The coolest Palm TX Hack I’ve ever seen!
I can’t always come up with original content. I do hope that my particular focus finds a unique audience out there. There are literally thousands of palm software out there and Palm Addict definitely has more posts a day than I do. On some occasions they have more in one day than I do in a week. However, what I am hoping for is that the things I do focus on would be the kind of thing you would be willing to pick out of the dumpster if you were to go dumpster diving. I must admit I have been busy lately and some of my posts have been devoid of humor but I believe that it is at the very least head and shoulders above what you’d find on Palm’s Official blog. :-). Alright, alright I’ll get to the post! I was just chatting it up to you before I go all 11 O’clock news anchor. There are hacks and then there are hacks.
This one needs to go down in the Palm Hack hall of fame. Dominik ‘Ninik’ Chmaj hooks us up with a Palm TX built in microphone hack.When you are done with this you may even fool the people who check to see if you voided your warranty. I tried to do this hack myself using one of his earlier tutorials but Dominik cleans up really well with his new version. The photos are breathtaking and his skills are evident. This hack finally brings voice recording to the TX in stealth fashion which is a very welcome edition to what many Palm fans consider one of the best Palms out there since the T3. Check out the glorious, wonderful, stupendous, amazing hackumentation. Click here
April 25th, 2007 at 3:13 am
If only I were so confident in my skills to open up a TX and tool around. Ah, well…I wonder if there is a software app out there that can serve as a microphone?
April 25th, 2007 at 8:04 am
That would be interesting even though it seems to be a hardware solution only. Who knows? Anyway I posted an alternative to those not used to T5 Torx screwdrivers.
April 30th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
I tried the mod myself 2-3 weeks back and it works pretty well. The mike sensitivity is pretty bad, so you have to either shout or listen very closely. A good voice recording app that also lets you map one of the hard buttons to start and stop recording is called Audacity Audio (www.audacityaudio.com).
Some instructions say you should use a resistor and capacitor in parallel in order to improve the SNR or gain or whatever. I tried to do that, but couldn’t get the assembly to fit in the TX case, so I ended up with just a mike.
Overall, I’m very happy with the mod, but the solder points are VERY tiny and you have to have a steady hand.
Good luck!
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:02 pm
I just posted an update to this hack on my blog on May 23, 2007. You can check it out. It seems the sound issues you discussed are not an issue in the video. However, they did state using a resistor and capacitor.