Reverse Engineering Apple’s iPhone/iPod Charger System Secrets

Written by mike on August 4th, 2010

Third party manufacturers that want to make iPhone/iPod charging devices have to agree to a secret hardware setup that will allow the devices to work, and promise to not disclose what components and specifications are needed to make a charger work. Engineer/hacker/braniac Ladyada (of adafruit.com fame) disassembles a few charging devices to investigate the exact resistors used, and how a wall charging device (AC) differs from a battery charging device.

Read more of her notes and explanations about USB charging, the differences in iPhone chargers over the last few generations, and a great photo of the innards of an iPhone wall jack.

Adafruit sells a variety of electronics kids: Arduino supplies, breakout boards, power supplies and more.
If you want to build your own battery-powered Apple charger, get the adafruit MintyBoost kit here.
Two other fun and hilarious electronics kits from them: Tweet-a-Watt and the Digg Button Kit.

One part of the video of particular interest is the soldering blower unit that Ladyada uses. Designed to allow for the teeny-tiny components to be soldered or removed safely instead of being bashed with a blazing hot metal iron tip, this thing melts the solder with hot air, so you can then safely manipulate it as needed. She uses the Hakko 851 hot air soldering station – it’s not cheap, but I think I need to get one of those things.

The 851 hot air rework station is ideal for soldering and desoldering small surface mount chip components, heating heat-shrink tubing, and other local heating operations.

• adjustable temperature control from 100°C to 540°C (212°F to 1004°F)

• ultra-light setting for air volume control

• ESD safe by design

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Posted in DIY, Gadgets |

http://twitter.com/thd_it/status/20323113975 Ivan Diego Meseguer

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Kelsey

Mike,

The Hakko is undeniably a great piece of gear but $650 for a heater & fan seems like a lot to me. Aoyue knocks-off a lot of Hakko gear. I bought their Model 968 rework/solder station a year ago for ~$150 and have loved it. The range of the rework gun is somewhat less (100-480C) than the Hakko but I never need to get close to the top of the range.

The guys at Sparkfun recommend and use them in their shop. Having only had it a year, I can’t speak to the long-term durability of the thing but I could buy five of them for the price of the Hakko…

EDIT: Fixed the links.
mike

Thanks for the info Kelsey – very helpful, and always awesome to save a few hundred dollars. I’ll check these Aoyue’s out for my shop.

How rad is Sparkfun? Sites like that get me so excited to make stuff.