ATV2 Development Kit
About three and a half years ago, I was one of the founding members of the AppleTV hacking community on the AwkwardTV IRC group. I created the original whitelist circumvention code seen here, and developed the first application installer, known as ATVLoader. I followed this up with the BackRow Developers’ Kit, a set of headers and a simulator application to aid AppleTV appliance developers in developing and testing their code.
After the first few releases of the BDK, I began consulting and no longer had much time to update it for compatibility with either new AppleTV or Mac OS X releases. As a result, I open-sourced it late last year. So far no-one appears to have taken up the banner, however.
With the release of the new iOS-based AppleTV 2, developer access to the device is simpler than ever, and has the possibility of iPhone-style live debugging through Xcode. As a result I am now considering getting back into the game, but I now have a daughter and a full-time job as iOS Team Lead at Kobo, so any time or effort I take away from either of those needs to be compensated for or otherwise justified somehow. Therefore I’m now accepting donations to aid in the development of a new development kit, which will include:
- A simple installer
- Stub libraries and headers
- Xcode debugger integration
…and possibly a Simulator application, although that will require a great deal more work.
The funding goals are as follows:
- CA$135: An AppleTV 2 to hack on
- CA$600: Stub libraries and basic Xcode integration
- CA$1000: Full Xcode integration for on-device debugging, like iPhone/iPad
- CA$3000: A simulator application
These are all subject to change, however, as the mood grabs me, and as the difficulty or ease of each task becomes more apparent.
And yes— everything will be open-sourced as and when each milestone is released.
Thanks for your support!
(Source: pledgie.com)
