Tag Archives: Ken Pillonel

Apple AirPods Max get a USB-C port thanks to this clever engineering hack

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Ken Pillonel takes consumer satisfaction a little too seriously. Famous for hacking previous versions of the AirPods to give them USB-C ports and make them more repairable, Pillonel has now turned his sights to the AirPods Max (which hasn’t received an update in over 3 years, as he points out). The regular AirPods and even the iPhone have both made a concerted shift to USB-C, but Apple surprisingly forgot to upgrade their flagship headphones, leaving it in the lightning era.

No stranger to hacking (ahem, upgrading) Apple’s accessories, Pillonel decided to build a USB-C AirPod Max before Apple did. The video above takes us through the journey, showing how Pillonel disassembled the existing AirPods Max, designed a new PCB with a USB-C port, and mounted it (with relative ease) in the headphones, giving them the upgrade they severely needed. The best part, Pillonel even sells his PCBs on his own website, encouraging other people to hack their AirPods Max too and upgrade them to USB-C.

Designer: Ken Pillonel

The AirPods Max debuted in December 2020, which means they’re one of the only mainstream Apple products to not have received a major upgrade in years (they were announced even before the AirTag). Realizing that now was a better time than ever, Pillonel decided to take his AirPods Max for a spin, cracking them open to see the assembly inside and whether it would be easy to upgrade it. Luckily, the lightning port was relatively easy to upgrade without any invasive procedures to the headphone’s body itself. Apple designed the port with a removable metal lip that allowed it to magically become wider (it’s almost as if Apple was preparing for this transition in advance), and knocking the lip out made the hole perfectly sized for a USB-C port.

Pillonel simply unplugged the lightning connector from the existing motherboard and designed a new one that housed the USB-C port. He shared the new PCB design on PCBWay, and had the circuit boards sent to him. An older iteration featured a single-piece PCB that worked, but was susceptible to wear and tear, so Ken redesigned the PCB with a flexible ribbon cable, allowing it to bend without applying pressure on certain parts. The new PCB is available in Pillonel’s shop for 39.9 CHF ($45.3 USD).

The older PCB was prone to wear and tear if used roughly

A flexible ribbon cable on the new PCB made it much more resistant to regular daily usage

The upgraded AirPods Max (Pillonel calls it the AirPods Max 2.0) only has the one design upgrade, although knowing Pillonel, he’ll soon make the entire thing repairable and probably even figure out how to replace batteries on them. You can visit his YouTube channel here, or read our coverage on his other interesting projects here.

The post Apple AirPods Max get a USB-C port thanks to this clever engineering hack first appeared on Yanko Design.

World’s first USB-C AirPods Pro comes with a sustainable, repairable case. Here’s how to make your own

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Ken Pillonel, the engineer and YouTuber behind the world’s first USB-C iPhone and AirPods, just revealed upgrades for the AirPods Pro. His custom build features a new 3D printed case that can be opened and repaired (thanks to screws on the back), along with a USB-C connector on the base instead of the conventional Lightning port. Pillonel’s build isn’t just a one-off custom project, though. He’s made his project open-source and available to the public, allowing pretty much anyone to upgrade their own AirPods Pro.

“The first and second generations of AirPods made by Apple were given a score of 0 out of 10 by repair specialists at iFixit. A few years later, the Pro version came out, and it still received a 0 out of 10”, Pillonel told Yanko Design. After creating the world’s first USB-C AirPods, Pillonel received a lot of requests for giving the AirPods Pro the same treatment. “The goal was to find a solution that gives a second life to the allegedly unopenable cases, which all face an inevitable end of life because of their built-in battery,” he said.

Designer: Ken Pillonel

Not only is Pillonel’s AirPods Pro case more sustainable and repairable now, it’s also USB-C compatible (a feature that will come in handy as Apple plans to launch a USB-C iPhone soon)

Every AirPods case is hermetically sealed, and even an Apple employee will tell you that it’s cheaper to just replace the thing than it is to repair it. Pillonel’s journey started with needing to overcome this hurdle, and the easiest answer was to just build a new case instead of somehow trying to salvage the existing one. Pillonel was lucky enough to get 2 cases from people willing to donate them, which he used to create his own mockup. The cases were first inspected to see the internal components, and then their forms were scanned, modeled, and 3D printed with screw holes and an easy-to-open build.

The new case is practically identical to the original, except for the presence of 6 screws that hold the case and its lid together in place.

The tougher challenge, however, was upgrading the AirPods Pro to USB-C. “A replacement battery can be purchased online, but it is the only replacement part available. If a charging port is broken, there is no way to replace it except by getting a replacement part from another device”, he said. Given Ken’s prior experience in the matter, this seemed easier the second time around. He scanned the Lightning module and made his own custom PCB, to which he attached a USB-C port. He even created the custom plastic bracket that helps the component mount onto the case, pretty much completing the hardware-intensive part.

An issue that Pillonel unexpectedly faced was with the LED connected to the charging module. Apple’s AirPods come outfitted with a charging LED that glows red, green, or white (RGW), but most LEDs Pillonel could find were RGB, offering red, green, and blue instead of white. It took him a while to finally find a vendor in Japan who had RGW LEDs that fit his size requirements. With this, his charging module was complete and ready to be put into the new and improved AirPods Pro case.

“I realized that 2 million people watched the last video where a similar project is done for the original AirPods, and only a few attempted to repair it as shown,” Pillonel mentioned. He was banking on Chinese manufacturers copying his PCB template and selling their own parts on AliExpress for people to buy, but that didn’t seem to pan out. With this project, Pillonel’s taking matters into his own hands by actually selling the charging module on his website for people to buy. You can even find schematics for 3D printing your own AirPods case, on the off-chance that you happen to break yours while prying it open. In all fairness, the new case makes much more sense, given that it’s easy to open if you ever need to replace the battery on the inside (which will eventually degrade after a year or two).

A Master’s in Robotics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Pillonel has more projects in the pipeline that include a transparent AirPods case as well as upgrades for the TWS earbuds themselves.

The post World’s first USB-C AirPods Pro comes with a sustainable, repairable case. Here’s how to make your own first appeared on Yanko Design.

The world’s first USB-C iPhone exists… and it wasn’t built by Apple

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Apple may have until 2024 to comply with the EU’s demands to have USB-C as the standard charging port for smartphones… but it seems like a Swiss robotics student may have beaten them to the punch. Meet the world’s only USB-C iPhone (that we know of), hacked together by Ken Pillonel, a master’s degree student in robotics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

The USB-C iPhone has been on Ken’s mind for a while. In fact, he embarked on this journey 5 months ago with a video explaining how he planned on modifying an existing iPhone, and even demonstrating a work-in-progress. Now, Ken’s work is pretty much complete as he debuted his first working prototype of the iPhone USB-C. The modified iPhone doesn’t just sport a USB-C for kicks… the port actually works, and lets you charge your phone as well as transfer data.

At the very heart of Ken’s solution is a redesigned PCB ribbon cable that fits inside the iPhone X, replacing the lightning charging PCB. Ken’s initial experiments from 5 months ago involved using a breadboard to work out the circuitry, before he actually fabricated a pretty professional-looking ribbon PCB that could actually fit inside the iPhone’s housing, sandwiching itself between the other components. The outer chassis of the iPhone had to be CNC machined too, to fit the new, wider port. Ken’s working on a much more in-depth video to showcase his final result and the process behind it, but he decided to give the world a taste of his prototype in a short YouTube snippet.

For now, Ken’s modded USB-C iPhone is probably one-of-its-kind. It isn’t entirely clear if Ken plans on taking his PCB to the market, although I imagine there’s an entire building of lawyers in Apple’s HQ waiting for a chance to fire up lawsuits and cease-and-desist notices to people and companies who create such kits that involve meddling with the iPhone’s hardware.

As a customer, however, the idea of a USB-C iPhone seems quite tantalizing. Imagine having just one cable for your MacBook, iPad Pro, and iPhone, and not needing multiple cables and solutions to charge different devices (or transfer data between them if AirDrop isn’t an option). That being said, unless Apple makes the USB-C iPhone official, Ken’s little hack isn’t going to sit well with the folks at the genius bar when you go to get anything repaired. Don’t expect any of your product warranties to still be valid!

Designer: Ken Pillonel