Hacking Google Daydream to work with iOS

The Google Daydream is a VR headset with a controller, and according to the folks at Google, “It’s not currently compatible with iOS and won’t be for several years probably.” OK.

This inspired [Matteo Pisani] to get to work on the protocol that it uses to speak with Android phones. Cutting to the chase, he got it working in several days.

There really wasn’t all that much to it. The controller sends data over Bluetooth, and [Matteo] noticed an “unknown” device on the network. Looking inside the data that it sent, it changed when he moved the controller. Not so unknown now! The rest of the work consisted of writing applications to test hypotheses, waving the controller around, and finding out if he was right. Read up if you’re interested in implementing this yourself.

We love protocol hacks here. From running quadcopters on your own remotes, to simply trying to turn on a lightbulb, it’s getting more and more important that we understand the various languages that our devices speak.

Filed under: iphone hacks, Virtual Reality

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Phone-To-Phone Power Theivery

Once again, [Rulof]’s putting his considerable hacking abilities to good use, his good use that is. By modding a few simple parts he’s put together something that he can carry around on his keychain that’ll allow him to steal power from his friend’s phones to charge his own phone.

He starts by cutting away the motor from an iPhone fan to isolate the Micro USB connector. He then removes the charging circuit board from a cheap Chinese USB power bank, and solders wires from the Micro USB connector to one side of the board. Lastly, he cuts away the Lightning connector from a Lightning-to-USB cable and solders that connector to the other side of the circuit board. For longevity and cosmetics, he puts it all in a small wood block and connects a key ring. The result is a small, neat looking box with a Micro USB connector on one side and a Lightning connector on the other. You can see him make it, and then use it to steal power from his friends in the video after the break.

And as long as his friends don’t catch on, he’ll never be without a power source again. But if they do catch on, he could always turn an ATX computer power supply into an 8 USB port charging station and win his friends back by charging all their phones. And what if there just isn’t any power because you’re city’s been hit with a cyclone? For that, one very capable hacker has built a hand cranked phone charger.

Filed under: Cellphone Hacks, iphone hacks

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Simple Game Boy iPhone Mod Is Simple

We’ve featured the work of [Modpurist] before, but his latest hack is wonderful in its simplicity. He wanted to create a more authentic Game Boy feel on his iPhone, so he printed out and stuck a skin on the front that makes it look like a Game Boy. Or rather, a Phone Boy, as the form factor is a bit different.

By measuring out the on-screen buttons and using light photo paper, he was able to have buttons on the skin as well: the touch screen still works through it.  You can download his printable templates… and the finishing touch is a similar print for the back of the phone to gives that genuine Game Boy feel. Okay, feel is not the right term since the classic d-pad and red buttons are still just capacitive and have no throw. But this is a clever step in a fun direction.

Check out his other hacks while you are at it, including the Game Boy Fridge.

Filed under: iphone hacks, nintendo gameboy hacks

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Pokemon Go Physical Pokeball Catches ‘Em All

There’s something irresistible about throwing Pokeballs at unexpectedly appearing creatures. But wait. When did you actually, physically throw a Pokeball? Swiping over colored pixels wasn’t enough for [Trey Keown], so he built a real, throwable, Pokemon-catching Pokeball for Pokemon Go.

For his build, [Trey] acquired an off-the-shelf foam Pokeball, from which he removed the original “light and sound” guts and some of the foam filling to make space for actual, real Pokemon a TI SensorTag 2.0. This little, self-contained IoT development board comes with BLE and an accelerometer, so on the hardware side, there wasn’t much more to do than stuffing it into the prepped foam ball.

[Trey] went on to write an iOS app that accesses the accelerometer data from his Pokeball. If the acceleration values surpass a certain threshold, his app writes a trigger command to a file that he set up to be regularly polled by a user input emulation macro app named AutoTouch. AutoTouch emulates the swipe that throws the Pokeball in the game.

Even if it was just translucent CGI, it might actually have been a real bummer for some fans, that Pokemon Go was released without any sort of physical Pokeballs after they had such a prominent role in the game’s trailer. A missed merchandise opportunity for Nintendo and Niantic, or one yet to come? Let us know in the comments, and enjoy the video, where [Trey] demonstrates his build:

Filed under: iphone hacks, nintendo hacks

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Ever Buy Music From Apple? Use Linux? You Need This Tool

Sure, you’re a hardcore superuser, but that doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy the finer things in life — like shiny squircles and getting every new app first. But, what’s an OS-indiscriminate person like yourself going to do when it comes time to purchase music? That’s where the recover_itunes tool shines, and if you’re a Linux user with an iPhone, it might just be your new best friend.

iPhones and other Apple products work great when you’ve purchased music from iTunes, but can be a headache when your music comes from other sources. On the other hand, music purchased from iTunes is notoriously difficult to listen to on anything other than an Apple product. One major reason for the difficulty with the latter is in the way that iTunes handles metadata.

By some miracle of chance, or sheer will, our music libraries — and all of the programs we use to listen to them — have mostly stuck to a standard of saving metadata in the music file itself; metadata for important things like the artist, album, and song title. Unfortunately “mostly” doesn’t include Apple. Apple uses a separate file that contains all of that information.

So, knowing all of that, what happens when you copy your iTunes library to your Linux PC? You’ll be left with files containing no useful information. All you’ll be able to do is play Russian roulette with the shuffle button, like it’s the ’90s and you’ve pushed Random on your Discman. Except now you’ve got 5,000 songs to skip through to find “MMMBop” instead of just the 21 on the CD (seriously, check it out, there are 8 silent tracks on that CD. Why not just use one long silent track?)

The recover_itunes program, created by [kleute], solves this problem, with virtually no effort on the user’s part. Point it towards your music directory and it’ll search for iTunes metadata to match any M4A files, saving copies of the files with the metadata inserted. As a bonus, it’ll even try to find the matching album artwork, which should look great on the HTPC you’ve been meaning to build.

[thanks to Peter]

Filed under: iphone hacks, linux hacks, musical hacks

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IPhone Polarizing Camera Solves Filter Orientation Problem Using Flash

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