MintyBoost unlocks the secret of Apple's chargers

The folks at Minty Boost have unveiled a rather interesting Apple secret: just how the company charges its devices. In the video on the next page, you can see the whole process reverse-engineered. It's rather technical, but as long as you make sure all the wires go where they need to go (you need to lay out a certain series of resistors on the USB data lines, so that the device thinks it's hooked up to an official charger), you can actually build your own iPhone or iPod charger.

In fact, there's a new Minty Boost kit which comes with prebuilt circuitry that you can use (inside an Altoids tin or whatever you want to use) to create your own iPhone USB charger. You can read about the whole process of reverse engineering Apple's process over on the official blog -- it's fascinating both how Apple implemented this process of "verifying" a certain USB charger, and also how Minty Boost eventually figured it out. It's definitely very technical, especially when you get into some of the final steps of amps and volts, but the bottom line is that by lining up those resistor levels, almost anyone can put together a working charger for any Apple device.

Keep in mind that if you aren't familiar with basic electronics safety, these are not the projects for you.

thanks pt for sending this in!