There are some very heated debates on the subject of customers’ rights to restore, reverse engineer, and modify the digital gadgets they personal. Advocates argue that these rights are important to innovation, selling sustainability, and empowering customers to have management over their possessions. They contend that restrictive insurance policies, corresponding to these carried out by sure producers that restrict repairability and entry to components, hinder competitors and result in pointless digital waste. Conversely, opponents, sometimes represented by some producers and trade teams, elevate issues about security, safety, and mental property rights. They argue that permitting customers to tamper with gadgets might compromise performance, pose security dangers, and doubtlessly infringe upon patents and copyrights.
The examples demonstrating why customers ought to have a proper to tinker with their very own devices are quite a few. One significantly blatant instance of customers being fleeced to make use of their very own gadgets was just lately highlighted by {hardware} hacker extraordinaire Man Dupont. After buying a reasonable touchscreen show, Dupont discovered that should you really need to use it with a Mac, you’ll need to buy a driver that prices $150 for every machine that you just need to use it with.
The HID interceptor (📷: Man Dupont)
That didn’t sound in any respect cheap, so Dupont determined to construct his personal USB converter that would map contact occasions on the show to straightforward mouse and keyboard occasions that any laptop might perceive. And because it turned out, it was not all that troublesome of a job — hardly worthy of a $150 driver.
After plugging the show right into a Human Interface Gadget (HID) interceptor that was constructed by Dupont for a earlier undertaking, it was shortly decided that the display reported itself as an HID machine. The format that the info was being reported in was additionally instantly obvious — X and Y coordinates for as much as 5 fingers.
With that information, an Adafruit Feather RP2040 with USB Sort A Host improvement board was used along side TinyUSB to emulate a mouse and keyboard. This setup allowed the inputs from the touchscreen to be learn and transformed right into a simulated mouse and keyboard that may work with Dupont’s Mac, or every other laptop. An absolute positioning USB HID mouse library was additionally utilized such {that a} contact wherever on the display would appropriately place the mouse on the host laptop. Usually, mouse drivers transfer the cursor relative to its current place.
The USB converter (📷: Man Dupont)
Not solely did this setup save Dupont over $130, but it surely additionally has the benefit of not requiring that any drivers or different software program be put in on the host laptop. So far as that machine is anxious, it’s working with nothing greater than a normal mouse and keyboard.
This can be a easy hack, but it surely demonstrates how essential it’s for customers to have the ability to reverse engineer and modify the gadgets that they personal. A easy hack and a pair spare components might prevent some money.
