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iPod Hacking: The Complete Documentation

• This category contains 25 Papers
• The last paper was added on 2007-03-26 (YYYY-MM-DD)

Apple iPod Remote Control Protocol

Published on 2005, by John Maushammer, ©John Maushammer.

I reverse-engineered a second-generation iPod™ remote (the version that has the touch-sensitive scroll wheel). The remote probably works exactly as-is with the first generation iPod™ (with the mechanical scroll wheel). The newest third-generation ipods (thinner, rounder, and with 4 buttons in-line) have a similar remote with an identical circuit board, but with a different square 4-pin remote connector -- the new pinout hasn't been completely figured out, and it's not known if the same protocol is used.

DIY iPod nano lanyard

Published on 2005, by Todd Dailey, ©Todd Dailey.

Last night I was lamenting the lack of any sort of lanyard holder for my iPod nano™. The official iPod nano™ Lanyard Headphones aren't out yet, and I wouldn't use those anyway since I don't like the Apple™ earbuds, I love my Sennheiser PX100's too much to give them up.

Hacking the iPod firmware (changing the graphics)

Published on 2004-12-08, by Phillip Torrone, ©Engadget, LLC..

So on Monday over at Hack A Day we posted a link to an iPod™ hack over at iPodHacks that let you extract all of the fonts and graphics from the player's firmware. Since then, a new application came out, and we wrote up how to change all the graphics on your iPod™.

Before we get started, here's a video (QuickTime) of our first hacked firmware to give you an idea of what we changed.

In this How-To we're going to show you how to change the Do not Disconnect circle/slash icon that endlessly and annoyingly flashes all the time on our desk. We replaced ours with the Engadget logo, the Sony™ CEO, and Hello Kitty but any graphic will do. You can also change battery icons, power status, boot up logos and fonts, or so it seems. We sprinted to write this up, so we might update it as we try some new things. Now on with the How-To!

How-to hand crank power your ipod...

Published on 2005, by mark, ©mark.

First of all, this is the magic flashlight, here in Holland it's sold as perfectmate dynamo flashlight, but I'm sure this is one of those products which all of a sudden are all over this planet…

Install SLAX on an iPod nano

Published on 2005-09-18, by jakemikey, ©slax.linux-live.org.

This is a howto on installing SLAX™ on an iPod nano™. It may seem long, but I tried not to gloss over or leave out any details.

iPod Altoids battery pack v2

Published on 2005, by Chris Diclerico, ©Chris Diclerico.

I got some new Altoids tins, borrowed a Dremel tool from Mitchell, and purchased brand new firewire connectors from NTC. Here's my second, cleaner, tighter, much nicer attempt at a sweet external battery pack for iPod™. Once, again, credit goes to Drew Perry for the design and inspiration. His is made inside a deck of cards, mine is in an Altoids can. This one is way better than the first one I tried, and my soldering is getting better - not really.

iPod Battery Pack

Published on 2004, by Drew Perry, ©Drew Perry.

On occasions I found that the iPod™ battery wasn't quite large enough to cope with very long journeys. I wanted a way to improve this... So I grabbed a few batteries, clips, soldering stuff, bits of wire and a deck of cards.. This page is about what I managed to come up with...

iPod Photo Diagnostic Mode revealed

Published on 2004-05-11, by Jeremy Horwitz, ©The Media LLC..

For years, iPod™ tinkerers have known that holding down the correct two sequences of buttons (currently, hold Menu plus central Action button, then Reverse plus Action button) would reset an iPod™ and then bring up a hidden diagnostic mode. Various tests, including hard disk, screen, and Wheel diagnostics would appear, and the iPod™ could even be forced into a slave-like disk mode from this menu system.

But the diagnostic menus were written in geek Greek — odd abbreviations that only techies (read: engineers, computer scientists, or trained technicians) would understand. Apple could plausibly blame the iPod's screen for this, as there just weren't enough characters per line (using Chicago or the bizarro Asiatic Times-alike font used on the iPod™ test menus, at least) to display more than a handful of letters for each test. The practical consequence was that few people played with the tests — incidentally a good thing, most likely — and the diagnostic menu became the sort of relatively open secret that someone would charge $19.95 to tell you about in an iPod™ book.

iPod Shuffle RAID

Published on 2005-02-03, by Jim, ©Jim.

So, what do you do when you and some friends are all getting iPod Shuffles™? You make a RAID array out of them, of course! Follow along as we explore new depths of geekery...

Special thanks to Justin, Melissa, and Shanea for the use of their iPod Shuffles™. ;)

So, here we have our iPod Shuffles™, all the top of the line 1Gb models. I'm sure that normal folks would probably take these home, install iTunes™ 4.7.1 from the CD in the box, and happily start putting music on the little things, but I had other plans for them...

iPod Shuffle without iTunes

Published on 2005-06-02, by Ohad, ©Ohad.

The great guys at BeInSync got me an iPod-Shuffle yesterday.

The moment I started skimming through the manual I figured this a'int gonna be an easy match up. Apple seems to really want you to install iTunes™, maybe it's an attitude problem. I personaly dislike having to install software that I don't need.

Why can we simply not use iTunes™ ? Because Apple™ intermixed iTunes™ and the Shuffle™ just to damn nicely together :-)

Martin Fiedler wrote a great tool that takes iTunes™ out of the equation. It path.os.walk()'s your iPod™ and builds a file with all the MP3s you've got there, so that the iPod™ knows what to play. You need to run it whenever you finish adding/removing mp3's from your iPod™, but heck it's better than doing it all through iTunes™.

iPod Super

Published on 2005, by command-tab, ©command-tab.

Ultimately, I'd like to get a regular 3.5" hard drive working with the iPod™ and explore what capacities it can make use of. The fact that it would be a huge unit will simply be a novelty.

IPOD-Photo Stereoscope (The)

Published on 2005, by Paul Bourke, ©Paul Bourke.

In the early days of photography, stereoscopic viewing was all the rage, it is estimated that over half the households in the UK and US owned a stereoscope. Photographers travelled the world taking stereoscopic photographs for a population who were unable to travel widely themselves. Fast forward 100 years and with the help of what is now an antique stereoscope, a digital camera, and a device such as an IPOD-Photo, one can once again view colour stereopair images without specialised computer hardware.

iPodLinux on 2G iPod Mini

Published on 2005-08-17, by ©Reid Burke, ©Reid Burke.

I recently was able to install Linux on my second-generation iPod™ mini. Although it still has some known issues it works well for me. It really wasn't that hard to do, but I had to refer though about 5 different iPodLinux wiki pages and do a few Google™ searches to fill in the missing pieces. Because of all of the different information it was easy to miss something and screw up, so I decided to write a howto to make it easier on those who are interested in getting Linux™ on their iPods. Nevertheless, I'd recommend having some experience with the command line before attempting to install it. If you're interested in getting Linux™ to work on your iPod™ mini, then here's how under Mac OS X™:

Make your own Pirate Radio Station with an iPod

Published on 2004-06-15, by Phillip Torrone, ©Engadget, LLC..

This was going to be How-To increase the range of your iTrip™ mini. But after playing around with the new iTrip™ mini, the FM broadcasting accessory for the iPod™ (our review here) our little minds got working on some ideas. We thought we might be able to make the range of Griffin's iTrip™ mini a little better if took it apart and exposed the antenna, turns out we could. And then we thought, hey- we could use a couple iPods to broadcast something we wanted to get out there, perhaps not should that is, but could. So that was our motivation, and here's the How-To.

Making Black iPod headphones

Published on 2005-09-29, by Fabienne Serriere, ©weblogs, inc..

We are starting a new feature for Thursdays here at Hack A Day: Thursday Nano Hacks. Our hack for the day is more of a mod out of necessity: Those ugly white headphones with a black iPod nano™? Ew! Please come back next Thursday for a real iPod nano™ hack alrighty?

Nanyard Lanyard for iPod Nano

Published on 2005-09-28, by austinv, ©Austin Vaughan & Robert Sinke.

I was thinking of buying the lanyard accessory for my iPod nano, but there's a couple of problems with it.

1. It's $ 40 plus shipping and tax - rather expensive.
2. You're stuck with iPod-brand earbuds, which, IMO.. suck.
3. It's not available for 4 to 6 weeks according the Apple™ webshop.

I was going to get one anyway, chop off the earbuds, and attach a better set. But then I figured up how much beer that could buy, and decided to build my own instead.

Nonviolent ipod shuffle disassembly

Published on 2005-03-02, by Jason Striegel, ©weblogs, inc..

while most shuffle owners don't know it yet, in a year or two there will be a lot of folks wondering where their battery life went. applecare's battery replacement service for normal ipods is available for the low, low price of $99. think they will have a cheapo shuffle battery replacement service? think different.

OS X Noncolor iPod Video How-To

Published on 2005-09-16, by Fragmaster, ©Fragmaster.

A tutorial for putting short videos on the Monochrome iPod™ using Quicktime Pro™.

1. Download and install iPodLinux using the easy to use OS X™ installer. If you are running a 1G iPod™ with a firmware version above 1.4 (as I did), ask for the older version in the comments and I'll hook you up.

2. Download a sample video from this page, and test it out. If it does not seem to be playing, check and make sure you downloaded the correct sample.

Play "movies" on an iPod Photo

Published on 2004-11-09, by Phillip Torrone, ©Engadget, LLC..

We picked up an iPod Photo™ the other day, and most observers have asked us Can that thing play movies? The short answer is no, only music and photos—but the longer answer is sorta, but not really anything worth calling a movie. In this week's how-to we'll show you how to play a movie on an iPod Photo™ by exporting frames of a movie, importing them to the iPod™ and playing them manually by click-wheeling through thousands of images, or even viewing 3d views of objects. Pointless? Yes. Will a lot of people try this and put movie trailers and porn on their iPod Photo™? You betcha, and as always, we're here to help.

Put PowerPoint on your iPod Photo

Published on 2004-11-16, by Phillip Torrone, ©Engadget, LLC..

This week's How-To is a quick and simple one if you have an iPod Photo™ and use PowerPoint™ or Keynote and don't want to lug around a computer—you can just plug in to a projector or a TV. This will also work with a Portable Media Center™, or any other photo playing device that can be a video source. Also included in this How-To are some other ways to play your favorite slides, like using a pair of VGA goggles (that one's for the geeks).

Read RSS feeds on your iPod

Published on 2004-04-16, by Peter Rojas, ©Engadget, LLC..

Are you an RSS junkie? I am, I rarely read websites unless it has an RSS feed. That said, my iPod™ mini is always by my side, wouldn't it be great to view RSS feeds on it? Well, you can and I'll show you how.

First, make sure you get what RSS is, there are million resources on the web which explain it here are few before we begin.

Restore your iPod nano to new condition with a $4 can of Brasso

Published on 2005, by Todd Dailey, ©Todd Dailey.

So, you have a black nano and now realize that you should have purchased a case or a cover for it. But, it's too late now, it's already covered with barely visible scratches and marks that you can only see under a 500-watt lamp. Oh no! What will you do? Never fear, I put my nano at risk for your sake. I had read on Slashdot™ and a few other places that Brasso can restore an iPod™ to like-new condition, but I didn't believe it myself, and I was a bit worried that it would have some sort of bad reaction with my iPod, such as melting it. :) After all, a $4 can of Brasso can't compete with $20+ third party creams and polishes, can it? Read on...

Review of Linux on the iPod

Published on 2004-12-28, by Jordan Carder, ©Jordan Carder.

Recently, I saw a note about a new release of the iPod-Linux Installer for Mac OS X™. I was intrigued, and decided to go check it out. I'm glad I did.

I remember quite some time ago reading an article about how some ingenious hackers had found a way to boot a version of Linux™ on the iPod™. Interesting, I thought to myself. But is it really good for anything? At the time, no, it was not. It was functionally useless, no more than a proof-of-concept.

I am happy to announce that iPodLinux has become much more than an interesting little proof-of-concept. It is now the de facto way to expand the iPod's capabilities and features. It is far from perfect, but quite far from useless.

Turn your iPod in to a Universal Infrared Remote Control

Published on 2004-07-27, by Phillip Torrone, ©Engadget, LLC..

Sometimes, you look around at all these gadgets and in a rare moment of inspiration or madness, you look at them all a little different— connected in a way they are currently not, but perhaps should be, or at least could be. There might not be anything new but there are countless combinations of disparate technologies, and we think this is a great example of combining a couple of those.

Use an iPod as a bootable drive

Published on 2004-08-17, by Phillip Torrone, ©Engadget, LLC..

This week's HOW-TO is a handy one for the Mac™ folks out there who want to run multiple operating systems, but not install them to their hard drive, all using an iPod™ as a bootable FireWire drive. This HOW-TO is also helpful for trying out new software (on another OS), running developer versions of Mac OS™ (like Mac OS X Server™ or Tiger™) as well as having a way to repair your Mac™ if for some reason it cannot boot on its own. At the end of this article, we also point to a way to simply back up your home directory (or anything else to your iPod™) which can be handy too, and even used in conjunction with this HOW-TO).