Hackers Achieve the Inevitable: They Got Nintendo’s Alarmo to Play Doom

The Nintendo Alarmo is thing much than a 2.8-inch circular surface housed successful a big, red, circular computer. That instantly made it a premier people for hardware hackers keen connected getting the $100 alarm timepiece to bash their bidding. The archetypal measurement connected this way is, inevitably, forcing the instrumentality to tally Doom. Unfortunately, it doesn’t effort to aftermath up your neighbors each clip you slay a demon, astatine slightest not yet.

Reverse engineering specializer and YouTuber GaryOderNichts has a video of the Nintendo Alarmo moving Doom natively, with nary hardware replacement involved. Gary posted a video to his YouTube and Twitter accounts implicit the play showing this successful action. The controls usage the spinning instrumentality connected the apical of Alarmo to purpose and move, and the 2 broadside buttons fto you occurrence your weapons. The hardware hacker laid retired the instructions and codification connected their GitHub for anybody other who wants to execute the aforesaid feat.

There is nary audio, arsenic Gary explained helium encountered immoderate “USB loader representation size restrictions.” It’s imaginable to get dependable if you load Doom afloat from USB without modifying Alarmo, but that would detract from the spectacle. In this case, Alarmo is moving a mentation of Chocolate Doom, an easy portable mentation of the 1993 classical shooter.

Hackers person been digging into Alarmo since its merchandise successful October. Gary cited a chap hardware hacker and Twitter user, Spinda, who was 1 of the archetypal to bash a teardown and amusement however one could connect outer devices similar the Flipper Zero to the Alarmo’s committee to commencement rooting done its interior memory.

Nintendo Alarmo teardown. Contains:
– STM32H730ZBI6 ARM MCU
– NXP 88W8801-NMD2 Wi-Fi SoC
– THGBMTG5D1LBAIL 4GB eMMC storage
– SC1233A 24GHz radar sensor
Unfortunately I tore the LCD ribbon cablegram 😅 pic.twitter.com/6hjkgAYfd9

— Spinda 🐲🦊🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ (@_spinda) October 12, 2024

Gary has been moving connected reverse engineering Alarmo implicit the past fewer weeks. On their Blog, the hacker described the process of soldering immoderate wires connected to the SWD pins connected a Raspberry Pi to work the board’s registers. The Alarmo uses an STM32H7 MCU, which Gary said was a large boon since there’s plentifulness of illustration codification disposable for escaped online.

The agelong and abbreviated of it is that Gary managed to bypass the locks connected the instrumentality and get a USB mode and the device’s singular USB-C larboard to tally a customized firmware update. This means you tin tally immoderate customized codification connected the instrumentality without needing to unfastened it up. It inactive works connected the existent bundle mentation 2.0.

Gary besides showed the alarm timepiece displaying an representation of a cat, but you tin tally animations arsenic well. You tin larboard immoderate specified visuals you privation to it, similar a lava lamp effect. However, nary of this needfully allows you to hack the Nintendo Alarmo’s basal bundle for immoderate heretical uses, specified arsenic letting God of War’s Kratos outcry astatine you to “wake up, boy” each morning. Nintendo whitethorn instrumentality the accidental to update the strategy to forestall immoderate much shenanigans. For now, this is simply the extremity of the iceberg for what is technically possible.

It whitethorn not beryllium the Switch 2, but the Alarmo is proving a good distraction until we yet spot Nintendo’s sequel console successful enactment next year.