Hacker gets Pokemon Go to work on his Tesla Model S touchscreen and reverse-camera [confirmed fake]

As you probably know, Tesla blocks video playback on the Model S touchscreen and it has yet to enable app mirroring, a feature owners have been waiting for a while and that was announced for a release this summer. Yet, it doesn’t stop some hackers to try bypass Tesla’s system and implement some of those features (to a certain level) themselves.

Earlier this year, we reported on a hacker installing Gentoo on her car and getting around Tesla’s video playback block to watch Terminator. Now we learn of a hacker claiming to have managed to make Pokemon Go work on his Model S. Update: the “hacker” has since confirmed that he faked the hack.

Jeff from Pink Java Media says that he realized his Model S has all the necessary systems to play Pokemon Go: a 17-inch touchscreen, a camera and GPS.

He doesn’t reveal in details how he managed to make to app work, but he actually released some footage of the app working on his touchscreen – see below.

Now he says that he fires up the app and drive around to find Pokemon to capture in his all-electric sedan.

He has to use the reverse-camera of his Model S for the app’s augmented reality features.

“It makes for quite a challenge,” Jeff said. “I almost backed over a Rattata!”

Here he is capturing Rattata:

The app is, of course, not optimized for the Model S and the hacker admits his hack is not working perfectly:

“It’s not perfect,” Jeff said. “The Tesla’s display cuts off some of the game; I haven’t been able to fix that.”

Don’t ask Jeff to hack your Model S though, he says he is not comfortable tinkering with someone else’s car. He probably had to gain a root access to his car and it involves more than just a software hack, you have to remove some dash trims to get there first. It’s not exactly an easy process.

Update: Some readers pointed out that it could be fake (not that it can’t be done of course, but that Jeff here could have put more work into faking it than hacking it) since it looks like the camera moved a little when he touches the screen:

https://twitter.com/jordan_dixon/status/760445891429957632

It would indicate that it’s a screencap taken from the app on the phone and overlayed on the screen. Maybe…