A replacement motherboard for the iPod mini, 3G and 4G
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Details
- External ID
- 49977893
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- A replacement motherboard for the iPod mini, 3G and 4G
- Website domain
- certainthings.studio
- Launched
- Oct. 6, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 5
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.10
- Tags
- —
Description
I’ve always wanted to get on the dedicated music train, but I can’t get over no wireless headphones and no streaming. So I made a drop-in replacement motherboard for the iPod mini, 3rd and 4th generation iPod.I’ve reverse engineered the original LCD, so it keeps the original display and click wheel. Externally the iPod is unchanged, apart from a USB-C port.Inside, there’s Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a Raspberry Pi Compute Module Zero, an RP2350, and a CS43131 DAC. The Pi runs Linux, so Spotify and Apple Music work, but it’s also just a small Linux computer so you can run whatever you want on it.There are two versions: Pi and Pico.Sprout Pico is built around the RP2350 and is focused on local playback. It gives your iPod Bluetooth and WiFi. This is the only board the iPod mini supports.Sprout Pi adds the CM0 on top of that. The RP2350 still owns the hardware and can run independently, and the CM0 adds Linux for things like Spotify and Apple Music. So when you’re just listening to local music, the Pi doesn’t need to be running at all. The aim is to keep the flexibility of Linux for streaming while maximising battery life for offline listening. This dual processor split is still a work in progress but planned for the next revision.Would love to get your thoughts, and any features you’d like to see!
Enrichment
- Niche
- open-source hardware and maker electronics
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Hardware & robotics
- Audience
- Prosumer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- custom replacement motherboard for classic ipods
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
No This is a custom hardware PCB design requiring electrical engineering, reverse-engineering vintage proprietary LCD and click-wheel pinouts/protocols, and embedded firmware programming.
What it would actually take: A real build requires KiCad or Altium PCB schematic design and multi-layer board routing constrained to iPod chassis dimensions. The core challenge involves reverse-engineering proprietary Apple bus protocols for the monochrome/color displays and click wheels using logic analyzers, plus integrating an ESP32 or modern SoC with Bluetooth/Wi-Fi audio streaming stacks. This demands specialized electrical engineering, hardware prototyping, and low-level embedded C/C++ firmware skills.
Discussion
No comments on this launch.
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 160 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #157 of 161 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 339 days after the earliest competitor.
- I built an open-source Linux-capable single-board computer with DDR3 · hn · 2025-12-24 · 17 upvotes · similarity 0.56
- I designed my own 3D printer motherboard · hn · 2025-12-06 · 127 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- An easy way of broadcasting radio around you (looking for feedback) · hn · 2025-12-17 · 36 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- ADSBee, an open source dual band embedded ADS-B receiver for anything · hn · 2026-01-01 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- Gramola, a CoverFlow-style music dock for macOS · hn · 2026-08-21 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.40
- Tunestack · ph · 2026-10-06 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.40
- Apple Sound · ph · 2026-09-29 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.40
- NostalgicPod · ph · 2026-10-07 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.40
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.