CS // 8 Aug 2019 // Comments Off on Hacking a Phicomm R1 Speaker

I bought a Phicomm R1 Speaker for 150RMB delivered, its supposed to have Wifi and a config app, but the App registration is apparently broken.

The Phicomm R1 speaker has Android installed, unfortunately the configuration app for the speaker is no longer working as noted, so you can only use Bluetooth unless you hack it (Bluetooth is available via a triple press of the top button).

For some crazy reason, the speaker has a fairly decent cpu, and is running Android (albeit without a display, which is annoying, but not completely unfixable); we can connect via adb.

Download adb tools here – https://www.xda-developers.com/install-adb-windows-macos-linux/ and stick in your path.

Set the speaker to Wifi (long press of the top button), and connect to the Phicomm_R1_xxx network.

Mine setup a network on 192.168.43.0/24, with a gateway of 192.168.43.1

adb connect 192.168.43.1:5555

adb shell ls -al

drwxr-xr-x root     root              2016-01-21 16:50 acct

lrwxrwxrwx root     root              2016-01-21 16:50 bcm4329_cybertan.hcd -> /etc/bluez/bcm432x/BCM4329B1_002.002.023.0389.0000_Cybertan-Foxconn_Cls2_extLNA_EDRmaxInputLev+PeakDEVM_NT.hcd

…

-rw-r--r-- root     root       148936 1970-01-01 08:00 rk30xxnand_ko.ko.3.10.0

drwx------ root     root              2018-04-28 10:50 root

-rw-r--r-- root     root       252134 1970-01-01 08:00 vcodec_service.ko

lrwxrwxrwx root     root              2016-01-21 16:50 vendor -> /system/vendor

Yup, that worked!

Ok, so we can see the thing at least! Lets get some screen viewing software installed. I’m on OSX, so its a simple brew install..

This seems to work reasonably well – https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy

brew install scrcpy

#load ADB first as above on the default unconfigured wifi ip
adb connect 192.168.43.1:5555
scrscpy

You should now be able to see the device display, and the internal app called Pandora. The pandora app is a rather useless one – it basically doesn’t work. So ignore..
We need to install other tools.

#allow any app install
adb shell settings put secure install_non_market_apps 1

Next up, configure wifi on the thing!

#install adb wifi tool
wget https://github.com/steinwurf/adb-join-wifi/releases/download/1.0.1/adb-join-wifi.apk
adb push adb-join-wifi.apk /data/local/tmp/adb-join-wifi.apk
adb shell /system/bin/pm install -t /data/local/tmp/adb-join-wifi.apk

#change YOURSSID, and YOURWIFIPASS as appropriate..
adb shell am start -n com.steinwurf.adbjoinwifi/com.steinwurf.adbjoinwifi.MainActivity -e password_type WPA -e ssid YOURSSID -e password YOURWIFIPASS

It will hopefully setup the wifi. You’ll need to wait for it to ‘timeout’ and tell you wifi setting failed; it will then connect to your normal wifi as set above.

Once on your ‘normal’ wifi, you can adb connect again to the normal ip.
I installed airpin.apk to setup Airplay, now I can connect to the speaker in iTunes, and play. Good enough!

It can be downloaded here – http://www.waxrain.com/product_en.html
Install in a similar manner as other apk’s, then use screen mirroring to config the name.
I called mine phicomm

#copy and install airpin APK
adb push AirPin.apk /data/local/tmp/AirPin.apk
adb shell /system/bin/pm install -t /data/local/tmp/AirPin.apk
#run the screen mirroring to configure directly on the device
scrcpy

You can go further and remove the Xiao Xun (小讯) listening software, and install something else, but I haven’t bothered (yet). Mine is still unconfigured.
This is detailed in Chinese over here –
https://www.right.com.cn/forum/thread-855587-1-5.html