Researchers from India hack AirPods to turn them into hearing aids for grandma
Researchers from India have turned a pair of AirPods Pro into a hearing aid for their grandma after using a microwave oven and a Faraday cage to get around Apple’s location blocks.
Apple recently announced a software update to its AirPods Pro which enabled a Hearing Aids feature to be added. The iPhone maker explained how the product could now be used as a “clinical-grade Hearing Aid.”
The update aims to help “minimize exposure to loud environmental noise with Hearing Protection, track hearing with an at-home Hearing Test, and receive assistance for perceived mild to moderate hearing loss.” But the feature was blocked in India.
Apple released a hearing aids feature for the AirPods Pro a while ago. I bought a pair for grandma, but then realized that the feature was geoblocked in India
So we at @_lagrangepoint decided to unblock it. It ended up involving a leaky microwave and building a Faraday cage: pic.twitter.com/G7E3Bl6f7W
— Rithwik Jayasimha (@thel3l) November 12, 2024
Three friends, Rithwik Jayasimha, Arnav Bansal and Rithvik Vibhu, found a way through Apple’s location restriction to enable the new feature to work after some trial and error.
Jayasimha explained the process on X, sharing how they initially thought it would be easy to conquer but “turns out that Apple checks several things, including GPS, country codes of the cellular network the devices is connected to and also – WiFi networks.”
How was the AirPods Pro turned into a functional hearing aid?The team used a WiFi only iPad and built their own Faraday cage – a device which is used to block out electromagnetic radiation.
“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.”
Inside the box was an ESP32, which is a chip that provides WiFi, broadcasting fake SSIDs (service set identifier) from California at the iPad. This then allowed the location blocker to be bypassed in India, with the Hearing Aids feature able to be used by the researcher’s grandma.
The people involved are part of the ‘Lagrange Point’ community and will even be putting on an open house later this month for others in the area who want to replicate their findings.
Featured Image: Credit to Rithwik Jayasimha on X
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