At first, we thought it would be easy—spoof IP location with a VPN, maybe rewrite some requests in a proxy, how hard could it be?
Turns out that Apple checks a number of things, including GPS, country codes of the cellular network the devices is connected to and also—WiFi networks Turns out that your device locates you by searching a massive database that maps WiFi SSIDs around you to a known locations.
We picked an WiFi only iPad because it reduced variables: we would not have to worry about Cellular and GPS All we had to do was somehow spoof WiFi SSIDs, while blocking out the ones in our neighborhood.
We briefly considered driving out somewhere remote, like a farm, where there would be no WiFi But then we realized it'd be cool to build a Faraday cage, a device that blocks out electromagnetic radiation—including cellular, GPS, and WiFi signals
We initially thought about using our microwave as a Faraday cage, but discovered our microwave was very leaky. Then we realized: a leaky microwave doesn't work as a Faraday cage, but does work excellent as a jammer! The fact that microwaves operate at 2.4GHz made it perfect.
Our hacky proof of concept was a Faraday cage built of aluminum foil, placed right above to the jammer–microwave that was turned on at full power It was literally as sketch as it looked:
Inside the box, we had an ESP32 broadcasting fake SSIDs from California at the iPad—in its total sensorial deprivation, it could only assume that it was in Menlo Park, hi
@finkd!
At the end of all this, we were able to enable the Hearing Aids feature for my grandma's airpods, and that of several friends :) They work great!
We also realized that our families are not the only ones who have loved ones who could use a pair of hearing aids The Airpods Pro 2s are actually a *budget* option in this category—hearing aids typically cost anywhere from 3x–30x more.
We also know that not everyone will be able to replicate this at home even though we're posting the full technical details, so we're going to be doing a open house at Lagrange Point this month.
If you or a family member would benefit from being able to use Airpods Pro 2s as hearing aids in India, please reach out—we're going to be unlocking them for anyone who needs it (for free ofc) at our place in Koramangala DM me or send us a mail at: hi at lagrangepoint dot org
And of course these things are always a group effort. Greetz and massive thanks to the gang
@rithvikvibhut@raghavtosh@itsarnavband @AppyFizzyy None of this would have been possible without them :)
And if you're interested in the technical details behind the Faraday cage:
Last week, I built a Faraday cage with friends We built this to unlock hearing aids mode on the AirPods for grandma, geoblocked in India for regulatory reasons This cage is in Koramangala, Bangalore 🇮🇳. But inside the cage, your phone thinks it's Menlo Park, California 🇺🇸
