The Nintendo Alarmo is nothing greater than a 2.8-inch round display screen housed in an enormous, crimson, round pc. That instantly made it a chief goal for {hardware} hackers eager on getting the $100 alarm clock to do their bidding. Step one on this path is, inevitably, forcing the system to run Doom. Sadly, it doesn’t attempt to get up your neighbors each time you slay a demon, not less than not but.
Reverse engineering specialist and YouTuber GaryOderNichts has a video of the Nintendo Alarmo working Doom natively, with no {hardware} alternative concerned. Gary posted a video to his YouTube and Twitter accounts over the weekend displaying this in motion. The controls use the spinning wheel on the highest of Alarmo to purpose and transfer, and the 2 aspect buttons allow you to hearth your weapons. The {hardware} hacker laid out the directions and code on their GitHub for anyone else who desires to realize the identical feat.
There isn’t a audio, as Gary defined he encountered some “USB loader reminiscence dimension restrictions.” It’s attainable to get sound in case you load Doom absolutely from USB with out modifying Alarmo, however that will detract from the spectacle. On this case, Alarmo is working a model of Chocolate Doom, an simply transportable model of the 1993 traditional shooter.
Hackers have been digging into Alarmo since its launch in October. Gary cited a fellow {hardware} hacker and Twitter consumer, Spinda, who was one of many first to do a teardown and present how one may connect exterior units just like the Flipper Zero to the Alarmo’s board to start out rooting by its inside reminiscence.
Nintendo Alarmo teardown. Comprises:
– STM32H730ZBI6 ARM MCU
– NXP 88W8801-NMD2 Wi-Fi SoC
– THGBMTG5D1LBAIL 4GB eMMC storage
– SC1233A 24GHz radar sensor
Sadly I tore the LCD ribbon cable 😅 pic.twitter.com/6hjkgAYfd9— Spinda 🐲🦊🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ (@_spinda) October 12, 2024
Gary has been engaged on reverse engineering Alarmo over the previous few weeks. On their Weblog, the hacker described the method of soldering some wires related to the SWD pins on a Raspberry Pi to learn the board’s registers. The Alarmo makes use of an STM32H7 MCU, which Gary mentioned was an enormous boon since there’s loads of instance code out there without spending a dime on-line.
The lengthy and wanting it’s that Gary managed to bypass the locks on the system and get a USB mode and the system’s singular USB-C port to run a customized firmware replace. This implies you’ll be able to run any customized code on the system without having to open it up. It nonetheless works on the present software program model 2.0.
Gary additionally confirmed the alarm clock displaying a picture of a cat, however you’ll be able to run animations as nicely. You possibly can port any such visuals you need to it, like a lava lamp impact. Nevertheless, none of this essentially means that you can hack the Nintendo Alarmo’s base software program for some heretical makes use of, akin to letting God of Battle’s Kratos yell at you to “get up, boy” each morning. Nintendo could take the chance to replace the system to stop any extra shenanigans. For now, that is merely the tip of the iceberg for what’s technically attainable.
It is probably not the Change 2, however the Alarmo is proving a tremendous distraction till we ultimately see Nintendo’s sequel console in motion subsequent yr.
