Retrofitting a TV, Fill Lights, and a Camera in Reverse with Codex and Claude

[[**AI is using interfaces such as ADB and Wi-Fi to let Agents analyze and rewrite devices like TVs, lights, and cameras, greatly lowering the barrier to hardware modification so that even ordinary people can customize devices to their needs.**

**Key points**

**1. TV modification can remove ads and rebuild the home screen**

Codex connected to the company TV via ADB, replaced the screensaver and home page, and removed the boot ads while keeping screen casting, signal sources, settings, and the original video entry points; the four meeting-room TVs were quickly replicated.

**2. Fill lights can be reverse-engineered into a unified console**

Claude analyzed how the fill lights work based on photos and requirements, developed a web page to uniformly control the on/off, brightness, color temperature, and lighting effects of four lights, solving the problems of the official app's frequent disconnections and its ability to control only one light at a time, and integrated it into the company workbench.

**3. Multi-camera shooting achieves unified control**

Codex built a unified multi-camera console for a Sony camera and a DJI Pocket 3 and deployed it to Feishu, enabling simultaneous preview of footage, unified control of shooting, and individual parameter adjustment, reducing the need for computer-side operations after fixing camera positions.

**4. Agents lower the barrier to hardware customization but backups are needed**

This article is from the WeChat public account: Digital Life Kazik, author: Digital Life Kazik, cover image from: Visual China

After the REA open-source project became popular, I wrote a dedicated article about how AI is making the reverse engineering of various software increasingly simple.

But just a few days later, people are no longer satisfied with that.

For example, a guy found that his parents' TV plays an ad before you can even open Netflix.

He couldn't stand it, so he simply threw the TV model at Claude Code and asked it to figure something out.

Claude Code found the TV over Wi-Fi, used the system's debugging interface to disable 25 system packages, and rebuilt a home screen for the TV.

After the changes, the interface was much cleaner.

There was even a guy who directly used Codex together with REA to reverse-engineer his own smart toilet.

The whole process took only about half an hour.

With one click in the Mac menu bar, the real toilet lid opens by itself—though I'm not sure what need there is to control a toilet from a computer...

Honestly, in the past, if you wanted to modify these devices, you really had to be an expert, otherwise it was really hard to pull off.

But now, you only need to tell the Agent what hardware devices you have and what functions you want to achieve; as for how to connect, how to control, and how to modify, you can leave it all to the AI to figure out on its own.

I actually published an article a long time ago about hand-building hardware with Codex; although it wasn't reverse engineering, the approach is actually pretty similar.

Whether you want to solve an annoying usability problem or simply add a fun feature to a device, you can try letting an Agent implement it for you.

So today I'd also like to share with you the process of our recent device modifications and some cases we find fairly interesting, to give you some new ways to play and some new ideas.

Trust me, after reading this, even a complete beginner can do it step by step.

Let's start with the recently hottest project of reverse-engineering a TV as an example.

For example, our company just moved, and in the new office there are four meeting rooms, each with a TV.

But these TVs play an ad every time they boot up.

Even if left idle for a while, the screen turns into ads for movies and TV shows and prompts you to press confirm to watch directly—which is actually a bit awkward in a company.

Because we often don't turn off the TVs, sometimes when clients come to the company to discuss business and the TV keeps looping ads like the one in the picture above, it's often a bit hard to keep a straight face.

Once you get to the home page, there are recommended movies, TV dramas, and variety shows.

TVs are, after all, meant for watching shows, so having film and TV content on the home page is completely fine in itself.

But after all, we use them in a company, and people basically use the TVs for meetings, screen casting, and displaying work-related content.

You can't be halfway through a meeting and suddenly want to binge two episodes of Peppa Pig, right?

So, inspired by that guy earlier, I thought I'd have an Agent clean up these boot ads and film recommendations, then rebuild a clean home screen, so these TVs truly run according to our company's usage needs.

The whole process is also simple: all we need to do is send the requirements to the Agent and then follow it step by step.

I opened Codex and told it the relevant situation and the requirements to clean up ads and redesign the home screen.

Then I picked one of them and let it try first.

Next, following its prompts, we needed to complete a simple operation on the TV: enable the ADB debugging function.

ADB lets a computer connect to and operate an Android device through the debugging interface; many Codex phone-control tricks also involve enabling ADB on the phone.

After enabling it, an authorization window pops up on the TV; just click to allow this computer to debug it.

That way, the Agent is officially connected to the TV, and we can start the modifications.

Next comes continuous chatting.

I asked him to first switch to the default screensaver, sent him the company logo, and then had him call the company's internal brand motion design Skill to make me a dynamic screensaver made of white particles that flows continuously.

About 20 minutes later, he made me two different options and let me pick the one I liked.

I chose B, so on the TV it looks like this.

However, just having a good-looking screensaver definitely isn't enough.

After all, this is a TV used by the company, so common functions like screen casting, switching signal sources, and settings still need to be kept.

So I continued to have the Agent call the Skill from earlier, following the previous design style, to redo the TV's function page.

Although we replaced the original TV home screen, I still wanted to keep the original video-watching function.

So I had it turn the original TV home screen into a separate entry for watching TV, and put it together with other apps into More Apps.

That way, when we normally turn on the TV, we get the clean interface we designed ourselves, and when we need to watch TV, we can return to the original system at any time.

In the end, the remodeled home screen looked like this.

In the lower left corner are screen casting, signal source, settings, TV manager, and a collection of other apps.

The whole interface is clean and tidy, and it's very convenient to operate; basically these are the most commonly used functions.

There's also a very important thing, which is the ad problem we wanted to solve at the very beginning.

With the Agent's unremitting efforts, it was also perfectly achieved.

We also recorded a video of the boot process; everyone can take a look at the effect—it goes straight into the system on startup~

At this point, the remodeling of this TV of ours is basically complete, and it already meets our needs for a company TV.

The TVs in the other three meeting rooms were also replicated and remodeled by Codex in a very short time using the same method.

To be honest, this feeling is really, really, really awesome.

However, I also have to add a disclaimer here.

Devices of different brands and different systems may have different open interfaces and permissions, but you can first connect your Agent and then communicate; for modifications involving system software, I also suggest everyone make a backup first and keep a way to restore, so don't actually brick it...

In real life, there are still a large number of electronic devices connected via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and other methods, and we can all try to have the Agent study their protocols and then redesign functions and operation methods according to our own needs.

These past few days, we also modified several other devices in the company.

For example, because we recently moved the company again, the video team's colleagues are building a new livestream room, which has 4 fill lights.

Although these lights can all be controlled through the official app, it's really troublesome in actual use. On one hand, the app is really terribly made and always disconnects; on the other hand, there's no way to control all 4 lights at the same time—you can only connect to one, adjust it, then connect to another and control that one. We really couldn't stand this anti-human interaction anymore.

So he handed these lights to Claude and had it study them and develop a unified lighting control console on its own.

He directly sent over photos of the lights, then wrote a requirement, which translated is: I'm building a livestream space and have four lights like the ones in the photo. Can you help me reverse engineer how they work, for example using tools like REA, and then build a web page to control all the lights? I hope they can automatically connect to this computer so I can manage everything in one place instead of adjusting each light one by one through the phone app.

Likewise, just follow Claude's prompts and complete the connection and control of the lights step by step.

It was done quickly, and in the end, this console was also integrated into our company's own workbench.

Now, through this, we can uniformly adjust the on/off, brightness, color temperature, and lighting effects of several fill lights.

Then, he also buried an Easter egg in the console...

Click the icon in the upper left corner to enter a page similar to a rhythm game.

There will be continuously falling tracks on the screen, and the real lights will also trigger changes accordingly.

In the end, the effect is like this. Using these fill lights to play a rhythm game—honestly, it's my first time seeing that.

Human imagination is truly amazing ==

Besides the lights, colleagues in our content department also modified their shooting equipment.

Because shooting videos often requires multiple camera angles, she tried it with two devices: a Sony and a DJI Pocket 3.

Originally, these two cameras each had their own control method and could not view the picture and adjust parameters at the same time.

So she also had Codex build a unified multi-camera control console.

After it was made, this application was likewise deployed on our Feishu platform.

Now we can preview the feeds from two camera angles, control shooting in a unified way, and also adjust the shooting parameters of each camera separately.

When shooting videos in the future, after fixing the camera positions, we can complete these operations on the computer, which is much more convenient.

It's just too awesome.

In the process of reverse engineering these things, it often reminded me of when I used to work as a UX designer.

Back then, there was a book that was almost required reading for every UX designer.

It was called The Design of Everyday Things.

There is a very important idea in the book: good design should conform to people's cognition and usage habits, making things easier to understand and easier to use.

But in the past, no matter how good the idea was, implementation cost still had to be considered. Whether a requirement was worth doing often depended on how many people needed it.

Now, Agents are lowering this threshold. Even if only you need it, you can try to build it yourself.

I have always felt that the most fulfilling thing about doing UX design is turning something originally very hard to use into something that better fits everyone's usage habits.

Especially when you see it really running according to your own ideas.

And now, this sense of accomplishment that originally belonged to designers and developers also has a chance to be experienced by more ordinary people.

It is giving more and more people the opportunity to go from being users of a product to being participants in designing it.

If something sucks, change it.

It seems we really can now start remodeling the world that belongs to us. AI Venture Capital Daily Channel: Frontier Technology. This content is published with the author's authorization. The views represent only the author and do not represent the position of Huxiu. If you have objections or complaints about this manuscript, please contact tougao@huxiu.com. Everyone who is changing and wants to change the world is in the Huxiu APP[ ]]]