Huck's Journal of Sorts

Pun intended, that is. Lately I've noticed that tablets from certain vendors such as RCA, Nextbook and LeapFrog have implemented a security feature by Singapore-based Digital Safety , also known as DiSA. According to the Digital Safety website, it "is designed to offer complete supply chain and in-store protection against shrink." Fig. 1: A DiSA-protected device being activated That is, it does away with physical anti-theft locks wrapped on the device's box prior to being sold to the end-user, and replaces it with an activation system that prompts for a code to be given by the sales person by way of a receipt. As mentioned earlier, this has been implemented by a number of manufacturers, though I don't think they've done so with Apple considering they already have a system that's already effective enough as it is. And I don't think that it has rolled out on all retail outlets either, especially with e-commerce and online stores displacin

Right now I am currently looking for the following devices to aid in servicing LeapFrog Epics: I honestly don't know if this would actually help with the locked bootloader situation we're having with LeapFrog, but I do have at least some hope on circumventing the restriction they somehow implemented. I understand if they did lock down the device somewhat for security's sake, but this basically left hobbyists, especially those who have been working with LeapFrog devices, in the dark, just as when kernel sources are available upon request. I know this sounds a bit embarrasing for me to ask for something from you guys, but if anyone is willing to spare a dime or two, please let me know so I can continue on helping parents like you and fellow hackers alike.

This will be a rather brief post, but let me just explain and ask you guys something. I do this stuff for free, and will be doing so for as much as I can, but if you really do like what I did, would you guys mind if I ask for a voluntary donation to defray costs (e.g. electricity, hosting bills, etc.) and for me to purchase devices, e.g. if someone has let's say a Nokia smartphone and as such I need a similar unit to test things on? I think some compensation would be nice so I can continue on this hobby, but after seeing countless "GSM" blogs by folks in developing countries asking $$$ for every single firmware they bragged about dumping off various devices, I felt a more voluntary and open revenue system would be better than be greedy and earn the ire of those asking for a quick fix like the parents whom I talked to earlier.

EDIT: If you have any inquiries or are getting stuck with updating the ROM, kindly let me know either on the LeapFrog Epic Guy page on Facebook, or on my personal Facebook account .  ...or as what I call it, KermitMod. :P My previous post about the Epic was quite a mouthful, but here's a link to the edited ROM for ex-demo units to be converted to retail. I basically had to edit the demo firmware to work around the issue of the bootloader being locked, preventing ROM backups from other Epics to be flashed through normal means. https://mega.nz/#!cuhHFYTC!GC6wU1MxDybNX_tU50aMpHbFnb3TjAh5dVaWn_cNj8Y As what I wrote earlier, this ROM has to be flashed using a feature tucked away in SP Flash Tool, i.e. Write Memory. You can't flash this as you would with any MediaTek device, as it would give out an authentication error. A bonus feature I added for this is support for Google Play services, allowing owners of ex-demo units to download content off Google Play Store like YouTu

EDIT 2: This tutorial is now outdated and will not work on Epic Academy Edition demo units. See this post for an updated method. EDIT: If you have any inquiries or are getting stuck with updating the ROM, kindly let me know either on the LeapFrog Epic Guy page on Facebook, or on my personal Facebook account . I've been getting a lot of inquiries lately from parents asking how does one convert a store demo unit to a retail one. Apparently a number of Epics, mine included, were sold on eBay, Craigslist and other classifieds, are programmed with a demo ROM meant for displays on Toys R Us, Best Buy, Fry's or whatever outlet these things are sold. The real caveat here is this: the boot loader is locked, making straightforward ROM flashing mostly impossible (hence why I wrote an open letter to LF asking if they can provide an unlocked bootloader). Now before you lose hope and say "Oh this is a waste of $50! Why did I even buy this crappy toy?", there is actually

EDIT: If you have any inquiries or are getting stuck with updating the ROM, kindly let me know either on the LeapFrog Epic Guy page on Facebook, or on my personal Facebook account . OK, so a bit of a rant, though for one I gotta give LeapFrog some credits to this. Sure, repairs are a service centre away, and the main market for this device are kids and their parents, but what about the more tech-savvy parents (e.g. geeks or tinkerer types) who'd certainly re-purpose or service their kids' Epics either because it broke down or gone on a boot loop for some reason? You see the main thing with this is the preloader, or other words the bootloader, is locked from tampering, making it next to impossible to use custom ROMs or kernels. You can somehow subvert this by editing just the system.img offline assuming you extracted it off your device, or in the case of backups, backing up the whole ROM image, boot/recovery and other images included, to a single ROM_0 file, and flas

EDIT: If you have any inquiries or are getting stuck with updating the ROM, kindly let me know either on the LeapFrog Epic Guy page on Facebook, or on my personal Facebook account . So I got my hands on a pair of these units from a friend of mine who was generous enough to donate for free. While getting these in-store demo units to work as a retail device is a pain and a half to do (more on that in a later post), I've had fun modding and poking into the internals to see what can be done with it. There are actually a LOT of hidden and/or dummied out features in the tablet, most of which can be accessed through the open-source Activity Launcher . For instance, LeapFrog dummied out access to the lock screen settings by removing menu references to said options in Settings. They disabled the AOSP lock screen presumably to save children the (supposed) frustration of having to unlock their device upon using it. It is however possible to re-enable it and add a lock pattern or a sim