For convenience, I will only use the term IDBUS, since it seems more correct to me (and this is what the technology is called in the THS7383 specification). The two terms are often considered synonyms of sorts. It also contains a logic gate - this chip is known as SN2025 / BQ2025. HiFive is a child of Lightning, that is, a plug connector. Several generations exist (x is the generation number)įrom now on I will only use the term TriStar, but keep in mind that it also stands for Hydra as they are very similar in most of the aspects that will be covered in this text. NXP CBTL1612Ax - Hydra is used with iPhone 8 / X and apparently everything else that supports wireless charging.Several generations exist (x is the generation number) NXP CBTL1610Ax - Second generation TriStar, used since iPhone 5C / 5S and apparently in everything else that does not support wireless charging.NXP CBTL1609A1 - mysterious first generation Tristar in iPod nano 7 - source.NXP CBTL1608A1 - First generation Tristar in iPhone 5 and iPod touch 5.TI THS7383 - First Generation Tristar in iPad mini 1 and iPad 4.I am aware of five main variants of the Tristar / Hydra: Probably the most significant change is support for wireless charging, but this remains to be verified: Hydra is a new variant of Tristar, used since the iPhone 8 / X. It is essentially a multiplexer:Īmong other things, its main purpose is to connect to the Lightning male connector as soon as it is plugged in - to determine the orientation, Accessory ID and properly route internal interfaces such as USB, UART and SWD. Tristar is an integrated circuit built into every device with a Lightning connector. Many Lightning accessories I've come across have mirrored pinouts in the connectors. Thus, the host device must determine the orientation of the cable before doing anything.Īlthough this is not always the case. Please note that in the connector, the pins on both sides of the connector are not connected in the same order. The picture above is the connector socket, and the picture below is its pinout: Lightning is the digital interface used in most Apple iOS devices since late 2012. Therefore, this article may be using incorrect or simply strange terms and be partially or completely incorrect!īefore we dive deeper, let's briefly understand the terms:
I must warn you that I have never done such research before. Read this article at your own risk! The information is based on a lot of internal Apple Internal materials (data leaks, schematics, source codes) that I read diagonally. This is my little article describing (almost) everything I know about the Apple Lightning interface and related technologies: Tristar, Hydra, HiFive, SDQ, IDBUS, etc.
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