A new hardware project is using open-source hardware and software that adds Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and music streaming apps to decades old iPods.
Sprout, by London-based FOSS folk Certain Things, is a “modern motherboard for old iPods” that requires no soldering. It even re-uses all of the iPod’s original parts, including the screen, click wheel and case.
The idea is simply: open your old iPod, remove the original PCB and replace it with the new one, which adds support for Bluetooth headphones (including Apple AirPods), Wi-Fi, and HiFi DAC with audio over USB-C.
It’ll even support music streaming from Spotify or Apple Music, and casting from devices over Apple AirPlay and Google Cast.
Open-source iPod software mods aren’t new – Rockbox has been around for decades – but hardware mods are typically drastic or require technical skill. This looks simple, and the upgrade is reversible – a relief to tech purists, I’m sure!
Sprout will provide a motherboard compatible with the following iPod models:
- iPod mini 1st and 2nd generation
- iPod 3rd generation
- iPod 4th generation
Since iPod storage is soldered to the mainboard (swapped out with this effort), a microSD card is used for storage, allowing your dusty old 20GB iPod to 100x capacity.
Sprout will come in two versions: Sprout Pico, built around the Raspberry Pi RP2350, and Sprout Pi, which pairs the microcontroller with a Raspberry Pi Compute Module Zero.
The developer describes the latter as using a dual architecture, with playback using the RP2350 for better battery life, while resource-intensive apps, like 3D games and even OS emulators, run on the CM0, which uses a Linux-based system.
iPod’s were purposeful devices, and Sprout’s UI retains the iconic, and simple to use iPod UI, with navigation driven by the click wheel and menu presses.
Thoughtful era-evocative touches include coverflow, a better podcasts UI, an AirPods app for configuring hardware features. There are even recreations of the old iPod games (the hours I lost to Parachute at the back of a bus).
Apple hasn’t approved this, and it may well have patents gathering on some of the interface touches Sprout’s UI echoes, gathering dust in the same sorts of drawers most iPods this is aimed at are.
To my eye, the UI is close enough to feel right, but different enough to not be a meritless clone.
An iPod powered by a Raspberry Pi
Sprout is open source hardware and software. Schematics, board layouts; firmware, software and the Sprout Pi runtime; and documentation notes on the reverse-engineering needed to get the iPod display, click wheel and headphone jack working.
A deliciously cool initiative “remixing” old tech with modern guts.
No word on price or release date yet, but if you’re interested, sign up for notifications on the project’s crowdsupply.com page.
While you wait, the Sprout website has an iPod simulator that lets you explore its UI and feature set (with dummy data, of course) from the comfort of your browser, without digging the dead iPod out of your ‘drawer of things’.