Today we are going to build the ultimate iPod.
We're going to add
new technologies that didn't even exist when it was originally released.
We're going to mod our mods
and we're going to do a little bit of light gaming.
Wait, how do I quit this game, None of the buttons
Do anything other than move my character around?
So buckle up and get ready because none of this is going to be easy.
If you remember the launch of this device back in 2001,
you remember what a cultural phenomenon it was.
The ads, the iconic white earbuds,
the constant weird endorsements from U2 for some reason.
The iPod was everywhere and for good reason too,
This device quite literally changed the way people enjoy music.
All of a sudden, you could fit your entire music
collection on something that could fit inside of your pocket.
Now that might seem trivial today, but back then, man, it was insane.
And as a result, everybody had an iPod.
Well, except for me, that is.
I was too poor, so I had this cheaper knockoff.
But eventually I did get my hands on one of these fifth generation iPods,
or what the kids used to call an iPod video and as it turns out, in 2024,
there are a lot of fun things that you can do to these fifth gen iPod.
So join me today as we fix some of this product's weak points.
Add new features to modernize it, and just generally answer the question of
is there a role for a device like this one in 2024?
So the first thing I had to do
was break out some tools and crack this iPod wide open.
And thankfully, with these fifth gen iPods, that's actually pretty easy to do.
There's ten or so clips around the outside that hold the front faceplate in place,
so by gently prying and shimmying your way around it, it should pop right off.
And then once you're inside, there's a bunch of ribbon cables to disconnect.
And in our case, parts for us to get rid of.
The first one goes back to the rather small original battery,
which we're definitely going to be replacing.
The next one connects to this really cool, miniaturized, mechanical, hard drive.
I'm sure back in the early 2000, these things were an amazing feat
of engineering, but these days we have much better options.
This next one here connects the headphone jack and hold switch,
which we're going to be keeping, but also heavily modified.
And then this ribbon cable connects the screen to the main motherboard.
And here again things have changed a lot in the last couple of decades.
So we'll be replacing the screen too.
But in order to remove the original one we need to dig a little bit deeper.
The front face of the iPod is connected
to a metal mid-frame that holds everything in place.
In order to separate them,
you have to undo these screws and then gently pry the two apart.
The main motherboard is sandwiched between the two and also connects to the front wheel.
So getting it all undone requires a bit of patience.
And as you can see, my poor eBay iPod definitely suffered
some abuse in its past life with this weird white residue.
So after I had everything all stripped down,
I gave it a good thorough cleaning with isopropyl alcohol.
Not only do I want to upgrade this thing, but I also want to make sure
it's in proper working order and stays that way for the foreseeable future.
So now that we have our iPod
all disassembled and cleaned up, we can start installing some mods into it.
And the way I'm going to do this is we are going to start with some of
the easier mods, and then work our way up into some of the harder ones.
With the iPod stripped down.
This first mod is by far the easiest, but should also make a huge difference
to its appearance.
I'm just going to be replacing the original beat up front faceplate
and the wheel with these cool transparent ones that I got from Elite
Obsolete, which is a store that specializes in iPod mods and parts.
Not only do these transparent parts show off the cool inner
workings of the iPod, but they'll also showcase all the mods
that we're going to do thread this project.
Next, I'm going to be tackling one of the iPod video's biggest weak points
the screen.
Not only is it kind of dim by today's standards, but it also suffers from poor
viewing angles that make it hard to see when you are looking at it straight on.
This new screen promises to be both brighter
and better, looking at off angles, and its installation is pretty dang easy.
Just lowered in place and then slot in the connector.
Once we get the project all assembled,
I'll do a side by side comparison so that you can see the difference.
Now is impressive, as that mini mechanical hard drive is.
It's got some pretty big flaws by today's standards,
so I'm going to replace it with this the iFlash solo, or in layman's terms,
an adapter that lets you replace your hard drive with an SD card.
And the benefits here are four fold.
You get way more storage.
In my case, I'll be installing a 256gb card,
but you can do even more than that if you want, though you should note
that the iPod can only address something like 50,000 songs,
so at a certain point, more storage just doesn't make any sense.
It's also way more shock resistant and durable
because it doesn't have any moving parts.
Similarly, it should make the iPod more responsive through decreased seek times.
And finally, it consumes a lot less power, which will extend battery life.
Now, I do plan on modifying the iFlash solo, but we'll save that
for a little bit later.
First, let's talk more about battery life.
The stock battery is 600 milliamps, or at least it was when it was brand new.
Today it's probably significantly less than that.
And the internet is absolutely filled with big battery mods for the iPod.
So I went and found the biggest one that I could.
This battery claims to be 3800 milliamps,
and based on its markings, I'm assuming it came out of an old LG phone.
Thankfully,
someone else has already done the hard work of replacing the battery connector.
So just like our other easy mods, this one is basically plug and play as well.
Or at least that's what I thought.
But when I went to reassemble the iPod, I couldn't quite get it all to fit.
Now, I probably could have trimmed
the mid-frame to make it work, but because one of our other mods
that we're going to do later, I don't think that'll be necessary.
And besides, I now had a new problem to solve.
This error screen popped up requesting that I connect the iPod to my computer.
When I did,
Well, at first nothing happened, but after installing iTunes
and doing a bit of troubleshooting, I got it to boot into recovery mode
where it formatted its new storage and got everything up and running.
So would you look at this thing in just a few hours?
We've given it a complete facelift.
We've installed that new screen, we've septupled the battery
life, ten X’ed the storage and just made this thing looked so much cooler.
Now, obviously, there's still the issue of the case
to deal with and the back plate not fitting on there quite right.
But before we do that, I actually want to install two more mods.
Now, these ones are going to be hugely impactful to the usability
of the device, but they also require quite a bit more skill to install.
So the first thing I want to do is add some haptic feedback to our iPod.
This is a technology
that is so ubiquitous at this point that you might not even know
that you're interacting with it on a near daily basis.
You know how when you type out a message on your phone,
you feel a slight rumble with each keystroke?
Well, that is haptics and the iPod actually has a rudimentary
version of this in the form of this little clicking sound
you get when you're scrolling through the menus.
So what I want to
do is add a little bit of rumble to that clicky sound.
This is the iPod taptic mod, and what it is is actually remarkably simple.
It's just a vibration motor out of an iPhone 7, which is cool, but
as you can imagine, installing it is not quite as easy as plug and play.
What we're going to do is start by removing the ribbon cable
that runs through both the headphone jack and the hold switch.
If you look really closely
just below the headphone jack, you'll see this tiny little speaker.
We need to get rid of that.
So I grab my soldering iron, dialed in the right temperature
and one pad at a time, carefully disordered it.
And what that means here is just melting the pads
and using tweezers to lift up on the speaker ever so slightly.
These pads are pretty weak, so take your time
and try not to force anything, as you might have already been able
to guess, the next thing we're going to do is solder the leads from the Taptic mod
to the pads that we just freed up, and there's no polarity to worry about here.
So which wire goes to which pad doesn't really matter.
So now, instead of engaging that speaker, any time you interact with the iPod,
it will instead engage the Taptic Engine and send small vibrations
through the iPod.
Or at least that's how it's supposed to work.
But first I had to reassemble everything and test it out.
Okay, now very carefully I’ll boot this guy up... got a logo.
Okay, moment of truth. Finger on the Taptic mod.
Oh no, not working... crap.
And yeah, things didn't go so great at first, so I went back, reflowed
my solder points and tried again and it still didn't work.
So I tried again.
Honestly, more times than I care to admit.
In the last act of desperation, I stripped down the Taptic Engine
and finally found the source of my troubles.
This right here.
This one wire hadn't been properly soldered in place,
which is honestly kind of disappointing given the price of this thing.
Regardless, a little bit of soldering fixed it back in place,
and then I rewrapped the Taptic Engine in insulating Kapton tape.
One small benefit is that my tighter wrapping job
should make the Taptic Engine at least slightly better
at transmitting its vibrations.
So with all that done, I reconnected everything and prayed it would work.
Yes it works.
Oh, that feels really good.
Very hard to explain, but well,
I guess it just feels like an iPhone because it's from an iPhone.
*sighs* that was annoying.
I can't believe that didn't work from the factory.
With all of that stress out of the way, I was finally ready to keep pushing forward.
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All right.
Now let's install the ultimate modern convenience into our iPod.
One of the things that I love about 2024 is that almost all of my devices
can be charged and connected to a computer with a single cable, USB-C.
And when I first got this iPod in the mail,
I was immediately reminded of the dark Ages
where each device would have its own proprietary connector.
So in order to call this a modern iPod,
we're going to have to replace that old 30 pin connector.
The only problem is
I would file this board under the heading of some assembly required.
This is Oxyll’s USB-C port, and it's going to push my soldering skills to the limit.
But if I can get it to work, it's going to offer even more functionality
than you're probably expecting.
As you might have guessed from the size of the parts,
this is going to require the use of my digital microscope,
which at this point I consider to be an essential tool for micro soldering
I recently upgraded to this new one and I absolutely love it,
so I'll provide a link for it along with all the other tools
and materials I've used throughout this project down in the video description.
So the way this works is you get a bare PCB
and then you have to solder on all the individual components.
Also does sometimes sell preassembled boards, but
they told me they don't have an ETA on when those will be back in stock.
So I started with the quote unquote easy
stuff, installing both the usb-C port and two small resistors,
which I could have installed with an iron, but I wanted to practice using hot air.
Basically, the way this works is you get a little bit of solder on the pads, move
the chips into position, and then using a stream of very hot air,
you melt the solder and secure them in place.
This technique is often used when you can't reach the pads on a chip
with a conventional soldering iron, which is exactly what I was about to do.
This teeny tiny little chip is the MUX switch, and honestly,
getting it out of its package was a challenge unto itself.
But this chip goes over here on these pads that will be almost unreachable
once that's in place.
So I preachin them, carefully, aligned the chip,
and then started blasting it with my hot air gun.
Anyway I started blasting
You don't want to heat it up too quickly all at once.
So I started at a low temperature and then slowly worked up to the solder
melting point.
I also used a very slow air speed, because this chip was basically nothing
and would be really easy to blow away.
Doing this took a few attempts because it's really hard to see if the solder
is actually melted at the scale, but eventually I managed to solder it down.
Unfortunately, that was only half the battle.
Next, I had to get rid of that old 30 pin connector.
I use some solder wick to remove most of the solder around its main
anchor points, and then I built a heat shield out a Kapton
tape and used a hot air gun to melt the 30 or so data lines.
Still keeping it in place.
Patience here is key, as ripping off any one of those 30 pads could potentially
mean a ruined iPod, just like with the MUX switch though, eventually I got it
and then I cleaned up all the solder,
which allows our new usb-C board to sit flat on the PCB.
The first points I connected were these large ground pads.
These provide the structural support for this mod
and keep it from being ripped out whenever you plug in a usb-C cable.
These cost related holes over here are a bit harder to reach, but they are
what allow both power and the USB data to flow from the usb-C port to the iPod.
And honestly, I would have been happy with just that functionality.
But this mod also allows you to row audio signals out of the usb-C port as well.
So using a bit of wire, I connected for other points on the iPod's
motherboard that are responsible for its audio output.
These points are absurdly small, but the microscope makes this work doable,
along with a bit of patience.
And this is why that MUX switch is so important,
is responsible for switching between data output and audio output.
Depending on what's plugged into the USB-C port.
So with all my lines connected,
the only thing left to do was throw out that old useless cable and reassemble
the iPod to make sure I didn't break anything.
Okay, big moment....
We're going to see if a boots please don't show an error
in boot into the main screen.
Okay, it’s not broken at the very least. Let's plug it in with USB
and see what happens.
*gasps* it charges.
Yes, yes, that is very exciting news
because that means that we can move on to doing some more mods.
These ones are going to be even harder than what I just attempted,
mostly because we're going to be operating in uncharted waters,
and I'm going to have to fear a lot of things.
Yeah, this next feature is a true modern luxury the ability
to transmit your music wirelessly to a pair of headphones or even your car.
That's right.
We're adding Bluetooth support,
and there is actually a semi established way to do this.
Modders have been adding
a specific Bluetooth transmitter to iPods for a little while now.
The problem is,
I couldn't find that board anywhere, so I ordered this generic Bluetooth
transmitter and receiver off of Amazon and hopefully we can make that work.
After I had it disassembled, I started stripping off all the things
that I wasn't going to need anymore.
I decided the battery, the 3.5mm input jack, the usb-C charging jack,
and also by accident, this other chip that I don't really know what it does.
After a quick detour to solder that back in place, hopefully it still works.
I got down to business without the battery.
I needed a way to power my Bluetooth board so I went right to the source and solder.
Two leads to the main battery connector on the iPod's motherboard.
Polarity is important here, so I tested first and then color coded my wires.
Then I solder those leads to the terminals where the battery used
to connect on my Bluetooth board and tested it out.
Next, it was time to find a way to hijack the audio signal from the iPod,
and here we needed an amplified signal, so we couldn't just use
the same points from earlier that we routed to the USB-C port.
So instead, I went to the headphone jack by studying a wiring diagram.
I found out which points on the bottom of the headphone
jack were responsible for the left and right channels, as well as the ground.
I then routed those wires back over to the Bluetooth board
and connected them to the pads that were left
over from removing the 3.5mm input, which is effectively
the same thing as connecting an AUX cable just without all the unnecessary bulk.
Okay, guys, spared you the disassembly here, so I have music
loaded up on here I tested it's already working through the normal headphones,
and now we are going to test the Bluetooth five, flip the switch,
turn it into transmit mode.
And I have a set of Bluetooth headphones here which are in pairing mode.
Oh, and it's already playing.
I don't want to play too much this because it's copyrighted music.
Okay, now, just need to find a way to make all of this
look good, because right now it looks like a weird science experiment,
which, I mean, I guess, to be fair, kind of bits.
So this is the iPod's original back plate,
and this one has definitely seen better days.
So what I would like to do is redesign this and rebuild it from the ground up
in order to accommodate all of our mods over here, and also just to kind of change
the look of this thing a little bit to create a new back for my iPod,
I had three key challenges I had to overcome.
First, I had to figure out how the original back even connected
to the front plate by studying it, I saw that it had these little clips,
the same ones that we undid at the start of the video,
and then the front plate has these recessed receptors for them.
So I figured, okay,
let me see if I can make something that will work with that same system.
I started by creating a really simple ring that just sit around the outside
of the iPod.
I then added all these little dents that I hoped would serve basically
the same function as the clips, and by just using a simple ring like that
with no back on it, I was able to watch and see how everything fit together.
This was really helpful because it let me confirm that all my tests
were slotting into position properly, and if they weren't,
I could see exactly what the problem was and how I needed to adjust them.
And as you can see, I also took a rough guess
as to where the USB-C, headphone jack, and hold switch cutouts were going to go.
The next thing I had to figure out was the layout of all the internal components.
And here's where it pays to not be afraid to break things.
The SD card adapter
and the Bluetooth board were both fighting for the same real estate,
so I was looking at the iFlash PCB and I noticed that none of its traces run
along the top side of the board,
which gave me an idea and an excuse to buy a new tool.
Believe it or not, I don't actually own a Dremel,
so I got this cordless rotary tool from Craftsman, link in the video
description and used a little mini cut off wheel to hack off about 50% of the PCB.
Again, because there are no traces here, it shouldn't impact its functionality,
but it did free up some very valuable real estate.
Similarly, I replaced all the wires that I used initially
with these much thinner copper wires.
Well, the wires are actually the same gauge,
but they don't have that same bulky plastic coating.
Now, you might think that this creates a nightmare scenario for potential shorts,
but these wires are actually coated in a flexible enamel that prevents that.
Not only did this free up even more valuable real estate,
but I think it also just makes the wires look better too.
So with that done, I was ready to get back to work on the rear case.
I added it back onto my ring, and I also added some cutouts
for both the battery and the Taptic Engine.
I put the Taptic Engine on the outside wall of the case,
because I want it to feel as strong as possible.
I also added some mounting points for both the headphone jack and the hold switch,
which took quite a few prototypes to get just right before I could print
my final prototype, though, I had to tackle my last major obstacle.
You see, in order,
if you pair anything to the Bluetooth board,
you need to press one of its pairing buttons,
and that's going to be pretty hard to do when it's buried deep inside the case.
So my solution was to de-solder one of the buttons and move it somewhere else.
I started by attaching more copper enamel wire to both poles of the switch.
and then I designed this
tiny little holder for it that sits just below the hold switch.
If I only screw the hold switch in on the left side here,
well then the whole thing is free to move like a little lever.
So I pressed the micro switch into its holder and gave it a shot.
Oh yeah, that works really well.
So now our hold switch is doing double duty.
Not only will it serve to lock out the controls on the front of the iPad
when you're not using it, but now when you press it down,
it will also allow you to pair new Bluetooth devices.
So now that we've got that worked out, what do you say we, finish this case?
The last few changes I made were rounding off the rear of the case,
tweaking the openings ever so slightly, and then printing out the final prototype.
This part of the project was really important.
Not only did I have to make sure that everything fit together,
but I also had to make sure that I could actually make all nine
connections necessary to join both halves together.
The sequencing here was actually really important.
I made liberal use of double sided tape to temporarily hold everything in place,
and then made all of my solder connections for the final assembly.
I'll do something more permanent, but we aren't quite there yet.
Oh man, it actually fits.
It all works too. Do our ports line up?
Yeah, our ports look good and man, I can't even describe to you guys
how good this taptic motor feels.
And we still get basically the same sound out of it through the vibration.
But looking at this thing, the black play on the back.
Eh, I don’t know, It's kind of boring to me.
So what do you guys say we make the back look a little bit more like the front?
Oh, yeah.
And, just to confirm, Bluetooth is definitely working, so.
Yeah, like I said, let's talk about this back,
just like I did on my modern Gameboy build.
I actually sent my 3D print files away to be professionally 3D printed.
There are a number of services
that will do this for you online and at a pretty reasonable price.
I especially love doing this
for clear parts because it saves you hours and hours of post-processing.
So I submitted my order and waited for my parts to come in the mail,
and with all my time savings, I embarked on another journey
that may very well be equally time consuming.
I decided to revamp the user experience of my iPod.
Did you know that there's a completely open source
alternative operating system that you can install on iPods?
It's called a rock box, and after a surprisingly easy installation
process, I was dropped into this ugly and frankly confusing homepage.
Like, why is there a settings page for the settings page?
But honestly, after spending a bit of time
with Rock box, I can tell you that it definitely has its advantages.
Not only does it offer you greater control of your iPod with new settings,
but it also gives you much more granular control
over all the same settings that you used to have.
If you're an audiophile who loves to build your own custom EQs,
this is the operating system you want to be running.
And while we're on the subject of audio files, oh boy, does
Dropbox ever support a lot of different codecs.
It also gets a lot prettier when you install custom themes on it.
And if you were a fan of the classic games on
the iPod, well, let me tell you, Rock box has you covered.
It even has a port of the original Doom installed on it by default,
which was a lot of fun to play, though I did think for just a minute
that I was going to be stuck playing it forever.
How the hell do I put this game? Oh two hold switch over here.
Okay, but I think the biggest
advantage of RockBox is just the fact that you are freed from iTunes now.
Now the iPod just appears like a drive on your computer,
and you can drag and drop all sorts of different content onto it.
But before I could dive too deep into configuring my database,
I got a notification that DHL was at my front door with my new transparent back.
Oh boy, here we go.
Let's crack this thing open and see how she looks.
And I've got to give it to PCBWay here.
They certainly know how to package your parts.
That being said, the results here weren't quite as fantastic as I had hoped for.
I mean, they look great.
Everything was crystal clear and probably much better than anything
I could have done myself.
But when I went to assemble everything, I had some slight issues with the prints.
I assume what happened here is a lot of the hard edges and fine
details of my models were lost during the post-processing.
It wasn't the biggest deal in the world, but I did have to get in.
There was a craft knife and shave things down a few spots.
Something you might want to note
if you're ever thinking about having your own parts made.
But once I got it all assembled, man, did it ever look good.
I love the transparent pack and it actually matches the front pretty
damn well.
And I also love just owning my own music and being able
to take around my entire collection with me wherever I go.
And that's the role of a device like this one in 2024.
It's a giant middle
finger to Spotify, Apple Music, and all the other streaming platforms.
Because as much as I love modern conveniences like Bluetooth, haptics
and a brighter screen,
I also hate that we've ended up in a place where we're basically just renting
our music from giant corporate overlords, but if you're willing to put in the work,
you can handle those water conveniences and own your music at the same time.
And I definitely consider that to be a win.
So a couple of things I want to address the screen.
Here's a comparison to what the original one looked like versus this new one.
It's definitely an improvement in terms of both viewing angles and brightness,
which for the cost I think is definitely worth it.
And then I was also very concerned about the Bluetooth board slowly
draining the battery, and I think it is, but it's also not that big of a deal.
I was able to get two weeks of use on approximately half charged battery,
so even with daily use,
you're probably only going to have to charge a device like this once a month.
And to me, that is perfectly acceptable.
Now, if you want to hear my thoughts on what I would have done differently,
or how I could have improved this project if I did it all over again, consider
becoming a channel member and getting the full post mortem breakdown,
as well as all sorts of other bonus content.
That's it for me and I will see you guys in the next one. Peace.