Reverse Engineering the iPod Nano 6 LCD interface

[@iwtommo]

4 Years later and i keep finding myself back here, always picking up something else of value. Thanks a ton Mike. More reversse engineering! :-)

[@jakubasinski7262]

This is most valued content I've seen on KZbin for long time. Thanks Mike.

[@barjammar]

The dissection of my iPod nanos is on my bucket list. Nice work,

[@frac]

Relating your experience of taking 40 minutes on one pin were words of gold. It shows me the frame of mind I need to be in before even start something like this. The slightest hint of frustration and you have to leave and come back later. And that discussion of the importance of the testing jig? Masterful! 1000 thank you's for taking the time to post this!

[@AppliedScience]

Awesome video, man! Thanks for putting this together. There are MIPI converter chips that will take parallel RGB bits, and create the serial data stream. Let me know if you are interested in more info.

[@xhivo97]

Are there any chips that do the opposite? Like take the output from a phone and talk to a monitor?

[@kbhasi]

01 | 43:45 You know it's a draft when 02 | they have *line numbers* in 03 | the PDF document.

[@mikeselectricstuff]

As long as they are not both terminated it's not a problem - they're just comparators. Need to watch trace length, stubs etc. Also need to use LVDS receivers that won't bork at the low-speed data levels.

[@ThoughtinFlight]

This was amazing. Truly you are a master of the dark art. The patience and skill. The fine work. The knowledge. Master.

[@Aeduo]

That's pretty awesome. While it might not be perfectly 100% to the spec, it's good to see stuff like this reverse engineered so fun stuff like video displays become available to hobbyists.

[@PraxZimmerman]

Driving displays and data transfer in general are magic.

[@Falcrist]

First year Electrical Engineering student here. (attending a U.S. university and focusing on embedded systems) These videos are fantastic. I'm missing a ton of what you're saying due to inexperience and lack of knowledge, but I'm still finding the video useful as a glimpse into what embedded systems design is all about. Also: it helps me keep my interest high. What you're doing is fantastic. Thanks for uploading! :D

[@worroSfOretsevraH]

I could watch videos like this every day, all day long. Please make more such content Mike. Huge thumbs UP!

[@asadhasan7485]

aint that some truth.

[@DPortain]

As an enthusiast programmer and intermediate circuit designer, this was both interesting, understandable and remarkably complete. I'll go watch the second part.

[@supermaucat]

Mike, you have the best electronics channel on YT. It's not superficial and you go in-depth on things. Thank you!!

[@Nermash]

One of your best videos so far, and one of the best on YT regarding HW reverse engineering. IMHO this is "fit for DEFCON presentation" grade!

[@MacoveiVlad]

You are right, i found the video i was referring to and Dave uses a specific decoder to get the data. But it is strange that such complex devices are not capable of a seemingly simple task. And the manufacturers sell the limited decoding functionality as an extra.

[@VegetableJuiceFTW]

I've almost no basic knowledge on this area, but man, this was insigthful.

[@superdau]

There are so many videos on youtube where I feel it's wasted time after a few minutes. But with your videos, Mike, I wouldn't care if it took another hour. In almost all the videos you make I didn't know anything/didn't think about most of the stuff in it. But I claim to understand at least 95% of the things you explain. The funny thing is, if a question pops up in my head while watching, most likely you'll answer it 5 minutes later ;). That's what makes the videos so watchable!

[@szabolcsmate5254]

20 Apple engineers do not like this.

[@alexyoung6418]

2146 Agilent engineers loved this.

[@leocurious9919]

Or maybe someone who doesnt like people recording their screens with a camera instead of in software?

[@fortheworld8961]

voooooohahahahahaha!!

[@inspectorlunge3887]

@Szabolcs Mate It's wasn't engineers, it was executives.

[@bobweiram6321]

Excellent presentation! It's like drinking from a high frequency bit stream, yet easy to follow.

[@LukePuplett]

Incredible. Thank you for taking the time to make this video. I hope one day I might be able to use some of the information, but in the meantime it was simply fascinating to watch. I want to share it with people but no one I know would appreciate it. Still, in the event of global apocalypse, I'd sleep better knowing you're on the spaceship.

[@jfernandmy]

Cannot say anything else than: WOW! Mike you are a real genius, in the first 5 minutes you showed me that I have a looong way to go! Thanks for such great videos!

[@naikrovek]

The Saleae Logic devices allow you to count pulses between cursors. It's not realtime like a proper scope, but you can capture a LOAD of stuff then analyze it, and there are tons of measurements like number of edges.

[@commodork]

This is a bloody good video! He has infinitely more patience than I have. I bow down to the master disassembler.

[@Vizimech]

@26:30 if you connect your scope to Sigrok PulseView (assuming it's supported) you can view how many pulses are between two cursors including a bunch more useful timing info and such.

[@xDR1TeK]

Seriously, I am lost for words. Thank You?

[@smling11]

Mike everytime I watched your video, you gave me a feel that you had put in a lot of time to make sure you would waste any viewer time. I respect you on this thought and effort. Just on this alone, you are helping to save a lot of unnecessary wasted time and power. You have my full attention and eyeballs. For other quantity videobloggers, I listen on my bluetooth headset whole doing other stuff and occassionarily see the video. Quality gems as usual.

[@timknapen]

That test rig is so beautiful! 😍

[@DarkVoidDan]

You Sir are an electronic God.

[@fortheworld8961]

please dont stop and keep doing you are giving valuable lessons to the future and passionate people

[@TheStevenWhiting]

The Christmas Lectures that use to be on Channel 4 in the early 00s were good. We now need Mikes Electric Stuff Christmas Lectures. Why am I'm mentioning Christmas when it's April? I have no idea.

[@semidemiurge]

Extremely interesting but at the pace of your thoughts I am following maybe 50% of it at best. Most of this is due to my lack of knowledge. Still, the way you explain your thought process and the video editing is superb. I appreciate the effort that must go into these videos and thank you for getting me started back into electronics after a twenty year hiatus. rick in colorado

[@ronaldlijs]

What can I say Mike, excellent video and the level of detail is just great, you see what you do do very well is to explain in plain English, keep it up, don't give in!!!!

[@Kilohercas]

MSO2024B does have cursors to count positive/ negative pulses, rising/falling edges, and many many more.

[@CalcProgrammer1]

The Raspberry Pi actually has a MIPI DSI connector, it's one of the two flat-flex connectors on top. Pretty sure it can't be directly addressed though, and requires the GPU to handle the display for you. It seems that Broadcom hasn't yet released any driver to allow access to the DSI interface, so at the moment no. Hardware is there, but not software, and even so the hardware would be generating the protocol, the RPi isn't fast enough to bit-bang it in software.

[@RandomInsano2]

Great video! I'd pay real money for this kind of thing (or sit through ads). Also, random tip that may have been mentioned, but when trying to do the bit->hex conversion, if it's MSB, or LSB, rotate the page 180 degrees to make converting it easier.

[@Graham_Wideman]

Epic video and trail of discovery! And impressively clean signals... I'm looking forward to viewing the HF probing techniques video in this series.

[@AbdullahKahramanPhD]

You are great, Mike! I agree with people, you have the best electronics channel on KZbin

[@mikeselectricstuff]

No, because you wouldn't see the effect onscreen - stemping on teh data shows you can display data with an incorrect CRC

[@genkidama7385]

wow man, you're so knowlegable in this subject.

[@Bullwinkle39]

one of the most interesting things i've ever watched on here yet win the morning i will have forgotten most of it :(

[@jonnypanteloni]

Thanks Mike! printing change the whole dynamic!! Break into bytes etc. very clever, you've done this before but appreciate the openness, will work hard to recycle the energy you put out.

[@HennerZeller]

This was really interesting and well packed into a dense hour of walking through the process. Thanks Mike!

[@HeathHunnicutt]

I thought it was interesting around 37:30 that you saw the green image resulting in non-green pixels. You mentioned jpeg being lossy. That is is. There are also only two color channels within it: yellow and blue. I theorize that using blue for the greyscale image might enhance the purity of the result.

[@AbhishekTiwari-zb6jl]

Complete fan of your work, you made my day. I picked up almost every piece of advice from you. Thank you soo much for Uploading such mind-blowing plus informative video. Please make more reverse engineering videos

[@windytan]

The binary count looks beautiful in a strange way. This made me want to invest on a scope.

[@AlanMedina314]

Extremely interesting video. I need to keep looking at it one go is not enough for the amount of info on this video.

[@WolfmanDude]

Wow that data protocoll was quite simple! I am new to digital stuff and I expected them to use some kind of super complex data with compression and a bunch of control signals! Nope, just Sync, the RGB values and some fixed control signal. Great work, this really motivated me to do more with digital electronics.

[@ashleyhughes398]

This is awesome information, I have no plans on doing any of this but the processes could be used for more basic designs

[@Aistlander]

Nice healthy little bits starting at 30:10, never seen them in real life caught on action:D

[@mjlynch712]

Another excellent video, look forward to seeing the final thing

[@nemanjatodorovic2803]

Excellent video! Man explained everything in detail, this is nowhere it can not be learned purely distributed free experience! Thanks for the free knowledge!!!

[@gamccoy]

Brilliant presentation. Thanks. I would be very interested in seeing how you program the FPGA in your attempt to drive the display. FPGAs are a huge gap in my knowledge.

[@yngvai777]

This is such an amazing video.

[@edgeeffect]

I'm a low end ARM or AVR kinda chap... so I'm not gonna be trying this but that was still dead interesting.... great stuff.

[@izzzzzz6]

The other day I picked up a biggish LG flatscreen tv from the side of the road, got home and found that someone already took most of the internals. Then I realised I've got a LED backlit panel there, just needs 96V from one of my dc dc converters. Then I realised I needed some plastic panel so I cut the piece I needed out of the back, then I saw that there are some useful holes for connectors so I'll be cutting that piece out also and another piece I need for a powered speaker project. All I really had left was the broken lcd and a bit of the plastic back. Which got me thinking, what sort of effects could I get out of the cracked lcd panel if I was to send voltages waveforms etc. I have no idea how lcd works but I do have another one somewhere which still has the driving circuit. Was thinking it could make an interesting piece of tiling, art, light blocker, piece of a modern lamp? Any ideas? But thats not why I came here. lol

[@jdaniele]

Really impressive! My respect!

[@202Electrics]

This is the most awsome video i've seen.Real Die Hard reverse engineering.

[@laneboysrc]

What a thriller! Couldn't stop watching. Thanks a lot for all the insights you gave!

[@stuknda80z]

you talk faster than my brain can process

[@kirasan]

You need to upgrade to a faster processor or overclock yours xD

[@basketofkittens]

Outstanding video! Thank you very much for taking the time to make it.

[@MacoveiVlad]

I remember that you can flip the orientation of the screen with a two finger rotation gesture so maybe the 1 in D1 is the orientation. I also remember seeing a video of yours or Dave's with an oscilloscope that was able to decode bit data onscreen, why not use that functionality? (presuming you and Dave use the same oscilloscope with the same firmware)

[@NRBW]

you could use a loupe and look at the pixels and verify that its doing colour correction..

[@AKATenn]

you are like the smartest dude on youtube, your videos are awesome!

[@TheMandarG]

you are like Gandolf... Wizardry that you do man!!! Brilliant!!!

[@berni8k]

You can often under clock these displays, just if you do it too much you get weird graphical artifacts. But to drive it from a Pi you would want to tap in to the RGB bus that feeds video out to HDMI since then you can use the built in video controller to run the display without the CPU needing to do a thing.(But you do need a fancy chip to make it the right LVDS format or a FPGA)

[@KatwereJames]

Mike you really spoke some sense into me! thanks a lot, some of the best i have watched.

[@cleverca22]

sounds like the exact interface the raspberrypi can use on the DSI output port, which doesnt have firmware written for it yet

[@Cybeonix]

Awesome! This one had me glued to my seat. Really interesting stuff

[@ophello]

ARE YOU A WIZARD

[@christopher.smith.]

You, sir, are a goddamn rock star.

[@Techniclty]

Great video, thanks! Looking forward to the future application!

[@AlexanderBukh]

All the meaty details for us noobs out there! Thanks a bunch!

[@etimon1d]

Again impressed by your skills...

[@jer_h]

great vid, thanks. What are the specs on your scope? that burst mode triggering looks amazingly useful

[@circuitsandcigars1278]

Yep shoulda gone for Electronics engineering but that damn Calculus

[@ebmmdawguy]

Some late night hackery, lovely. Well that's me up until 1:30 AM hah.

[@ovalwingnut]

DazZled & AmaZed.. I'm on the fringe of even starting to understand this GR8T info.. And having to use the CC (as my sound was down) added to the excitement :o) I'll be heading back for a 2nd viewing (listening:) as I want to try and absorb more of the magic. p.s. LOVE THE SCOPE! p.s.p.s. That was some serious video editing and effort producing this segment. Super job. Thank you very much.

[@DaleLadDaz]

jesus christ, this guy could reverse engineer the matrix ffs no idea what any of it meant, but damn, i wish i did, i found this video fascinating, even though i am clueless lol

[@timbdotus]

Wow, this was fantastic and very informative! I don't have anywhere near the equipment you do, but all of the principles with regard to reverse engineering are very much applicable to the low end stuff I'm currently working (and learning) on. As for driving that iPod display with lower end hardware, I wonder if something like a Raspberry Pi or Beagle Bone would work? The Pi has a DSI port, so if the blobs are ever released for it, perhaps it's feasible?

[@isashach]

Truly awesome. Didn't understand half the stuff you did, but still awesome. Out of curiosity, if you're going to buy this in bulk, how much are you paying per screen? My supplier (I repair iStuff all the time, so I know these things :) offers just the LCD at 3.05$ and the complete LCD + Touchscreen at 27.56$. Also, would the raspi be powerful enough and have enough memory to run this thing? It would be an excellent low cost screen for it in that case.

[@NathanaelNewton]

"i'm assuming you can all count in binary in your heads" Hahaha :)

[@unolisto]

very interesting video. thank you for sharing and all the work that goes into making this video. fun to watch!

[@Razor2048]

Can a display like that have it's refresh rate altered, (eg in order to attempt to improve the response time, or is the refresh rate fixed? anyway awesome video, cant wait for more :)

[@azyfloof]

Bloody amazing! Thanks for this, Mike, best hour I've spent on KZbin yet :D Very very handy, taught me a lot.

[@SarahC2]

37 minutes in - it looks light it goes from black to light green on the display, rather than fully saturated green - so I'd expect it to increase the blue and red channels to make the green lighter?

[@FirstName-14]

Great video. I need to get a good scope.

[@yngvai777]

That iPod didn't know what it was in for when Mike bought it.

[@cursedfox4942]

you shoul do an ipod again but reverse engineer it so storage can be upgraded like on the nano 1 or 2 or 3 g

[@Daniel-cl2pw]

Wow, awesome video!

[@CKOD]

How close were you to just getting a 2-sided riser PCB made up with connectors for the LCD to go between the main board and the LCD, pass the signal though, and break out to some connectors to probe? It would have been < $5 on OSH park, and I might have got a case of "forget this, I'm getting a board made"

[@mattstelmach1982]

Hi Mike, can you show me how to run that display from my PIC18 clocked at 4MHz?.....just kidding, sorry had to ask. Great video, don't fully understand everything you covered but it's fascinating stuff. Thanks for sharing.

[@ISmellBurning]

Mike.... fantastic tutorial, thanks very much!

[@rangehold]

Wouldn't it be better to check if the CRC is needed by stamping the signal on top of the crc (brecking it) while leaving the data alone?

[@ingoatd]

41:51 awesome cut

[@justingreen8006]

Excellent Work!! Just discovered you and subscribed. I look forward to watching your other videos Thank you Mike for your hard work and expertise! ~ Justin from Canada

[@thekaiser4333]

Subscribed to what? You have no videos and only 2 subscribers. Most likely your Grandmother and your local priest.

[@ELJORGE1]

Thanks a lot mike! Nice tips on reverse engineering

[@ediTv2]

Wow very very impressive. Very informative too.

[@xhivo97]

Would the opposite be possible? Like driving and HDMI screen with a phones MIPI DSI port.

[@someoneyoudontknow106]

17:57 VERY CLEVER! THANKS A LOT!!!

[@lucabravi40]

Fascinating. Thanks for the video.