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Hacking The DS's Wireless
xNoLaNx writes "Darkain, maker of the remote control program for Winamp, RM-X, has been working day and night hacking the Nintendo DS and its wireless, and making a custom USB power connection for it. He has been able to monitor packets over 802.11b coming from PictoChat and more."
I remember when I was playing King Quest in 80's, when the king has to go to this wizard place to learn some magic. I had to resort to opening up the binary files and read some command lines to know what to do and what to pick up. I didn't have too much luck with Police Quest though, since it's more of an action-based game :)
So now with these decoded Mario64 packets, we know to wait for yoshi in the middle of kira spa, room 1?
Other than that, I don't know what is the use of these decoded packets.
The USB power cable is cool, if not for the fact that we already can buy USB-powered XMas tree, desk fan and whatnot.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Imagine sooner or later, with the right development one could load up ethereal on their DS and start monitoring the local wifi connection.
This game system could turn into a neat little surveilance device.
I gotta say that the DS is way more fun than I expected, and Feel the Magic puts a grin on my face like few others have in the past few years. This system seems like it has a great future ahead of it, and online capabilities (true online, not just wireless multiplayer) are going to put it over the edge!
So... will I be able to participate in a pictochat with my cousins' DS, while I use my powerbook?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
The Nitro project is actually working on tunnelling games over the internet. I believe they're using some of this guy's data as help, but they're also doing other stuff.
I hope somebody finds a way to hack WoL capability for the DS.
I thought one of the best things about these new handhelds (PSP included) was that you could play people you didn't know by just 'beeping' them whenever they were in range.
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I don't have one yet, but from looking at it, it appears very hackable, which will be nice once I get the cash for one I expect this to be the first of many
Signatures are so 90s
I was disappointed to learn that the DS doesn't support networking beyond local links to other DSs.
With Wi-fi support in every unit, I'd pay $30 for a "game" cartridge with an internet suite based on Opera or maybe the mobile Mozilla technology. Give me a web browser, IMAP client, AIM, and maybe an RSS reader and I'm good.
Hopefully something like this is on the way, something a little more portable than my laptop.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
You can play Frozen Bubble wirelessly! duh :P
I can already see someone making a LAN tunneler program for the DS that use a good old wireless router and a program on the computer to grant players the power to play online. It might work something like this. You bring up the program and it gives you list of games you pick a game and then pick a "room" depending on the game the "room" might hold more or less players. The room would fool the DS into thinking it near these other player as if they are in the same physical room. Once in the "room" you can simpley turn on the DS load up the game like metroid hunters and its game on!
Nintendo guards its intellectual property very closely. That's why it took so long for GameCube bsd and linux to come out- and they're still not as functional as xbox linux. I'm sure Nintendo has made it so that it would make more sense to "hack" or even just buy peripherals for a Palm/palmtop than to try to make DS useful.
i read that the DS can use the same power cable as the GBA SP. why bother hacking that together (other than the sheer nerdy joy of doing it yourself)? someone already made one: http://www.the-console-corner.com/gba_sp_usb_power _cable.htm
(sorry for not making that html. lazy tonight.)
Nintendo, I know you won't listen to me, but please, do what Sony did with the Aibo and release a consumer-grade development kit!
For those of you without the equipment to make your own, you can buy them quite cheaply from a Hong Kong importer called Lik Sang. http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?category=278&prod ucts_id=2994&
from the article:
List of things you need to get started:
* TWO (or more) Nintendo DS Units
* A WiFi card of some kind
* AiroPeek NX software package
AiroPeek NX?
hmm... sounds interesting... *click* *click*
Its 3.5 grand for a copy w/ a 12 month support contract!?!
Not to sound cheap (cos I am), but um, thats a bit of an investment for what sounds like etheral w/ tcpdump on windows.
Anyone with experience w/ Airopeek mind sharing all the cool stuff it can do?
One of the features of the DS is that only one person has to own the game, and you and your friends can play together on that one cartridge.
How much would it take to make this technology send out downloaded copies of the game that are fully playable on another system?
Of course there may arise the potential of travel risks for this guy.
For example, how will this affect is ability to travel freely to and (perhaps more importantly) from the USA?
*cough*DMCA*cough*
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I think it would be cool to setup a Nintendo DS server (if such a thing existed) here in my house on my spare Soekris box. I could stick a miniPCI wireless card in it, hook it up to an antenna that I could mount on my roof, and then host a 24/7 Metroid Prime Wireless LAN party to all the people in my area.
I've been doing most of the same stuff as Darkain has, but under Linux using all free software. Ethereal/tcpdump doesn't keep the raw 802.11b packets needed to see all of the DS data, but AirSnort does. AirSnort will record to pcap format and then you can mess with the packets in Ethereal. Just a heads up for those who don't want to pay for AiroPeek and still want to mess with low level wireless stuff (like the Nintendo DS).
Actually, DevKitARM has compilers for GBA and GP32 development already. Considering that the GBA uses an ARM7 CPU, and the GP32 uses an ARM9, and both CPUs are present in the DS, it would just take a little reverse engineering and writing libraries compatible with the DS hardware to make an easy-to-use development setup for the DS.
Unfortunately, this info will probably get overlooked since I'm posting AC. But, I moderated in this story, so I don't have much choice.
making a custom USB power connection for it
Hook it up to a wireless USB adaptor and you'll have wireless power!