Hardware Hack: iFlash for the iPhone

November 2009

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If you are one of those who loves clicking pictures with your iPhone camera then one thing you would have found frustrating is the lack of a flash especially when you want to click a photograph in some place where there is poor light. You might find this article interesting as Joe has come up with a crazy hardware hack called iFlash for the iPhone. Joe is the same guy who had released Ringtonator, an iPhone application to add custom ringtones to your iPhone. He has recently published a guide to build a removable external flash (camera light) for the iPhone using a dock connector, LEDs and a tact switch.

I guess after reading about the components used to build the external flash you might have figured out that this one is not for the faint hearted. This reminded me of another hack to get the two-way video conferencing on iPhone to work. The reason why I say its a camera light rather than a flash is because there doesn’t seem to be any flashing mechanism.

Anyway lets jump into the details of the components that you will need to build this iPhone accessory:

3mm super-bright white LED's
Dock Connector: Joe used the dock connector of an old iPod charger here so that the LEDs are powered by the iPhone's battery.
Tact switch: To turn ON or OFF the camera light. I guess a much simpler option then to develop a native iPhone app just for the turn on/off functionality.

And the tools that you would need are mentioned below:

Soldering iron + solder
Drill/Dremel/Soldering Iron
Hot glue/Super glue

Before you jump into building the camera light for the iPhone have a look at the before (top) & after (bottom) photographs below from the iPhone’s camera using iFlash:

If you like what you see then you can check out the detailed How-to: Make your own iFlash camera flash for the iPhone guide published by Joe by following this link. It might not be a great accessory to carry around attached to your iPhone but in case you don't want to miss one of those priceless moments in a place where there is poor light then this could be a solution to build and carry around in your pocket as it is safe to assume that flash is one feature Apple cannot magically turn ON with a firmware update in the first generation iPhone.

If you liked this ingenious hack don't forget to thank Joe on his blog at the link provided below.

[via Joe's blog]