[This sounds hopeful, but remember not to hold your breath…]

Well, it looks like someone is about to collect the DS Wifi bounty! Sgstair, a long time homebrew coder, says hes very close to cracking the DS Wifi, which will open up a whole new world for homebrew apps and games.

Kraln: I can imagine. What are the next steps for you?

sgstair: Well, right now I’ve just managed to get the hardware send and receive working. That was the big holdup in completing this project - now all I need to do is input the data from the WiFi hardware and implement an 802.11 layer, on top of which a TCP/IP implementation can be put.

Kraln: So, in a very short time you’ll have a fully featured 802.11b network stack? What’s going to be your first demo of your breakthrough?

sgstair: Yes, I expect to have a network stack ready very soon. The first demo I have planned is going to be an interactive demo of sorts, I’m going to write a small web server on the DS, and have it display user input on a webcam.

Sgstair Interview

Sgstair’s Site

UPDATE: People seem to be having trouble connecting to the interview site. Ive posted the whole thing after the cut.

I’ve recently interviewed SgStair, who appears to be on the cusp of winning the DS WiFi bounty.

SgStair and I have worked on numerous projects in the past, and it seemed only logical to help share his wisdom with everyone

Kraln: Now, can you give me a quick introduction of who you are and what the whole DS Wifi bounty is about?

sgstair: My name is Stephen, I’m known as sgstair most places online. I’m a crazy programmer and a hardware freak who specializes in doing the impossible, or at least the highly improbable in between stuff I do for work and purely for fun. I’ve been hanging around the Nintendo handheld homebrew community since the end of the golden gbc days and have a few interesting projects I’ve been involved with documented on my website (www.akkit.org)…

The DS Wifi bounty is an initiative started by another Nintendo homebrew regular, StoneCypher. He decided to provide an incentive for developers to quickly provide a method of wireless internet access on the DS, which all developers would be able to use.

Kraln: So, how did you get involved in this whole “be the first to crack wifi on the NDS” thing?

sgstair: Well, I was involved in hacking wifi a while before the bounty even came up - Though, naturally when the bounty came up it provided another incentive to continue my work.

Kraln: Some people are probably thinking “What’s the big deal - the DS already has wifi?” - What have you done that’s so special?

sgstair: What I’m doing is to write a library so homebrew developers can use the wifi for new and useful purposes, by providing them with a similar interface to the internet as they would have if they were writing code for a PC

Kraln: So, they couldn’t do this before?

sgstair: No, until now there has been no (legitimate) way for homebrew developers to use the wifi functions of the DS hardware.

Kraln: Let’s talk more about you. I know that you were one of the first people with a hardware solution to run homebrew (PassME). What else have you been up to?

sgstair: Well, I joined the homebrew community a year or two before the GBA first came out; back in those days I was stupid and inexperienced - but the community got me going in the right direction and I’ve since over many years learned and mastered the GBA hardware. Now that I’ve moved to the DS, it’s another platform to tackle, however I’m a good deal more prepared for it, with hardware and software design experience.
As far as accomplishments go, I haven’t done a whole lot. Most of my work is chronicled at my website ( www.akkit.org ). I’ve recently been working as a commercial game developer, which is a new thing to me and a whole lot of fun. My side projects are pretty varied, and not all of them make it to my website, but I have some new and exciting things in the pipeline.

Kraln: Awesome. Can you tell us how you went about breaking wifi?

sgstair: It hasn’t been an easy path, and has taken a lot of my time. Reverse engineering any large piece of software is always a complicated process, so it’s hard to judge how long it will take… In this case it has taken me a lot longer than I expected it to- I’ve spent close to 200 hours on the project so far.

Mainly, I’ve just been working on reverse engineering some code that uses wifi, and attempting to discover how it works. The hardware isn’t in itself that complicated, but the initialization sequence to make it work is a bit tricky, it (the code) has been through several revisions and has been the limiting factor in making this work.

Kraln: So, you had to blaze some new ground in regards to the knowledge of how the NDS hardware works. Learn anything interesting?

sgstair: Yes, I’ve learned a good deal from this project - though not too much interesting. The wifi code is only really interesting the first few times you look over it- once you find yourself painstakingly tracing routines to ensure you understand how they work, that gets a little tiring.

Kraln: I can imagine. What are the next steps for you?

sgstair: Well, right now I’ve just managed to get the hardware send and receive working. That was the big holdup in completing this project - now all I need to do is input the data from the WiFi hardware and implement an 802.11 layer, on top of which a TCP/IP implementation can be put.

Kraln: So, in a very short time you’ll have a fully featured 802.11b network stack? What’s going to be your first demo of your breakthrough?

sgstair: Yes, I expect to have a network stack ready very soon. The first demo I have planned is going to be an interactive demo of sorts, I’m going to write a small web server on the DS, and have it display user input on a webcam.

Kraln: Fraggle Rock or Weird Science?

sgstair: Hmm, I don’t really have an answer

Kraln: I’ll take that as a yes. Anything else you’d like to add?

sgstair: Not really that’s about all that’s going on.

Kraln: Thank you for your time.

Submitter: pete