Five Great Nintendo R4 Ds Hacks

There's a lot of different ways to get a R4 DS running homebrew software (amateur and homemade apps and games that you download over the internet), but many of them require hardware hacking or other complicated steps such as shorting wires to bypass the R4 DS firmware.

The simplest solution is to buy a Slot-1 Card, of which there are a number available. The Cyclo R4 DS Evolution, which sells for about $50-60, is the best overall "all-in-one" solution, but it also requires the purchase of a MicroSD memory card (a 1GB or 2GB is perfectly adequate and these can be had from a number of online sources for about $10 each.) This is by far the easiest solution, as you simply "drag and drop" downloaded .NR4 DS files to the MicroSD card using a USB attachment that comes with the CycloR4 DS Evolution.

The CycloR4 DS automatically patches the software as it is copied to the memory card, so in most cases it is ready to run when you fire up the R4 DS. It also gives you a nice GUI on the R4 DS end which lets you either run software or run the MoonShell media player (which is used for movie files, music files and viewing pictures.) The Cyclo R4 DS also ad R4 DS some enhanced functionality to the R4 DS, such as real-time game save and restore, a slow-motion option and incremental display brightness adjustment.

There are some other competing Slot-1 CarR4 DS that work just as well and actually can be had for a little bit cheaper ($30-40), such as the R4 and the M3, but neither has quite the robust feature set that the Cyclo R4 DS does. If you really want to spend as little money as possible, other branR4 DS of Slot-1 Card go as low as $20 (for the R4 DS Toy), but generally the lower it costs the less features it offers, and the more likely it is you'll have to manually patch files before copying them over to the R4 DS.

Some good places to look for homebrew games and apps are the QJ.net forums, the NDS Homebrew Site and Wikipedia's list of R4 DS homebrew software . You'll find everything from emulators for other consoles and for computers, to ported versions of PC games such Doom and Starcraft, to iPhone-like apps.

Most of these R4 Card also have the side effect of being able to run ROM images of commercial software. But I know you're totally ethical and won't use them for that purpose.

2) Install R4 DSLinux

Linux is on almost every platform imaginable now, including the Nintendo R4 DS. The best way to get it going is to simply use a Slot-1 Card method as described in the previous section, and the installation instructions are very simple and straightforward. It comes packaged with a bunch of neat and useful apps, a virtual QWERTY keyboard you manipulate with the stylus, even Sudoku and Tetris games. It also works with the R4 DS WiFi, and there's a simple text-only web browser and an IRC client.

3) Turn the R4 DS into a pro-quality camera shot controller

This one is heavy on the technical specs and requires some C++ programming skill to replicate, but if you want a highly portable and customizable delayed and time-release shot controller for a professional camera it seems like it would easily be worth the effort (or worth enlisting a techie friend to help out in creating.)

Rather than try to explain something I admittedly don't understand very well, it's probably better just to link you to the inventor's page, which has a lot of helpful screen shots of it.

4) Turn the R4 DS into a phone with VoIP

The Nintendo R4 DS can be turned into a VoIP phone by using a homebrew app called SvSIP. This will require you to get homebrew software running on the R4 DS first, as outlined in the first section of this article. SIP is simply a VoIP (Voice over IP) protocol, and the caveat to this one is that you have to connect to a provider that supports SIP. Fortunately there are some sources of free SIP accounts out there, and a good starting point for searching is this list. This is really more likely to work consistently in Europe than in the U.S. at this point, however.

5) Turn the R4 DS into a GPS device

Now you have a great excuse to bring the R4 DS on camping trips! This one is possibly the most technically complicated as it involves building a serial interface for the R4 DS (which involves some simple soldering of wires and connections), and instructions for that process can be found at this page. This interface opens up a number of possibilities in addition to GPS, however, such as attachment of a keyboard and various USB devices.

Once done, however, it is simply a matter of connecting a GPS module and running a small program (again via homebrew metho R4 DS outlined in section 1 of this article) which uses Google Maps to display position. This is a fairly new hack and the author still wants to clean up his code completely before he posts it, but it will be seen at this link when it is ready.