 12-161. FSK circuit schematic

If you look at Figure 12-161, you’ll see two inputs. X3-1 and X3-2 connect to a UART (the FTDI USB to TTL serial cable) that you can talk to over a serial connection, such as a PC running HyperTerminal or another serial terminal program (such as screen on Mac OS X/Linux or minicom on Linux). You may need to download a driver for the FTDI cable from www.ftdichip.com/FTDrivers.htm. X4-1 and X4-2 on the right side of the circuit are for the next hack [Hack #12.22]. The same basic circuit is used for both hacks, just with different firmware. The top of the schematic shows the wiring that connects to the headphone jack to plug into the iPhone. The bottom left of the schematic shows the header pins that connect to the UART programmer itself.

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Figure 12-162. FSK circuit—top view

Figure 12-163. FSK circuit—top down

GND

Serial Header

Keyboard Header

[Hack #12.21]

[Hack #12.22]

Pins 12, 27

GND, Pin 18

TX

9V

Figure 12-164. FSK circuit—isometric view

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PSoC port

RX

GND, IRDA_IN

iPhone Headphone Plug

HACK # 12.21 Figure 12-165. FSK circuit—bottom

Figure 12-166. FSK circuit, with PSoC programmer and battery attached

You will find it easiest to make the connection to your audio/microphone jack by cutting up an old pair of iPhone headphones and wiring the plug direct to your breadboard.

Programming the Cypress Chip You will need a Cypress programming system. The baseline, simplest programmer is the CY3217 part listed earlier in this hack (Figure 12-166). If you are really interested in spinning projects of your own with this processor family, you’d be better off dropping the greenbacks to purchase an ICE (in-circuit emulator) that allows to you debug the hardware. It is a must for development, but overkill for simply programming a chip. You can find information about the ICE and how do develop your own projects at www.psocdeveloper.com/getting-started.html. You will also need the PSoC Designer software at: www.psocdeveloper.com/tools/ psoc-programmer.html (Figure 12-167). You can then download the source code for this hack, both for the iPhone application and for the PSoC from http://perceptdev.com/labs/iphonehacks.

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Figure 12-167. PSoC Programmer software

Unfortunately, the Cypress PSoC development environment is Windows-only. However, it is free to download. It includes its own C compiler, which is also free (but limited in functionality: you will need to spend a lot of money to obtain the fully optimized version). This hack was actually developed on a Mac using Windows running under Parallels Desktop as well as VMware Fusion, so you could run it on your Mac if you don’t mind purchasing VMware or Parallels as well as a Windows license. There are few devices on the market like the Cypress chip. It’s not just a microcontroller. It is a combination microcontroller, FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), and analog device. Cypress calls it a “mixed signal array.” Whereas an FPGA has software configurable digital hardware, the Cypress chip also has software configurable analog hardware. An equivalent design to this application would have about 10 op-amps, and a bunch of other discrete components on the board, as well as an FPGA that you would have to program. Incidentally, this is the reason why the Cypress is so good for analog audio processing: it really allows you to squeeze a whole circuit board onto one chip. For example, this hack (UART to FSK) was converted to keyboard-to-FSK [Hack #12.22] in about a day. The hardware for both is exactly the same, requiring you to just upload a different program to the chip. To flash the chip, you’ll need to use the PSoC Programmer, shown in Figure 12-166. You’ll also need the firmware for this hack, which you can download from www.perceptdev.com/labs/iphonehacks. Plug the USB end into your computer. If not already installed, install the PSoC drivers, and the PSoC Programmer software (Figure 12-168).

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HACK # 12.21 Figure 12-168. PSoC Programmer software

After you start it up, select the correct chip family, the 29x66, CY8C29466 (Figure 12-169). You should see “connected” on the bottom right of your screen if the software and chip are communicating. You can test the connection by clicking Toggle Device Power, and you should see a red LED light up or turn off on the PSoC programmer hardware, and the words “Not Powered” on the bottom of the screen will change to “Powered.”

Figure 12-169. Choose the correct family

Click “file load” to load the firmware file that you downloaded from http://perceptdev.com/labs/ iphonehacks, and then click Program, which will flash the chip (Figure 12-170).

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Figure 12-170. Programming the PSoC

How it Works To build the FSK to UART converter shown in this hack, we used the method described in two papers: •

•

FSK Generator, Application Note AN2098: www.psocdeveloper.com/docs/appnotes/an-mode/ detail/an-pointer/an2098/an-file/122.html, which describes how to take digital bits and turn them into an FSK audio signal. FSK Detector, Application Note AN2336: www.psocdeveloper.com/docs/appnotes/an-mode/ detail/an-pointer/an2336/an-file/124.html, which describes how to decode the FSK audio signal back into digital bits.

The circuit takes serial from the computer, converts to frequency-shift keying. It takes a carrier signal, such as a sine wave, and modulates it, toggling between 4000Hz and 8000Hz (Figure 12-171).

Figure 12-171. 4kHz to 8kHz frequency-shift keying

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HACK # 12.21 As a test, you can play these audio files out of your computer, and pipe the audio into your iPhone using the microphone splitter from [Hack #12.14]. One of the audio files has a canned message: “If you can read this, then your system is working!” Like a player piano, you can even see the speed and cadence of the original typing as it plays. The iPhone can even be acoustically coupled—a fancy word for holding the iPhone near a speaker using the microphone on the bottom, without using a microphone splitter. You can simply play some of the sample FSK files from your laptop or desktop speakers, and hold the iPhone, running the FSK application, near the speakers. You’ll have to hold it just right to get a clean decoding, as you can see in Figure 12-172.

Figure 12-172. PC Speakers <--> FSK Application demo

The FSK specifications are: • • •

1200 baud 8-N-1 Bit 1: 8kHz Bit 0: 4kHz

The baud rate to the iPhone is 1266 exactly (intended to leave a little buffer so that a 1200 baud device connected to the FSK circuit never gets jammed). If you treat TX as 1200 baud, you’ll be fine, because the chip will never send anything at a rate faster than 1200 baud. The bytes are sent as ASCII little-endian (LSB/MSB). So for example, “U” is sent as the following 9 bits: bit 0: 4 kHz start bit bit 1: 8 kHz bit 2: 4 kHz bit 3: 8 bit 4: 4 bit 5: 8 bit 6: 4 bit 7: 8 bit 8: 4

Standby is at 8kHz. That is, if you’re not sending data, then emit a constant 8kHz tone.

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You can decrease the sample rate of this audio file significantly in an audio editing program, even compressing it to an MP3, and it will still work. It has been tested to 20kHz at 16 bits, and it was just fine. Theoretically, you could go to 16kHz and retain the information.

Hacking the Hack If you’ve read this far, you probably already have ideas for how to apply this. [Hack #12.22] jumps right into applying this circuit to the holy grail of iPhone device connectivity: an iPhone keyboard. ——Zack Gainsforth, George Dean IV & Damien Stolarz

Hack 12.22:

Connect a Keyboard to Your iPhone— Without Jailbreaking!

Adapt an infrared keyboard for PDAs and type on your iPhone. A number of industrious hackers have achieved what to some is the holy grail of iPhone accessories: a physical iPhone keyboard. But most have done it in a very hard-to-repeat manner, and few have shared the methods they used. This hack attempts to solve both of these problems. For one, it uses the audio port, an Apple-SDK supported method of communicating with an iPhone or second-generation iPod touch. And for another, the source code for the hardware used—both to program the chip, and to run on the iPhone—are publicly available. You can download schematics, code, plans, and a parts list from http://perceptdev.com/labs/iphonehacks. Furthermore, you can purchase new and used infrared keyboards online for less than $10 USD. Thus, with everything needed from [Hack #12.21], you’re looking at potentially less than $75 USD to build a keyboard, chip programmer included (Figure 12-173).

Figure 12-173. Typing on a Targus PDA keyboard into the iPhone

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HACK # 12.22 Using a modified version of the iPhone modem Cypress firmware from [Hack #12.21], you can attach an external portable keyboard to your iPhone. We implemented support for two keyboards: a MicroInnovations IrDA Palm keyboard, which had an unusual binary protocol (“scan codes”), due to its unusual keyboard layout (Figure 12-174); and a Targus keyboard, whose scan codes matched a standard PC keyboard. Both were designed for use with a PDA and use a form of infrared called IrDA to send keypresses to a device.

Figure 12-174. MicroInnovations keyboard hooked to Cypress circuit

Rather than worry about building an IrDA receiver, we just wired the IrDA signal directly by soldering leads to both terminals of the IrDA transmitter. This gave us a cleaner signal and simplified development (Figure 12-175). If you wish, you can certainly add an IrDA receiver to the modem and obtain the same functionality.

Figure 12-175. Soldering onto both sides of the IrDA transmitter LED

The schematic for the keyboard hack is the same one described in [Hack #12.21], except now we’re using the header for keyboard in. It is shown again in Figure 12-176 for ease of reference.

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Figure 12-176. The iPhone FSK adapter schematic

To connect the Targus keyboard, you need to snip the red and white wires that lead to the IR transmitter (Figure 12-177).

Figure 12-177. Finding the IR red and white wires

Wires

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HACK # 12.22 Then clip these two wires. The white wire from the Targus IR keyboard (not shown) clips to the IRDA_IN pin on the circuit. The red wire from the Targus IR keyboard (not shown) clips to any convenient ground (Figure 12-178).

Figure 12-178. Connecting the keyboard to the FSK circuit

How It Works The IrDA signal on the keyboard essentially “shorts” a voltage (brings it down to zero), which you provide via a 5K (5 kilo-ohm) pull-up resistor. Thus, the standby voltage is 5V (in our case) and the value goes to 0V (short) for brief, 5 microsecond pulses as the keyboard shorts the line. A series of pulses (or lack thereof) indicates what data is being transmitted. (Figure 12-179 shows a single byte sent over the channel.)

Figure 12-179. One byte (start bit + 10001100)

In Figure 12-179, the leftmost bit is the start bit (logic 0, voltage 0). The 8-bit sequence following is 10001100. The absence of a pulse implies logic 1, the presence of a pulse implies logic 0. This is the first byte (first half of the scan code) sent in response to a keypress “u.” chapter 12 - Connect a Keyboard to Your iPhone—Without Jailbreaking!

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In this configuration, the presence of a pulse indicates a logic 0, and the absence indicates a logic 1. The pulses are sent at 9600 baud. Therefore, in order to read the data sent by the keyboard, you have to do the following:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Using a DigInv block on the Cypress chip, use an interrupt to call a function in your code each time a negative pulse (zero) arrives. Wait for a first pulse. This is your start bit, which signifies the start of a byte. Your function will start a timer that goes for 3/2s of a 9600 baud period (150 microseconds). If subsequent pulses arrive during the timer period, your function notes them. If no pulse occurs, your function is not called. When the timer is up, check to see if the interrupt function was called. If not, that would mean the last bit was a logic 1 (no pulse). If it was called, then the bit was logic 0. Reset the timer for a single 9600 baud period (100 microseconds). Repeat step 4 seven more times. On the last bit (now you have 8), write the byte to the FSK system—which is identical to what you did in [Hack #12.21]. Also turn off the timer, and have your interrupt function wait for another start bit. At this point, you will be in the middle of a stop bit, which is always logic 1, (no pulse, signifying the end of the byte.

Because the keyboard sends data at 9600 baud, the circuit has to buffer data to some extent, even though nobody can seriously type faster than 1200 baud. This is because key presses generate multiple bytes: they’re scan codes, not ASCII. And, because scan codes vary from keyboard to keyboard, you are best off figuring out what they are by pressing keys. Note that both the press and release of a key generate a scan code, as do modifier keys like shift, alt, and control. So a single character typed could generate 6 or more bytes of data. With stop bits, it could be up to over 50 bits for a single keypress. A 120 words per minute typist can type 10 characters per second. Yet even with overhead, 500 bits per second fits into our 1200 baud bandwidth budget. When the keyboard firmware is loaded onto the Cypress chip, it replaces the bidirectional serial firmware from [Hack #12.21]. There is only enough memory on the Cypress to do one-way communication (keyboard to the iPhone) in the current code, but if you optimized it further or used a larger Cypress chip, it would be possible to have keyboard input simultaneously with some sort of serial output to a device. It’s also worth noting that the keyboard uses only the microphone input. Thus, using a simple Y-splitter [Hack #12.14], you should be able to listen to audio while typing.

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iphone hacks

HACK # 12.23

Hacking the Hack The source code for the Cypress firmware for reading the keyboard is available from www.perceptdev.com/labs/iphonehacks. Because the source code is available, and because kits with the keyboard preassembled are straightforward to produce, the library that adds keyboard support can be integrated into any iPhone application. Thus, a programmer could create terminal programs, note-taking programs, and even full-screen text editors with arrow controls. Given that some old serial mice originally ran at 1200 baud, it’s entirely conceivable that an improved circuit could be produced with both mouse and keyboard support. But with the iPhone being such a nice computer...with a keyboard...it seems like we’re only a few steps away from a mobile PC revolution [Hack #12.23]. ——Zack Gainsforth, George Dean IV & Damien Stolarz

Hack 12.23:

Use Your iPhone to Go Back in Time

The iPhone is a portable personal computer. Everyone with a smartphone has a personal computer in their pocket. But if the iPhone is such a great computer, why are we still carrying around a laptop? There are wireless technologies coming around the corner, such as UWB (“ultra wideband”), that promise to connect devices to screens wirelessly. But until that time, we have [Hack #12.06] to enable our iPhones to connect to monitors. Using [Hack #12.06] combined with [Hack #12.22], we’ve finally “demobilized” the iPhone, taking portable computing to its illogical conclusion (Figure 12-180).

chapter 12 - Use Your iPhone to Go Back in Time

447

Figure 12-180. The iPhone as a desktop personal computer

Enjoy hacking your phone!

448

iphone hacks

HACK # 12.23

12 - chapter 12 - Use Your iPhone to Go chapter Back in Time

449

450

iphone hacks

Index A Access Point Name (APN) settings, 193–195 account balance, 155 address book, autocorrection, 213–214 Address Book, backing up, 64 addresses folder path, 24–26 IP, 223–224, 247–250 router, 247–248 administration, remote server, 233–236 AFP (Apple Filing Protocol), 237–238 AHED, 127–128 AIM, 66–67, 82 Air Sharing, 34, 87 airtime usage, 155 alert duration, 77–79 AllElectronics.com, 402–403 altering voice, 271–272 Amazon Kindle, 121 Anguna, 146 animation, exporting, 104 antenna, performance, 257 AnyDVD, 99 anySIM, 187 APIs API Explorer, 337–339 private, 339–345 APN (Access Point Name) settings, 193–195 AppBackup, 34 AppFlow, 216 Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), 237–238 Appletalk, mounting filesystem, 237–240 Apple TV, remote, 272–273 Apple Universal Dock, 108 Application Notes, 440 applications App Store, 5–6, 19 backgrounding, 255–256 backing up, 280–281 command line scripts, 282–291 databases, backing up, 302–307 force quitting, 40 frameworks, adding, 342–343 hidden classes, adding, 343–344 hiding, 215–217

installation, 19–23 iPhone, developing on, 328–331 jailbreaking, history, 14–17 manual backup, 34–35 manual installation, 323 native, 4 new, viewing, 331–333 overview, 4 private methods, adding, 344–345 repositories, 21–23 SDK, developing with, 316–320 self-signing, 320–322 third-party, 4, 19–23 timeouts, 289–290 troubleshooting, diagnosis, 37–38 virtual machines, developing on, 324–328 web, 4 Applications folder, 25 apps. See applications App Store, 5–6, 19, 81–82 AptBackup, 280–281 Arduino, remote control, 412–419 ARM processor, 6 aspect ratio, video, 89 Asterisk, 165–166, 167–171 AT&T network, 3 audio capture, 106 autocomplete, 222 autocorrection, 213–214 AutoStitch, 128–129 auxiliary input, car, 362 AV cables, 101–102

B background applications, 255–256 tasks, scheduled, 294–302 Backgrounder, 83, 255–256 backing up application databases, 302–307 files, 30–35, 59–64 jailbroken apps, 280–281 locally, script, 284–285 script, launchd, 301–302 to server, script, 285–291 badge, application result, 290–291 Band, 261–262 barring calls, 156

baseband bootloader, 7, 9–10 chip, 6 firmware, 6–8 unlocking, 18–187 bash utility, 284 Bassline, 263 BBinfo, 10 BD+, 96 beejive, 66–67, 80–81, 81–82 Beighley, Lynn, 303 Big Boss, 56–57 binary plist files, 293–294 bin folder, 25 BIOS, troubleshooting, 38 Bio Worm, 145 Bitfield, 101 bit rate, video, 90 BitTorrent files, 279–280 Bladox, 189 blogging by phone, 177–179 Blu-Ray, converting to iPhone format, 95–101 Bonjour, 88 bookmarks, 62 books, 120–128 BookShelf, 124 bootloader, 7, 9–10 BootNeuter, 188 boot screen, custom, 211–213 Bose QuietComfort headphones, 352 BossPrefs, 216–217, 240, 331–333 Boxwave, 348–349, 420 bricking, 6 browsers, access to files, 28–29 buying unlocked iPhone, 184–185 buzz, ground loop isolator, 366–367

C CableJive adapter, 363–364 cables, output, 101–102, 107–108 Calatrava, Antonio, 243 Calico Panorama, 128 call barring, 156 caller ID, 155, 271–272 call forwarding, 156–158, 244 CallMe, 163–164 call waiting, 155 CallWave, 175

index

451

camera close-up lenses, 354–357 external illuminator, 409–412 measuring distances, 266–269 stills, 128–133 video, 133–135 CamStudio, 106 capture, screen, 104–106 car connecting iPhone, 362–368 R/C, controlling, 412–419 carriers logos, 210 restrictions, 182 cartridges, retro game, 137–139 cd command, 229 CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) standard, 3 cellular data standards, 3, 193–195 certificates, self-signed, 320–321 charging adapters, car, 363–365 building adapter, 420–424 USB port, 419–424 Chicken of the VNC, 222 chip, baseband, 6 chroot, 5 chroot jail, 320 Clarifi case, 356–357 class-dump, 340–342 classes, frameworks, 337–339, 339–345 Classics, 125 Cleartune, 261 clients, IRC, 54 clipboard, email as, 59–62 Clippy, 275–277 close-up lenses, 354–357 cloud, backing up files, 30, 33, 35 codec, 89–90 Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) standard, 3 code signing applications, 320–322 Colloquy, 54, 84 ColorWare, 214–215 ComicZeal, 125–126 command-line Handbrake, 91–92 scripts, making applications from, 282–291 tools, learning, 229

452

iphone hacks

community support, troubleshooting, 49–50 component AV cable, 101 composite AV cable, 101–102, 107–108 compression, video, 89–90 computers access to files, 24–26 controlling from iPhone, 220–221 controlling iPhone, 221–222 instant messaging, 70–73 iPhone as, 447–448 Secure Shell (SSH) terminal program connection, 222–233 streaming video and music, 110–116 syncing from iPhone, applications, 270 syncing iPhone call log, 308–309 syncing multiple, 109–110 conductive gloves, 369–371 configuration after unlocking, 193–199 connections, external, 246–251 consoles, video game, 137 contact information, xiii Content Scrambling System (CSS), 96 conventions, xii converting Blu-Ray, 95–101 DVDs, 95–101 video, 89–95 copy and paste, 62–64, 275–277 copying email, 62–63 copy protection, DVD and Blu-Ray, 96–99 cores folder, 25 cost, SDK, 312 CradlePoint, 368 CSS (Content Scrambling System), 96 Cucusoft iPod Video Converter Suite, 101 custom autocorrection, 213–214 boot screen, 211–213 hiding apps, 215–217 icons, speed dial, 159–164 ringtones, 200–206 skins, 206–210, 214–215 view controllers, 335–336 Cyberduck, 228 Cycorder, 35, 133–134 Cydia, 20–23

Cypress PSoC (Programmable System on a Chip), 434–442

D daemon tasks, 294–302 Darkfader, 146 databases, backing up, 302–307 debugging launchd scripts, 298–299 delegate class, application, 334 Delta2, 150 demilitarized zone (DMZ), 248–249 desktop files, manual backup, 34 dev folder, 26 DFU (Device Firmware Upgrade) mode, 42, 46–49 DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol), 247 Dial2Do, 179 dictionaries, 126–128 digidrummer, 263 Digital Rights Management (DRM), 96 directories filesystem, 24–26 finding, 229 disassembling iPhone, overview, 372–376 iPhone 3G, 384–391 iPhone original model, 376–383 iPod touch, 391–398 disguising voice, 271–272 DiskAid, 24 distances, measuring, 266–269 distribution issues, SDK, 315 DMZ (demilitarized zone), 248–249 DNS, dynamic, 249–250 dock car, iPod integration, 362–365 charging, 420 connector pinouts, 404–409 original, 350–351 remote control, 426–430 serial port connection, 424–426, 426–430 documentation, SDK, 312–313 Dodd, Richard, 357 domain names, 249–250 DOTS iPhone Glove, 371 double-exposure effect, 356 downloading music, 278–280

SDK, 316–317 torrenting, 279–280 video, 278–280 VM, 324–325 YouTube videos, 277–278 DRM (Digital Rights Management), 96 drums, 263–264 dTunes, 278–280 DumpRom, 146 duration, alert, 77–79 DVD to iPod Converter for Mac, 101 DVDFab HD Decrypter, 98 DVDs, converting to iPhone format, 95–101 dynamic DNS, 249–250 Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), 247 dynamic IP addresses, 247–250 DynDNS, 249–250

E ear protection, noise-cancelling, 353 e-books, 120–128 Ecamm, 270 EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution), 3, 193 editing files, 237–240 Elgato, 93, 100–101 email copy and paste, 62–64 as storage, 59–62 texting, 64–66 to-fax, 251 visual voicemail, 171–175 Yahoo! push, 58–59 emulation, video games Game Boy, 143–144 Game Boy Advance, 145–147 Nintendo, 139–141 output to TV, 361–362 overview, 136–139 PlayStation, 147–152 Sega Genesis, 141–142 Super Nintendo, 144–145 Emulator Zone, 139 encoding DVD and Blu-Ray, 99–101 encryption DVD and Blu-Ray, 96–99 keys, SSH, 229

Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE), 3, 193 ePSXe, 150 eReader, 122–124 Erica’s Utilities, 274–275, 283 etc folder, 26 EVDO (Evolution-Data Optimized) standard, 3 exporting PowerPoint presentations, 101–108 extending call record database, 305–307 exterior, painting, 214–215 external connections, 246–251 external illuminator, 409–412 eyeMobile KC-1 lens, 356 EyeTV, 116

F Facebook, 82, 177–179 FairMount, 97 FakeBlank, 188 favorites list, phone numbers, 159 Faxaway, 253 faxes machine, printing to, 251–253 receiving, 253–254 feeds, 116–120 Festival-Lite, 274–275 field of view, camera, 128–129 Field Test mode, 158 files backing up, 30–35, 59–64 BitTorrent, 279–280 computer access, 24–26 filesystem, 23–29 finding, 229 folder path addresses, 24–26 hierarchy, 24–26 iPhone file server, 86–88 iPhone firmware (IPSW), 6 Mobile Finder, 26–28 MobileSafari, 28–29 mounting filesystem, 237–240 ringtones, 205–206 skins, 208–209 sound, skins, 210 Yahoo! push storage, 59–62

filesystem mounting, 237–240 overview, 23–29 filming, 133–135 finding files, 229 findme, 241–242 Findmyi, 244 FingerPiano, 259 firewalls, 246–249 FireWire, charging, 419–424 firmware baseband, 6–8, 8–13, 18–19 DFU (Device Firmware Upgrade) mode, 42, 46–49 restoring, 42–45 fisheye photos, 356 flashlight, 409–412 FlickIM, 80 focus, changing, 354 folders path addresses, 24–26 skins, 208–209 force quitting applications, 40 formats e-books, 120–121 video, 89–95 Forsythe, Daniel, 354 forwarding calls, 156–158, 244 port, 247–249 4-track, 262 FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), 438 frame rate, video, 89 frameworks hidden, 339–345 viewing, 337–339 Freeman, Jay, 20–21, 56, 133–134, 312 Free RSS Reader, 118 Fring, 168–169 FSK (frequency-shift keying), 434 FSK Detector, Application Note AN2336, 440 FSK Generator, Application Note AN2098, 440 FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace), 240

index

453

G Gabcast, 181 Game Boy Advance games, 145–147 Game Boy games, 143–144 games emulation, overview, 136–139 Game Boy, 143–144 Game Boy Advance, 145–147 Nintendo, 139–141 output to TV, 361–362 PlayStation, 147–152 Sega Genesis, 141–142 Super Nintendo, 144–145 GarageBand music editing, 262 ringtones, 204 gawk utility, 283 G-BANK, 147 Gcast, 180–181 General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), 3 GeoHot, 15, 52 Global System for Mobile communications (GSM). See GSM gloves, conductive, 369–371 glue, conductive, 369–370 GNU Unix shell utilities, 283–284 Google News, 117–118 Google syncing, 62 GotVoice, 175 GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), 3 GPS, measuring distances, 266–269 graphical user interface (GUI), 6 Griffin, 356–357 ground loop isolator, 366–367 GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) codes, 154–158 standard, 3 GUI (graphical user interface), 6 gzip utility, 283

H hackability, versions, 8–13 Hackint0sh, 51–52 Haldar, Sibsankar, 303 Handbrake, 90–92, 99–101 hand-coding UI, 333–336 hard drive, email as, 59–62

454

iphone hacks

hard reset, 45 Hardt, Jamie, 307 hardware Nintendo emulation, 141 SIM card, unlocking, 189–192 troubleshooting, 38–39 unlocking, 185–187 video conversion, 93 headers, frameworks, 339–345 Head First SQL, 303 headphones adapting for original, 348–349 jack, serial connection, 434–442 noise-cancelling, 351–353 pinouts, 399–404 heat, lap, 358 hidden frameworks, 339–345 hiding applications, 215–217 hierarchy, files, 24–26 High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), 3 Hildenbrand, Chris, 146 Hipcast, 181 homebrew games Game Boy, 143–144 Game Boy Advance, 145–147 Nintendo, 139–141 overview, 136–139 PlayStation, 147–152 Sega Genesis, 141–142 Super Nintendo, 144–145 Hörberg, Bertil, 143 Horrible Demon 4, 143–144 Hotz, George, 52 HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access), 3 HTTP server, phone as, 245–246

I iBoot, 7, 9 iBrickr, 14 iCal, 307–311 ICE (In Circuit Emulator), 437 iClarified, 53 icons applications, 288–289 speed dial, 159–164 Idid, 321

iDrum music application, 263–264 ringtones, 205 iFixit, 372 iFuntastic, 14 i3gSim, 189–192 iLiberty, 14–16 illuminator, external, 409–412 iLocalis, 243–244 IM. See instant messages, texting images applications, 288–289 boot screen, 211–213 skins, 206–210 IM+Chat, 81–82 iMaracas, 258–259 IMEI display, 158 ImgBurn, 98–99 iMovie, 92 importing call log to iCal, 309–311 incoming caller ID, 155 inetutils utility, 283 infrared keyboard, 442–447 remote control, 430–434 initialization, view controllers, 335–336 Inside SQLite, 303 Insomnia, 256–257 Installer.app, 19–20 instant messages, texting, 66–67, 70–73, 79–83 Instapaper, 119–120 integration, iPod, 363–365 Intelliscreen, 120 Internet, in-vehicle, 368 Internet Relay Chat (IRC), 54–55, 84–85 Iogear, 420 IP addresses, 223–224, 247–250 iPhone developing applications on, 328–331 Dev Team, 15, 19, 50–51 disassembling, original, 376–383 disassembling, overview, 372–376 disassembling, 3G, 384–391 firmware (IPSW) files, 6 Linux, running, 346–347 wiki, 52

iPhone Configuration Utility, 195–199 iPhone Converter, 94 iPhone Modem, 254–255 iPhone Open Application Development, 6 iPhone Video Recorder, 134–135 iphonelogd, 307 iPhoneNewsreader, 118–119 iPhone-optimized web pages, 4 iphoneSimFree, 187 iPod disassembling, 391–398 integration, 363–365 opening tools, 374 IPSW (iPhone firmware) files, 6 IR-909, 263 IRC (Internet Relay Chat), 54–55, 84–85 iRCm, 85 IrDA transmitter, 443 iSimpleSolutions iPhone integration, 365 iSpoof, 271–272 iSSH, 235–236 iToner ringtones, 205 iTunes backing up files, 30–33 device information, 316 remote, 272–273 ringtones, 200–203 syncing multiple computers, 109–110

J jack, headphone, 348–349 Jaiku, 178 jail, 5 jailbreaking benefits, 14 firmware, 18–19 history, 14–17 overview, 4–5 Pwnage, 16–18 QuickPwn, 16–18 unlocking, 185–186 versions, 8–13 javacom, 322 Jing, 104–106 Jivetalk, 80–81, 81–82 JOE editor, 327–328, 329–330

Jott, 177–178 Just Kissed Games, 324

K kaleidoscope effect, 356 Kekus Digital, 128 Kensington 4-in-1 universal charger, 420 keyboard, infrared, 442–447 Keynote, 104 keys, encryption, SSH, 229 Kindle, 121 Kyocera KR-1, 368

L LAN connections, 250 lap heat, 358 laptop, tethering, 254–255 LaunchAgents, 295 launchd, 295–302 LaunchDaemons, 295 learning music, 260 Learning Unix for Mac OS X Tiger, 229 LED, blinking, 412–416 lenses, close-up, 354–357 Lexcycle, 121–122 Library folder, 25 light, low, photos, 130–132 Lightsaber Unleashed, 256 lighttpd, 245–246 Lingon, 299–300 LinkedIn, 82 links, symbolic, 25 Linux, running on iPhone, 346–347 local backup, script, 284–285 location, phone, 241–244 locktable, 187 LogMeIn Ignition, 221 LogoMe, 212–213 logos, carrier, 210 Lomo viewfinders, 354–356 lost phones, 241–244 low light photos, 130–132 ls command, 229 Lynkeos, 130–131

M MacFUSE, 238–240 Macfusion, 238–239 Mac OS X, system software, 4, 42–45

MacTheRipper, 97 magnifying glass lens, 357 Maildash, 65–66 managing network services, 240–241 manual application install, 323 file backup, 30, 34–35 Maplin, 402 Max/MSP, 413 Max5 Runtime, 414 MCC/MNC pair (Mobile Country Code/Mobile Network Code), 187, 189 mdhelper, 32 measuring distances, 266–269 media container, video, 89 media remote control, 272–274 MesaSQLite, 304 messages. See email; instant messages, texting; MMS; texting methods, private, 344–345 microcontrollers, 412–419, 427, 434–442 MicroInnovations keyboard, 443 microphone, switch, 400 migration assistant, Smartphone to iPhone, 271 MiniPiano, 259 mIRC, 54 mirror video output, 360–362 The Missing Sync, 271 mixing music, 263–264 MMS receiving, 68–70, 77 sending, 67–68, 76–77 SwirlyMMS, 73–77 MobileChat, 81 MobileFinder, 26–28, 34, 63–64 MobileInstallation, 322 MobileMe, 33 mobile phone lenses, 356–357 Mobile Studio, 87–88 MobileSafari, 28–29 mobile user, 4 Mocha VNC, 220 model, identifying, 9 modem, faux, 434 modmyi.com, 53–54 modulator, RF, 358–360 Monster adapter, 400–401

index

455

Moore’s Law, 136–137 mounting filesystem, 237–240 multiple computer syncing, 109–110 text messages, 64–66 music applications, 258–265 manual backup, 34 rear seat entertainment, 365–367 ringtones, 200–206 skins, 210 streaming, 278–280 streaming from computer, 110–116 syncing multiple computers, 109–110 MxTube, 277–278 MythTV, 114–115

N nano utility, 283 NAT, 247 native applications, 4 Netatalk, 237 netatalk utility, 283 network configuration after unlocking, 193–199 network-cmds utility, 283 networking backgrounding applications, 255–256 controlling computer from iPhone, 220–221 controlling iPhone from computer, 221–222 external connections, 246–251 managing services, 240–241 mounting filesystem, 237–240 printing to fax machine, 251–253 receiving faxes, 253–254 recovering iPhone, 241–244 remote server administration, 233–236 SSH terminal program connection, 222–233 tethering, 254–255 tracking iPhone, 241–244 trackpad, 218–219 web server, phone as, 245–246 while sleeping, 256–257

456

iphone hacks

news feeds, 116–120 Ng, Patrick, 354–355 NIB file, 336 night photos, 130–132 Nintendo games, 139–141 noise-cancelling headphones, 351–353 note to self, 71 NullRiver Installer.app, 19–23

O Ocarina, 256, 264–265 OOB (out-of-box), 7–8 OOTB (out-of-the-box), 7–8 open toolchain, 312–316 opening tools, 374 OpenSSH, 284 operating system, troubleshooting, 38 Optomo Pico projector, 108 Orb, 113–114 OSCemote, 413 Oulid, Simon, 118 outgoing caller ID, 155 outlets, 334 out-of-box (OOB), 7–8 out-of-the-box (OOTB), 7–8 output to TV, 358–362

P Package and eXtension Library (PXL), 19 painting exterior, 214–215 PanoLab Pro, 132–133 panorama photos, 128–129, 132–133 partitions, 5 passwords, SSH, 229–231 PdaNet, 254–255 PDF books, 124–125 PDRoms, 138 permissions, xii personal computer, 447–448 phones Asterisk voicemail, 165–166 blogging, 177–179 GSM codes, 154–158 mobile phone lenses, 356–357 podcasting, 180–181 ringtones, 200–206 speed dial, 159–164 spoofing, 271–272

translate voicemail to text, 175–177 Twitter, 177–179 visual voicemail, 171–175 voicemail button, 158 VoIP (Voice over IP), 167–171, 257 Vonage voicemail, 166–167 PhoneTag, 175 PhoneView, 270 photography, 128–133, 354–357, 409–412 Photo-JPEG, 93, 106 photos, manual backup, 34 physical computing, 412–419 piano applications, 259–260 PianoChords, 260 PianoChordy, 260 Pico projector, 108 picture messaging, 64, 67–70, 73–77 Pier Solar, 142 Ping.fm, 179 pinging domain names, 250 pinouts, 398–409 PlayStation games, 147–152 pledit.exe, 294 Plist Editor for Windows, 294 plist files, 239–240, 291–294, 299–300 plugs, headphone, 348–349 plutil, 293 PodBreakout, 404, 406, 427 podcasting by phone, 180–181 Poof!, 216 port forwarding, 247–249 PowerPoint presentations, 101–108 preferences, plists, 291–294 prereleasing firmware, SDK, 315–316 presentations, PowerPoint, 101–108 printing, 62, 251–254 private APIs, 339–345 encryption key, SSH, 229 IP addresses, 247 private folder, 26 profiles codec, 90 provisioning, 320 projector, PowerPoint presentations, 101–108 property lists. See plist files

protocols, data, 3, 247–248 provisioning, 320, 321–322 PSoC (Programmable System on a Chip), 434–442 public encryption key, SSH, 229 IP addresses, 247 purchasing unlocked iPhone, 184–185 PureData, 413 push, cloud, 33, 59–62 PuTTY, 224–226 pwd command, 229 Pwnage, 16–18, 188 PXL (Package and eXtension Library), 19

Q QuickPwn, 16–18 QuickTime Pro, 92 quitting applications, 40

R radio frequency modulator, 358–360 Radtech, 403 Randall, Chad W., 324 R/C car, controlling, 412–419 readers, e-books, 120–126 Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, 116–120 RealVNC, 220, 222 rear seat entertainment, 365–367 reassembling iPhone original, 376–383 iPhone 3G, 384–391 iPod, 391–398 RebelSim, 192 rebooting, 41–42 receiving faxes, 253–254 recording music, 261–262 video, 133–135 recovering iPhone findme, 241–242 iLocalis, 243–244 recovery bootloader, 7 mode, 42–45 recurring tasks, 296–299 redirecting calls, 156–158 Remote, 272–273

Remote Buddy, 273–274 remote control Apple Universal Dock, 108 docking station, 426–430 infrared, 430–434 in-vehicle, 365 media, 272–274 R/C car, 412–419 Remote Desktop, 220–221 remote IRC, 84 remote server administration, 233–236 RemotePad, 218–219 repositories, 21–23 reQall, 179 resolution camera, 128–129 video, 89 respring application, 285–291, 327 restarting SpringBoard, 331–333 restoring software, 8, 42–45 results, application, 290–291 reversing updates, 13 RF modulator, 358–360 Ridax Dock Connector, 420 ringtones, 200–206 ripping DVDs and Blu-Ray, 96–99, 101 RoadMovie, 101 Rooms, 85 root user, 4 Rost, Bob, 140 router, 247, 368 RSA fingerprint, 227 RSS feeds, 116–120 rsync utility, 283

S Sack of Flour, 140–141 Sadun, Erica, 32, 55–56, 216, 338 saurik, 20–21, 56, 133–134, 312 Savant, 273 sbin folder, 26 SBSettings, 240–241 scheduled background tasks, 294–302 Scosche charger adapter, 363–364, 420 remote control, 365 scp tool, 323 screen capture, 104–106

ScreenSplitr, 361 scripts, command line, making applications from, 282–291 SDK (Software Development Kit) choosing, 311–316 developing applications, 316–320 overview, 5–6 self-signing, 320–322 Secure Shell (SSH) terminal program connection, 222–233 mounting filesystem, 237–240 remote server administration, 233–236 security, file storage, 88 seczone, 187 sed utility, 283 Sega Genesis games, 141–142 self-signing applications, 320–322 Senuti, 270 serial port connection, 424–426, 426–430, 434–442 server backup, script, 285–291 remote, administration, 233–236 syncing iPhone call log, 308 web, phone as, 245–246 services, network, managing, 240–241 Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), 167–170 7-Chords, 260 ShelfServer, 124 shell-cmds utility, 283 shortcuts, speed dial, 159–162 SiAX, 170 signature, Apple, 187 SimpleMessageSystem, 415 Simplify Media, 116 SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) cards, 3, 154, 182–183, 189–192 simulator, iPhone, 319 SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), 167–170 skins, 206–210, 214–215 Skype, 167–171 sleeping, networking, 256–257 slides, exporting, 102–104 SlySoft, 99 Smartphone, syncing to iPhone, 271

index

457

SMS alert duration, 77–79 instant messaging, 66–67, 70–73 multiple recipients, 64–66 sneakernet, 86 software. See also applications IPSW (iPhone firmware) files, 6 restoring, 8 system, 4 unlocking, 185–189 upgrading, 8 versions, hackability, 8–13 Software Development Kit (SDK). See SDK (Software Development Kit) soldering, 376 Sonos Controller, 273 sound files, skins, 210 sources, e-books, 126 SparkFun Electronics, 370, 404 speed dial, 159–164 SpinVox, 175, 176, 178–179 spoofing, 271–272 Springboard, 4, 206, 331–333 Sprint, 3 spudgers, 372–373 SQLite v3, 283, 302–307 SQL (Structured Query Language), 302–307 SSH mounting filesystem, 237–240 remote server administration, 233–236 terminal program connection, 222–233 standards, cellular, 3 Stanza, 121–122 static IP addresses, 223–224, 247 streaming video and music, 110–116, 277–280 Structured Query Language (SQL), 302–307 Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards, 3, 154, 182–183, 189–192 subviews, 335–336 SummerBoard, 206–207 Super Nintendo games, 144–145 support, troubleshooting Big Boss, 56–57 community, 49–50

458

iphone hacks

Freeman, Jay, 56 Hackint0sh, 51–52 iClarified, 53 iPhone Dev Team, 50–51 iPhone wiki, 52 IRC (Internet Relay Chat), 54–55 modmyi.com, 53–54 Sadun, Erica, 55–56 SwapTunes, 109–110 SwirlyMMS, 73–77 symbolic links, 25 syncing call log, 307–311 file backup, iTunes, 31 Google, 62 iPhone to computer, applications, 270 multiple computers, 109–110 Smartphone to iPhone, 271 synthesized music, 263–264 System folder, 25 system software, 4

T tab autocomplete, 222 talking, text to speech, 274–275 TalkShoe, 181 TapDial, 162 Tape Measure, 267 Targus keyboard, 443–445 Taylor, Dave, 229 Telekinesis, 111–113 telephony Asterisk voicemail, 165–166 Asterisk VoIP, 167–171 blogging, 177–179 GSM codes, 154–158 podcasting, 180–181 SIP VoIP, 167–171 Skype VoIP, 167–171 speed dial, 159–164 translate voicemail to text, 175–177 Twitter, 177–179 visual voicemail, 171–175 voicemail button, 158 VoIP (Voice over IP), 167–171 Vonage voicemail, 166–167 Terminal, 227–229

terminal program connection, Secure Shell (SSH), 222–233 remote server administration, 233–236 tethering, 254–255 text, translate voicemail to, 175–177 texting email, 64–66 instant messages, 66–67, 70–73, 79–83 MMS, receiving, 68–70 MMS, sending, 67–68 text-to-speech, 274–275 themes, 206–210, 214–215 third-party applications, 4, 19–23 thread, conductive, 370–371 3G connections, 170–171 thumbdrive, iPhone as alternative, 86 timeouts applications, 289–290 recurring tasks, 297–299 TinyURL, 71–73 tip-ring-sleeve (TRS), 399 T-Mobile, visual voicemail, 171–175 tmp folder, 26 TN3270, 236 Tolbert, Nathan, 146 toolchain open, 312–316 VM, 324–325 tools, 372–374 torrenting, 279–280 TouchCopy, 270 TouchOSC, 413 TouchTerm, 233–235 tracking iPhone findme, 241–242 iLocalis, 243–244 trackpad, 218–219 translate voicemail to text, 175–177 triage, troubleshooting, 37–39 trigonometry, measuring distances, 266–269 troubleshooting, 298–299 applications, 37–38 Big Boss, 56–57 BIOS, 38 community support, 49–50

DFU (Device Firmware Upgrade) mode, 42, 46–49 diagnosis, 37–39 force quitting applications, 40 Freeman, Jay, 56 Hackint0sh, 51–52 hard reset, 45 iClarified, 53 iPhone Dev Team, 50–51 iPhone simulator, 319 iPhone wiki, 52 IRC (Internet Relay Chat), 54–55 launchd scripts, 298–299 modmyi.com, 53–54 operating system, 38 rebooting, 41–42 recovering, 42–45 restoring, 42–45 Sadun, Erica, 55–56 TRS (tip-ring-sleeve), 399 truphone, 170 Tuner 440, 261 tuning instruments, 261 Turbo.264, 93, 100–101 Turbo-SIM, 189 TV input from iPhone, 358–362 PowerPoint presentations, 101–108 rear seat entertainment, 365–367 remote, 272–274 streaming from computer, 114–115 TVersity, 116 TVOut, 361–362 Twitter, 177–179, 241–242, 244

U UART, 434 UICatalog sample application, 317–319, 327–328, 331, 333–336 universal charger, 420 Universal Dock, 108 Unix, 4 unlocking, 6 advice, 183 carrier restrictions, 182 configuration, 193–199 purchasing unlocked, 184–185

SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) cards, 182–183, 189–192 software, 185–189 YouTube settings, 199 upgrading software, 8 uploading video, 134–135 Ureach, 176 URLs, shrinking, 71–73 USB port, charging, 419–424 usr folder, 26

voicemail Asterisk, 165–166 button, 158 translate to text, 175–177 visual, 171–175 Vonage, 166–167 VoIP (Voice over IP), 167–171, 257 VoIPover3G, 171, 257 voltage regulator chip, adapter, 422

V

wallpaper, 209 wall wart charger, 423–424 Wani, 145 WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), 74–75 web applications, 4 Web Clips, speed dial icons, 159–163 web server, phone as, 245–246 web-based video conversion, 94–95 website feeds, 116–120 WeDict, 126–127 WhisperSync, 121 WinSCP, 224–227 WinterBoard, 206–210 Wipeout, 152–153

var folder, 26 var/mobile folder, 26 var/root folder, 26 Veency, 221–222 Venus Multi Game Hunter, 142 Verizon, 3 versions, hackability, 8–13, 18–19 vibrate alert duration, 77–79 video capture, 106 compression, 89–90 converting to iPhone format, 89–95 downloading, 277–278 output cables, 101–102, 107–108 recording, camera, 133–135 streaming, 278–280 streaming from computer, 110–116 syncing multiple computers, 109–110 uploading to YouTube, 134–135 Videora, 94 view controllers, custom, 335–336 viewfinders, Lomo, 354–356 Vine, 220 virginizing, 8, 45 virtual machines, developing applications, 324–328 visual voicemail, 171–175 Vizualogic screens, 366 VM, developing applications, 324–328 VMware, 324 VNC, 220–222 VNCViewer, 222 voice, altering, 271–272 VoiceCloud, 175, 176–177

W

X Xcode, 316–320 XIB file, 336 X-Killer, 149 Xploder, 148–149

Y Yahoo! instant messaging, 66–67, 82–83 push, file storage, 59–62 Yellowsn0w, 188–189 Yessim, 192 Yodio, 181 YouMail, 175–177 YouTube, 102, 134–135, 199, 277–278

Z Zamzar, 94–95 Zdziarski, Jonathan, 6 Zeroconf, 88 ZiPhone, 14–16 ZodTTD, 138 Zophar, 139

index

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iphone hacks

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iphone hacks

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iphone hacks

iPhone & iPod touch Superguide

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iLounge Free iPod-iPhone Book4_p

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Take Control of iPhone and iPod touch Networking and Security

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iOS Forensic Analysis: for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

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iOS Forensic Analysis: for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch

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iOS 5 Programming Pushing the Limits: Developing Extraordinary Mobile Apps for Apple iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch

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iPhone SDK 3 Programming: Advanced Mobile Development for Apple iPhone and iPod touch

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iPhone SDK 3 Programming: Advanced Mobile Development for Apple iPhone and iPod touch (Wiley)

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iPhone SDK 3 Programming: Advanced Mobile Development for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch

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IPhone SDK 3 Programming: Advanced Mobile Development for Apple IPhone and IPod Touch

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Developpez des applications originales pour iPhone et iPod Touch

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iPhone-Apps entwickeln: Applikationen fur iPhone, iPad und iPod touch programmieren

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Spiele entwickeln für iPad, iPhone und iPod touch

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Pushing Limits

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Pushing Limits

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Pushing Limits

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Pushing the Limits

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Chip-Alles ueber iPhone iPod und iTunes

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Pushing the Limits

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Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK

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Pushing the Limits

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Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK

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iPhone Programming

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iPhone-Magazin

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iPhone For Dummies: Includes iPhone 3GS

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Cocoa and Objective-C: Up and Running: Foundations of Mac, iPhone, and iPod touch programming

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