projecthijack

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  • University team is perfecting the art of hijacking power from the iPhone's headphone jack

    by 
    Megan Lavey-Heaton
    Megan Lavey-Heaton
    01.17.2011

    The University of Michigan's Project HiJack harnesses power by using bandwidth from the iPhone's headphone port. There are actually some peripherals that do this already -- think Square's credit card reader -- but Project HiJack sees this expanding to produce sensors for blood pressure, glucose, carbon monoxide and more. Right now, their work is very basic, but they are producing data transfer results through the headphone jack. Check out Project HiJack's work in action after the cut. [via Engadget]

  • iPhone headset socket hijacked to power DIY peripherals (video)

    by 
    Sean Hollister
    Sean Hollister
    01.17.2011

    Apple's proprietary dock connector may keep would-be peripheral manufacturers at bay, but if you want to build your own iOS companion devices, there's another way. You might have noticed that the Square credit card reader uses Apple's 3.5mm headset jack to transmit power and data at once, and gadgeteers at the University of Michigan are busy open-sourcing the same technique for all the DIY contraptions you can dream of. Project HiJack has already figured out how to pull 7.4 milliwatts out of a 22kHz audio tone, and built a series of prototype boards (including working EKG, temperature, humidity and motion sensors) that transmit data to and from an iOS app at up to 8.82 kbaud -- using just $2.34 worth of electronic components. See the basic principles at work in the video above, and -- as soon as the team updates Google Code -- find out how to build your own at the links below.