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Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

lagrangepoint.substack.com

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Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#121

Post by bayindirh »

greggsy wrote: post #113
tzs wrote: post #47

> Hearing aids typically cost anywhere from ₹ 50,000 to upwards of ₹ 8L depending on the correction capability For those who don't recognize the ₹ symbol it is the symbol for the Indian Rupee and an "L" after a number means 100,000, so ₹ 8L is ₹ 800,000. At current exchange rates that puts hearing aids in India from $600 to upwards of $9,500. AirPods Pro 2 are ₹ 24,900 ($295).

I’m not across the scope of hearing aid technology, but what does the product at that upper tier actually look like, and how much does it cost in another country? I’m envisioning some highly specialised and tuned implant at that price.

You generally get a custom mold for your ear canals and a specially tuned DSP for your frequency curves + BT connection to your phone for calls, at least. Your device can be retuned over and over as long as it functions, too.

What drives the prices up is a multitude of factors: High end DSPs, micro speakers which can do good sound reproduction at required frequencies, relatively low sales volume, R&D expenses and of course an insatiable appetite for profits.

These things always cost and arm and a leg in here, too.

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#122

Post by wiml »

avidiax wrote: post #78
thel3l wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We built it ourselves actually! The first prototype was just aluminium foil, tape and hope, but we wanted something more solid so we built one out of n°100 copper mesh and some 2020 aluminium extrusions!

You can use a microwave oven as a very cheap faraday cage. Just don't turn it on.

The door of a microwave typically doesn't form an RF-tight seal. Instead there's a groove that forms a resonant trap at the microwave's operating frequency. So it'll probably block 2.4-GHz ISM-band stuff like Bluetooth (I don't actually know how wide the trap band is compared to a BT or wifi channel), but outside that band all bets are off.

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#123

Post by saagarjha »

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?

It's Binary Ninja: https://binary.ninja

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#124

Post by xanderlewis »

subarctic wrote: post #106
jrockway wrote: post #101

> Since WiFi and a microwave operate at the same frequency (2.4GHz), we ran our leaky microwave at full power to block out any persistent network signals in the air. Incidentally, WiFi tries to intentionally avoid this interference. Microwaves output no power during the zero crossing of the AC line that's driving it, and in this interval, there is no signal in the air to jam things. WiFi listens before sending (so as…

Whatever the theoretical analysis tells you, I've been able to reproduce a microwave interfering with a wifi signal with at least one microwave and router. I've had other times where it didn't have a noticeable effect though.

I’ve had a microwave oven interfere quite clearly (correlated with turning it on and off) with my AirPods before.

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#126

Post by TrickyRick »

bayindirh wrote: post #121
greggsy wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not across the scope of hearing aid technology, but what does the product at that upper tier actually look like, and how much does it cost in another country? I’m envisioning some highly specialised and tuned implant at that price.

You generally get a custom mold for your ear canals and a specially tuned DSP for your frequency curves + BT connection to your phone for calls, at least. Your device can be retuned over and over as long as it functions, too. What drives the prices up is a multitude of factors: High end DSPs, micro speakers which can do good sound reproduction at required frequencies, relatively low sales volume, R&D expenses and of…

Not to mention that this is paid by insurance in many countries which means there is little incentive for individuals to shop around.

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#127

Post by Lio »

eru wrote: post #102
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Indian numbering system marks odd power of ten, i.e. 10 ^ {1, 3, 5, 7}. Unit, thousand, lakh, crore [1]. Ours, on the other hand, does it mod 3, e.g. 10 ^ {1, 3, 6, 9}. Thousands, millions, billions, et cetera . [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system

> Ours, on the other hand, does it mod 3, e.g. 10 ^ {1, 3, 6, 9}. Thousands, millions, billions, et cetera. To make matters more confusing, for American English it goes millions, billions, trillions. For British English it used to go millions, milliards, billions, billiards, trillions, trilliards. (That 'long scale' is still the way German used to work ten years ago. No clue if it changed in the meantime.)

Haven't we given up on our scale in the UK to match the US system?

i.e. the milliard was replaced with the US billion.

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#128

Post by gorbypark »

thel3l wrote: post #31

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

I'm a bit perplexed about region handling, maybe you could shed some light on it. I have an iPhone from Canada, with a Canadian Apple account (Canadian CC/billing address, set location to Canada in App Store), but live in Spain for the last few years. I am still fully "Canadian" according to Apple. I don't get any of the 3rd party App Store stuff that's region locked to the EU, and have access to Apple Intelligence and other features not available in the EU.

I can't give the hearing aid feature a test because it's not available in either Canada or Spain, but I am wondering what the difference is (if any) between the hearing aid region lock and other geo-locked/geo-enabled features Apple has.

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#129

Post by thel3l »

JSR_FDED wrote: post #64
thel3l wrote: post #31

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

Loved the article, thank you for sharing. How happy are the grandparents with the hearing aid functionality? Is it working well for them and how is the battery life?

It's all too early to tell, but we'll know after a week or so. The battery life thing is not seeming like a big problem, since the existing device needs batteries changed every few days or charged every night.

As for the sound quality, a few of our grandparents have tried it, and while they say it sounds 'different', it's not necessarily bad. Grandma was actually quite content even with just the old EQ settings that shipped pre iOS 18 for folks with hearing issues.

Thanks for the kind words!

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#130

Post by thel3l »

sagz wrote: post #83

Can this be used to get EU specific features too? (AltStore and such)

Probably would work, however I suspect the changes would not be as sticky.

Apple has some slightly more complex checks that they have used in the past to georestrict stuff like ECG, by using MCC/MNC codes from your mobile network. I suspect that the alt stores would be region locked and stop working outside the EU—but that remains to be tested, and seems like a fun thing to experiment with.

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