Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

lagrangepoint.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 202 posts

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#91

Post by ilt »

thel3l wrote: post #28
post_break wrote: post #20

Does this reset itself after a certain amount of time or is it one and done? I'd be worried about the feature being removed when the iPad or airpods decide they've been in India for too long.

Heya! One of the authors here. Nope, its a one time thing. When the feature is enabled, a flag is set on the iCloud account, so you can travel anywhere and have it work. At the same time, a EQ profile is pushed to the transparency mode of the Airpods, enabling the hearing aid features. Once done, it sticks with the Airpods, unless you reset them. However, an interesting quirk is that if you enable this on someone's a…

I live in India and I have been using hearing aid feature since at least March when I bought Airpods Pro. Only that it wasn’t called as such earlier. It uses the audiogram I had provided it which it used to create a customized equalizer for my hearing disability. I am sure they must have improved upon the capability in new OS versions but functionally it has been present for a while now.

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#92

Post by ilt »

RobMurray wrote: post #80

Is this actually different from the custom transparency mode in accessibility / headphone accommodations that existed before they even announced the hearing aid feature? It can use an audiogram stored in the health app. sounds pretty terrible with custom transparency mode though, a bit like a comb filter.

Exactly. I don’t think it’s different. I have been its user since March.

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#93

Post by ilt »

jijji wrote: post #74
rkagerer wrote: post #73

Is the hearing aid feature unavailable if you use the AirPods with an Android?

I'm not a genius but it seems pretty trivial to take the input from a microphone and pipe it to the output of a speaker, the hardest part probably is the device drivers for the airpods (or any bluetooth ear buds for that matter). It looks like others have already done this in hardware [0] for $84.99 on amazon.com. There is also "Sound Amplifier" app for Apple iPhone [1] that amplifies the surrounding voice near the p…

It’s really not that simple. AirPods settings where you can tune audio for vocal range, balanced tone, brightness or your audiogram - which does much more fine tuning to the sounds you hear than just amplification.

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#94

Post by userbinator »

notpushkin wrote: post #86
justinclift wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone else wondering, apparently "TWS" means "True Wireless Stereo": https://audiochamps.com/what-does-tws-mean/ So, Bluetooth.

Bluetooth headphones have many form factors. TWS in particular means you have two buds that aren’t joined in any way.

This is what a non-TWS Bluetooth earphone looks like:

https://5.imimg.com/data5/SELLER/Default/2023/5/311562137/UE...

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#95

Post by _rs »

tumblestick wrote: post #60
thel3l wrote: post #31

Hey! I'm Rithwik, one of the authors of the article, happy to answer questions etc!

Hi Rithwik -- great work. My Nana would have been thrilled to know this was possible :) If I can ask -- what program did you use to generate the code maps in your article?

They look a lot like the graphs that Hopper produces :)

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#96

Post by _rs »

thel3l wrote: post #28
post_break wrote: post #20

Does this reset itself after a certain amount of time or is it one and done? I'd be worried about the feature being removed when the iPad or airpods decide they've been in India for too long.

Heya! One of the authors here. Nope, its a one time thing. When the feature is enabled, a flag is set on the iCloud account, so you can travel anywhere and have it work. At the same time, a EQ profile is pushed to the transparency mode of the Airpods, enabling the hearing aid features. Once done, it sticks with the Airpods, unless you reset them. However, an interesting quirk is that if you enable this on someone's a…

I wonder if the flag gets reset every so often if the device doesn't think it's in the US for a long period of time. I've heard Apple considered that for some of the other EU restrictions

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#97

Post by _rs »

ilt wrote: post #91
thel3l wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heya! One of the authors here. Nope, its a one time thing. When the feature is enabled, a flag is set on the iCloud account, so you can travel anywhere and have it work. At the same time, a EQ profile is pushed to the transparency mode of the Airpods, enabling the hearing aid features. Once done, it sticks with the Airpods, unless you reset them. However, an interesting quirk is that if you enable this on someone's a…

I live in India and I have been using hearing aid feature since at least March when I bought Airpods Pro. Only that it wasn’t called as such earlier. It uses the audiogram I had provided it which it used to create a customized equalizer for my hearing disability. I am sure they must have improved upon the capability in new OS versions but functionally it has been present for a while now.

I suppose the difference is 1st party support for creating the audiogram, plus the clearance from the US gov to market it the way they want as OTC hearing aids

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#99

Post by makeitdouble »

userbinator wrote: post #54

It appears that the Hearing Aid feature is actually an equalizer preset that is pushed to the AirPods and will replace your transparency mode. Apple could've just not marketed these as "hearing aids" or used the medical terminology, as every other TWS with parametric EQ and transparency mode can do the same thing, and they wouldn't have the regulatory hawks going after them. They only lose the marketing edge, but per…

> They only lose the marketing edge

This is a bigger deal than it may sound. Apple isn't operating in a vacuum, sony[0] and bose are also targeting the market and they'll also probably do their marketing push as they see fit.

Apple only having a "kinda works as a hearing aid" is a sizeable disadvantage when the other brands will have posters in prominent places at sales points. Apple would still win on online sales and people who don't need that much reliability of course.

[0] https://electronics.sony.com/otc-hearing-aids

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#100

Post by wongarsu »

userbinator wrote: post #94
notpushkin wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bluetooth headphones have many form factors. TWS in particular means you have two buds that aren’t joined in any way.

This is what a non-TWS Bluetooth earphone looks like: https://5.imimg.com/data5/SELLER/Default/2023/5/311562137/UE...

Or more commonly:

https://kagi.com/proxy/1462421?c=3_iinnNGr4mThI2-fwchjJtCnBS...

Post reply on HN