title: What's needed to use the Apple Accessory Protocol?
body: <p>I'm in the process of planning out a personal project that will be a media player and one of the things I would like to do is be able to dock my iPod touch (or any iPod or iPhone) and control it and play music off it like the speaker docs do that you can buy.</p>
  
  <p>I <a href="http://www.adriangame.co.uk/ipod-acc-pro.html" rel="noreferrer">found</a> <a href="http://ipodlinux.org/wiki/Apple_Accessory_Protocol" rel="noreferrer">some</a> <a href="http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=704" rel="noreferrer">information</a> while searching around online for this but my question is can I make up a cable and use the serial protocol from any device or does Apple have this locked down so only certified/approved devices can communicate this way?</p>