Custom Firmware

Burned by the prices and the limited capabilities of the software available from the conglomerates, the demand for alternative software's have gone up. (In a hope to make their names), lot of individuals and teams have been developing free software's. Few of the software's are exceptionally good and a lot others are easily, at-par or above with the conglomerate counter-parts. Many communities have evolved who are determined to provide nothing-but-the-best to the consumers for free. Even, the open source community shares those similar goals.

Open source software's (ex: Firefox) and free software's (ex: Opera) have been rapidly gaining real estate on our desktops and laptops. People who really have nourished this benefit had one more wish. That is, customized software on other consumer products. In other words, it's asking for custom firmware on your house-hold products. In the recent past, there have been lot of work going on these by the communities of both the worlds. And so, we end-users now have custom firmware available for products like routers, music players, cameras, etc. This list is growing pretty fast.

• Routers:

A router's speed is defined by the hardware in that device and the firmware driving it. In spite of having good hardware, if the firmware is not that solid, your router tends to perform with far less than expected results. This generally is the case, when most of the manufactures are in a hurry to-the-market. They don't concentrate much on the software or firmware quality. Their priority is just to become the first to enter the market. As the market is getting flooded with lot of early adaptors, manufacturers focus towards quality is still diminishing.

This is the real cause for not having at-least some of the basic features on your router.

There comes the dd-wrt firmware. Flashing it on your router will give your router the required signal boost which you have always craved for. It makes your router deliver much better-than-before results. With dd-wrt, You also get lot of additional functionality which you could have probably never wished to get from your manufacturer.

Know more about the custom firmware for your router here.

There is a good article on How-To-Turn-Your-$60-Router-To-A-$600-Router.

• Music Players:

While using your music players, how many times would you have thought "if this feature would have been there?". Lot of manufacturers (in-fact, everyone) provides you with a firmware on their product which is most of the times not-so-good at the best.

How many times, would you have wished for better audio quality?
How many times, would you have wished for a small real time clock on your device's screen (if any)?
Did you ever wish for additional codec support?
Did you ever wish for playing games on the tiny screen (if any) of your device?
How many time have you been not satisfied by your device's random function?
Did you ever wish for easy-to-use on-the-go playlist creation?

If you have ever wanted any of the above features, what would you do? Go and buy the latest player available at that time from the market? Even after that, I guarantee that, it would still leave some of your desires un-fulfilled. So, buying the latest player for feature upgrade may not be the ideal solution.

Instead of switching players, the very best alternate solution may be to switch to a firmware that provides you those features. Rockbox is an open source firmware replacement for your digital audio players. Rockbox provides all these above features and a lot more. Following the instructions to flash your device with Rockbox firmware is very easy. Rockbox makes your device dual-bootable. That means, you can always go back to your manufacturer provided firmware anytime. This is incredibly awesome.

Know more about the custom firmware for your music player here.

• Cameras:

(Only Canons)
Even, in my dreams, I would have not expected a custom firmware on the digital cameras. But the CHDK community have come those dreams come true.

The CHDK program on your camera gives you Live Histogram, Battery Indicator, Motion-Detection triggered photography, Zoom during videos, File browser, Text reader, Calendar, Games and many more fun tools and utilities.

Know more about the custom firmware for your digital camera (Canon) here.

• Game Consoles:

Each time, he cracks the firmware, Sony patches it back in their next firmware release. He then again provides the crack to the new firmware. Then, Sony makes the move and then he and so on...

We are talking about the firmware for the ultimate gaming hand-held console, the Sony PSP. And, then, we are talking of the Homebrew developer, Dark_Alex. He is very well known amongst the PSP gamers. Lot of gamers literally wait anxiously for his firmware releases. No one has unlocked the PSP firmware as better as Dark_Alex. He always betters Sony's official PSP firmware. After some sort of confusion with Sony, Dark_Alex said he was going to quit the homebrew scene forever. And then immediately afterwards, Team M33 appeared with a custom firmware. It was revealed later that, both Dark_Alex and M33 are same. You can find official M33 builds here.

Know more about the custom firmware for your Sony PSP (Phat & Slim) here.

All the manufacturers follows the common "upgrading path" principle. If they sell their best to you today, what would they sell you tomorrow? They all just leave you at a point, where you wish for more from their next products.