This is a portfolio site for Gareth Halfacree, the former systems administrator currently earning a living as a full-time technology journalist and technical author. You may know him from his best-selling books the Raspberry Pi User Guide, The Official Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide, Get Started with MicroPython on Raspberry Pi: The Official Raspberry Pi Pico Guide, and the Official BBC micro:bit User Guide, or his contributions to national magazines, radio programmes, and publications including Imagine Publishing’s Genius Guide and Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks series – or even his eponymous “Gareth Halfacree’s Hobby Tech” feature, a four-page spread in Raspberry Pi Press’ Custom PC Magazine each month.
Get Started with MicroPython on Raspberry Pi Pico, 2nd Edition
The revised larger edition comes with additional chapters specific to the Raspberry Pi Pico W, a device which can do everything the Raspberry Pi Pico can do and more – thanks to the addition of a radio module capable of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi communications. New projects include connecting to a Wi-Fi network, querying remote servers, and hosting a web page capable of interacting with the Raspberry Pi Pico W’s general-purpose input/output pins, plus configuring a Raspberry Pi Pico W as a Bluetooth beacon – connecting, if you’ve got one, to your phone or a second Raspberry Pi Pico W.
It’s not just about the new chapters, though. This second edition offers a complete overhaul: all projects have been brought up-to-date with the latest MicroPython advancements, a now hard-to-find display component has been swapped out for something more readily available at a lower cost, and the ever-talented Sam Adler has created all-new illustrations to bring the book’s look and feel in-line with my recently-launched The Official Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide 5th Edition.
As always, I want to thank everyone at Raspberry Pi Press for their work in helping me make this the best book it could be: editor and publishing director Brian Jepson, co-editor Liz Upton, interior designer Sara Parodi, Nellie McKesson in production, photographer Brian O’Halloran, graphics editor Natalie Turner, and head of design Jack Willis, plus everyone else involved in getting the book to shelves today.
Get Started with MicroPython on Raspberry Pi Pico 2nd Edition is available from all good bookshops and Raspberry Pi resellers now, as well as on the official Raspberry Pi Press store for global delivery; if your bookseller doesn’t have a copy, or if you’d like to request it from your library, you can ask for it under ISBN 978-1-912047-29-1.
As always, I hope you have as much fun reading the book as I did writing it!
Digital Roundup – June 2024
Reviews are always a lot of work, but fun with it. As always, I handle the product photography myself in-house – and June’s shots have come out splendidly. The Jumperless was a little more of a challenge than usual, thanks to the presence of hard-to-capture RGB LEDs viewable only from a very precise top-down angle, but I’d like to think the results speak for themselves.
The to-review pile isn’t exhausted yet, though, so expect to see more reviews in July, along with my usual newsletters and news articles.
- The Turbo9 Reimagines Motorola’s Classic 6809 as an Open-Silicon Pipelined 16-Bit Microcontroller
- This Custom Board Adapts Lenovo’s Connector to a Real ThinkPad X1 Nano Internal USB Port
- AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 Series Packs a 50 TOPS Neural Processor for On-Device Artificial Intelligence
- Canonical Launches an Ubuntu Linux Image Optimized for the RISC-V Milk-V Mars Single-Board Computer
- “Relaxing” Memristors Could Give Future AI Systems a Major Efficiency Boost
- Raspberrry Pi Teams with Dolphin Design for More Power-Efficient Chips
- Matthias “bitluni” Balwierz Creates a Tiny POV Display Controller Core in Tiny Tapeout
- Steve Markgraf’s “hsdaoh” Taps Low-Cost HDMI Capture Dongles for High-Speed Data Acquisition
- M5Stack’s CoreS3 SE Drops the Sensors, Slashes the Price
- Olimex Launches an Industrial-Grade NXP i.MX 8M Plus System-on-Module for Industrial Edge AI
- Raspberry Pi Targets Edge AI, Partners with Hailo for the Raspberry Pi AI Kit
- Dmitriy Kovalenko’s CO2nsole Offers a Slick Text-Based Interface for Environmental Monitoring
- MiKoBots’ 3D-Printable Robot Arm Features an Open Source Vision-Capable Software Stack
- Intel Promises Better AI Performance, Longer Battery Life with Upcoming “Lunar Lake” Chips
- Spec5’s Ranger is an Espressif ESP32-Powered Ready-to-Run Meshtastic Communicator
- Michael P. Turns to a Raspberry Pi Pico to Reverse Engineer These Classic Plessey Micro-LED Displays
- MNT Research Begins Shipping the Aggressively-Open Pocket Reform Netbook
- MYIR’s Latest System-on-Module Taps the AMD Artix-7 FPGA
- An Analog Network of Resistors Promises “Machine Learning Without a Processor,” Researchers Say
- DFRobot’s Indoor Ambient Energy Harvesting Kit Seeks to Skip the Battery for IoT Sensors and More
- Tommy Nielsen’s Sandwizz Turns KiCad Projects Into Wire-Free Breadboard Prototypes
- Atari’s Classic 600XL, 800XL Gain CP/M Support with This 1090 XL Zilog Z80 Expansion Board
- Arduino Cloud Gets Better Device Tracking with the New Advanced Map Widget
- Canonical’s Farshid Tavakolizadeh Turns a Raspberry Pi Into a Matter Gadget with Ubuntu Core
- Jan Dvorak’s Software-Defined Radio Is Built From a Raspberry Pi Pico — And Very Little Else
- A Tunable Metasurface Filter Could Give Future Drones Smart Infrared Crop-Monitoring Powers
- Researchers Demonstrate a Safe, Cheap, Flexible Water-Based Battery for Better Wearables
- Apple’s MacBook, iMac, and iPad Devices Get Matter-Capable Thread Radios — But Shh, It’s a Secret
- WeightAn’s Ray Marching Algorithm Turns an Arduino UNO Into a Seconds-Per-Frame 3D Renderer
- Mirko Pavleski Turns an Old Microwave Oven Into a Pocket-Friendly Spark-Shooting Tesla Coil
- Ihar Yatsevich’s Pocket-Sized WSPR Beacon Uses a SiLabs Si5351 and a Microchip ATmega328
- Classic 3D Rendering Tech Lives Again in the “World’s First 3dfx-Powered Laptop”
- Sam Hocevar’s KiCad Projects Imagine a World Where All Arduino Boards Use USB Type-C
- Oak Development Pairs a Lattice iCE40 FPGA with a Raspberry Pi RP2040 for the RPGA Feather
- These Clever Papercraft Critters Offer Robotic Movement — Through the Power of Air
- M5Stack’s Latest Espressif ESP32 Camera Module Includes Wi-Fi and Power-over-Ethernet Connectivity
- Raspberry Pi Floats on the London Stock Exchange, Brings in $211.5M to Fund Expansion and More
- Cortex Automation Aims for Plug-and-Play CNC Control with Its Teensy 4.1-Powered Neuron-1 Board
- Hozkinz Takes the Nintendo DK Bongo Controller for a Walk — Turning It Into a Portable Drum Machine
- ThingPulse’s Pendrive S3 Is an Espressif ESP32-S3-Powered Multi-Function USB Stick
- Jules Ryckebusch’s Gladys Is a Do-It-Yourself Hydrophone That Outperforms Commercial Competition
- A Human-Like Triple-Layer Sense of Touch Lets This Trash-Sorting Robot Feel Its Way to Success
- This Robotic Sniffer Dog Captures Hazardous Air Samples So You Don’t Have To
- Double-Spun PVDF Nanofibers Deliver Sensitive Flexible Sensing, Energy Harvesting for Wearables
- Flow Computing Promises a 100-Fold Performance Gain by Adding a “PPU” to a CPU
- Luca Schultz’s BikeBeamer Turns Your Wheels Into Wi-Fi-Equipped Espressif ESP32-Powered POV Displays
- Argon40’s Latest Argon ONE Case Packs a Raspberry Pi 5, M.2 NVMe Slot, and Even Analog Audio
- Jay Doscher’s Recovery Kit 2B Drops Back to the Raspberry Pi 4 for a Battery-Powered Rugged Build
- AlmaLinux 9.4, 8.10 Gain Support for the Raspberry Pi 5 Single-Board Computer
- Roman Revzin’s Crunch-E Puts an Espressif ESP32-Powered Music-Maker on Your Keychain
- Quectel Targets the Internet of Things, Industrial Networks with New Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Modules
- DeepComputing Unveils the RISC-V-Powered DC-ROMA II Laptop, Partners with Canonical on Ubuntu Port
- This Arduino-Compatible Macropad Makes Phonetic Typing Easier
- Herman Õunapuu Brings an Abandoned Printer Back From the Brink with a Raspberry Pi
- PLCs for You and Me: Hands-On with the Arduino PLC Starter Kit and Opta WiFi
- MvACon Gives Transformers Better 3D Understanding From 2D Cameras — with Minimal Overhead
- Framework Aims for Deeper Customization, Releases Framework Laptop 16 CAD Models
- Tod Kurtz’s “picotouch_bizard” Is a Business Card-Sized Pressure-Sensitive MIDI Controller
- This Student-Built Smart Bracelet Offers Round-the-Clock Monitoring for ALS, Parkinson’s Patients
- Atti Bagashov’s Giard{U}ino Energetico Delivers Water-Efficient Automated Indoor Gardening
- Franz “Fraens” Hirschböck’s 3D-Printed Bottle Labeler Takes a Pain out of Homebrew Hooch Production
- Remy van Elst Brings a Piece of Vintage Telephony Back to Life with a Simple Tone-Dialing Conversion
- LILYGO’s T-Glass Is a Low-Cost Espressif ESP32 Platform for Head-Up Display Projects
- Running Out of Desk Space? Take This Ultra-Tiny Ortholinear Keyboard for a Spin
- This Raspberry Pi Pico “Pack” Adds Two MIDI Ports Without Ballooning the Board’s Footprint
- Precor’s “Smart” Treadmills Vulnerable to Attack, IBM X-Force Researchers Warn
- Researchers Warn of Arm Memory Tagging Extension (MTE) Bypass, Vulnerabilities in the Google Pixel 8
- Sajeevan Veeriah’s New Library Aims to Ease the Use of Seeed’s LoRa-E5 with the Espressif ESP32
- Alif Unveils the Ensemble E1C, Packing a 46 GOPS AI Acceleration Alongside an Arm Cortex-M55 Core
- Sam Rossiter’s Rosmo Aims to Deliver an Easy-to-Build Robot Platform for ROS 2 and MicroBlocks
- TDK Boasts of a Hundredfold Boost in Energy Density for Its Next-Generation Solid-State Batteries
- Teledatics Prepares to Launch Its HaloMax Wi-Fi HaLow and LoraMax LoRa Comms Modules and More
- LIST Researchers Look to Test New Energy-Harvesting Technology for Small Satellites
- The postmarketOS Project Celebrates a Major Milestone as It Passes 250 Supported Devices
- Framework Announces a Partnership with DeepComputing for Its First RISC-V Mainboard
- Sipeed Univels the Lichee Book 4A, a Notebook for the “RISC-V Explorer”
- Microsoft Shrinks MakeCode to Make MicroCode, a Portable Programming Tool for the BBC micro:bit V2
- Peter Hill’s Business Card Doubles as a Handy Protoboard for Electronic Experimentation
- Adafruit’s “Code Learning” Infrared Receiver Delivers Modulated Signals for Advanced IR Projects
- Dylan Turner’s PS-OHK Is a One-Handed Keyboard with an Unusual, Single-Layer Layout
- This 3D-Printed “Reference Sugar Beet” Could Transform Crop Phenotyping — And You Can Print Your Own
- STMicroelectronics Launches the ST Edge AI Suite, Promises Inspiration and Easier Development
- The Open-Hardware RTC8088 Adds a Battery-Backed Real-Time Clock to Any IBM PC/XT or Compatible
- Sean Heber Builds an Electronic Etch A Sketch the Hard Way: With No Microcontroller
- Jeff Epler Saves Vintage Xerox 820 8″ Disks for Future Generations with an Adafruit Floppsy
- Nuvoton Unveils Its ReRAM-Packing Low-Power Arm Cortex-M23-Based M2L31 Microcontroller Range
- Joseph Naberhaus’ First Big Electronics Project Is a Doozy: Building a Computer From Discrete Logic
- Machenike’s KT84 Keyboard Packs a Low-Res “Pixel Screen” Alongside a Compact High-Res Panel
- Prototyping Magic: Hands-on with the Wire-Free Jumperless Breadboard
- Disposable NFC: Ken Shirriff Reverse Engineers the Tech Behind Montreal Métro Tickets
- Infineon’s CY8CKIT-062S2-AI Dev Kit Targets Low-Power ML and AI at the Edge
- Yeo Kheng Meng Clones the Classic Covox Speech Thing on a Chip — Thanks to Tiny Tapeout
- Stefan Wagner’s TinyStick Is a Compact Joystick/Mouse with a WCH CH32V003 RISC-V Hidden Inside
- Del Hatch’s ePiPod Offers a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W-Powered ePaper Take on Apple’s Classic iPod
- LILYGO’s T-Encoder Pro Is a Smart Espressif ESP32-S3 Rotary Encoder and Touchscreen Display
- Clyne Sullivan’s Solar-Powered NoiseCard Lets You Know When Things Get Too Cacophonous
- Raspberry Pi Connect Gets an SSH-Like Remote Console, Expands Support to All Models
- Joel Thorstensson’s PLC Box Packs a Stack of Siemens Industrial Automation Tech in a Portable Case
- SiFive Unveils Its Fourth-Generation “Essential” RISC-V Core Range — From 32-Bit MCUs to 64-Bit CPUs
- HaiLa Partners with e-peas on a Battery-Free Wi-Fi Backscatter System Powered by Ambient Light
- Davide Orengo’s Pulse Counter Taps an ESP32-S3 and LTE Modem to Track and Report Utility Usage
- Lucas Fernando Builds a Computer Vision Model for One Task: Spotting Naruto Hand Signs
- Is Cooking Your Motherboard a Surefire Fix for Faulty Electronics? Hold the Oven, Says iFixit
- This Transparent Edge-Lit Seven-Segment Display Is Clearly a Great Build
- This Metamaterial Captures and Boosts Tiny Vibrations, Delivering Electricity for the IoT and More
- GOWIN Goes High-Throughput with Its Arora-V GW5AT-15 FPGA, Targets 4k Video Applications
- Olimex’s Neo6502 Goes Portable as the Neo6502PC, a Compact Open-Hardware Tablet Throwback
- Oasa’s R1 Robot Mower Combines a Classic Reel Cutter with Bleeding-Edge Autonomous Smarts
- Josh Fox Wants to Put Computer Vision to Work Making Cycling Safer with the Survue Smart Light
- These Maple Seed-Inspired Twirling Robots Can Deliver Sensor Packages to the Most Remote Locations
- PINE64 Becomes the Latest to Adopt the Unusual Sophgo SG2000 Multi-Architecture Chip in Its Oz64
- This Kirigami-Inspired Mechanical Computer Needs No Electronics, Only Plastic Blocks and Tape
- Proposed Linux Kernel Patch Could Boost Raspberry Pi 5 Performance by Up to 18 Percent
- Will Whang’s FourThirdsEye Puts a Sony IMX294 Sensor on Your Raspberry Pi 5 or Compute Module 4
- Auterion’s New Skynode S is an Ultra-Compact Autopilot Platform with On-Device AI Smarts
- Andy Geppert’s Business Card Is Making Moves — As It’s a Literal Brushless Motor
- Alley Cat’s “Alley Chat Pocket HT” Brings Back the Pager with LoRa and Meshtastic Technology
- Quectel’s FLM263D Is a RISC-V Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy Module Targeting Matter Projects
- Wavelet Lab Picks Lime Micro’s LMS7002M for its High-Performance 8×8 xMASS SDR
- FOSSi Foundation El Correo Libre Newsletter Issue 75
- MyriadRF OTA Newsletter: Wavelet Lab Unveils the xMASS SDR, LimeNET Micro 2.0 Orders Open, a Raspberry Pi Pico SDR, and More
Digital Roundup – May 2024
Despite this, I’ve had a bumper crop of articles published online in May. Highlights include the launch of the Raspberry Pi AI Kit, in partnership with Hailo, and the Raspberry Pi Connect browser-based remote access platform, Lex Bailey’s incredible Sinclair ZX Spectrum-powered laptop, Pineberry Pi’s relaunching as Pineboards as it looks to branch out from Raspberry Pi accessories, neuromorphic computing in space, a one-Euro RISC-V personal computer, and a project to encode sound as serial data and play it back with nothing more than a resistor and a capacitor.
My hands-on review on the unPhone, an educational tool which combines the core features of a smartphone bar the actual “phone” parts and lives at the heart of an Internet of Things course at the University of Sheffield, was published on Hackster.io too – and will be followed by additional reviews this June.
- Lex Bailey’s Luggable Laptop Is Powered by a Sinclair ZX Spectrum — and Boasts Its Own Phone
- Pineberry Pi, Now Pineboards, Launches New PCIe Boards and Looks Beyond the Raspberry Pi 5
- Andrew Crawford’s MIDI Goblin Wants to Offer a Flexible Box of Tricks for Music and More
- A Sun and Moon Play Peek-a-Boo in Ben Krejci’s Home Assistant-Linked Solar Power Gauge
- Elehobica’s Raspberry Pi Pico-Powered Hi-Res Audio Player Sounds Like a Great Idea
- DeepSea Developments Modularizes the RTL-SDR for Multi-Receiver Software-Defined Radio Projects
- Petteri Aimonen Turns Scrap Razor Blade Plastic Into a Smart Periscope for Easy BGA Inspection
- AAEON Integrates a Hailo-8 Accelerator Into Its Latest UP Squared Pro 710H Edge Industrial PC
- This Arduino-Powered “Probability-Based Sequencer” Upcycles an Unreliable Kids’ Toy
- Ben Brooks’ Espressif ESP32-Based Beehive Monitor Gets His Buzzy Friends Talking to Home Assistant
- Sundance DSP’s TinyBeast FPGA Is a Compact Microchip PolarFire FPGA Board for Edge AI Acceleration
- SparkFun Delivers Ultra-Precise Location Measurements On the Go with the RTK Torch
- Waveshare’s UGV Rover Aims to Provide a Platform for Artificially Intelligent Raspberry Pi Robotics
- SupTronics’ Latest NVMe Board Connects a Whopping Four Drives to a Single Raspberry Pi 5
- Researchers Turn to Computer Vision to Track Down Asbestos Roofs for Safe Removal
- Arduino Unveils Opta Digital, Analog Expansion Modules for Bigger PLC Projects
- BrainChip Partners with Frontgrade Gaisler to Put Neuromorphic AI Smarts in Future Space-Ready SoCs
- Konstantinos Paraskevas’ NanoCell Aims to Deliver the Perfect ESP32-C3 Board for Battery Projects
- Rue Mohr’s 115kaudio Captures Audio as Serial Data — and Plays It Back with a Resistor and Capacitor
- Erik Bjorgan Makes Voice Cloning Easy with the Applio- and Piper-Based TextyMcSpeechy
- Picovoice Aims to Deliver Snappier LLM-Powered AI Voice Assistants with Orca
- Raspberry Pi Solves Remote Headless Connection Headaches with the Browser-Based Raspberry Pi Connect
- Hugging Face Targets Real-World PyTorch Robotics Projects with the Open Source LeRobot
- Oak Development Technologies Wants to Add a Little FPGA to Your Next Feather Project
- The H2Z80 Is a Zilog Z80-Based Compact Microcomputer Built Entirely on Perfboard
- Keri Szafir’s ThermoNIX Turns a Vintage Nixie Tube pH Meter into a Multi-Channel Lab Thermometer
- IMSAI Guy’s Contact-Free Oscilloscope Probes Are Built for the Low, Low Price of “Nothing”
- Swarming Microrobots Prove Able to Grab Bacteria and Microplastics Right Out of Dirty Water
- Melanie Allen Wants to Bring Dead-Man Switches to All with a 3D-Printable BusKill Adapter
- Variscite Expands the DART Pin2Pin System-on-Module Range with the Edge AI-Capable DART-MX93
- Some Smart Thinking About Always-On Wi-Fi Gets a Raspberry Pi Pico W Weather Station Sipping Solar
- Updated Matter 1.3 Standard Brings Energy Monitoring, Electric Vehicle Charging Support, and More
- SellersCircuits’ DIY Waveform Generator Is a Handy Raspberry Pi RP2040-Powered Synthesis Tool
- Tomas Pavlovic Brings Back a Czechoslovakian Classic, the Tesla PMI-80 Single-Board Computer
- Vansh Kumar Singh Puts Google’s Gemini AI in Your Pocket with This M5Stack Cardputer Gen AI Project
- Erich Styger’s MCU-Link-MR Promises Easier Debugging of Pixhawk, PX4 Drone and Robotics Hardware
- Ildar Rakhmatulin Is Back with More Low-Cost Brain-Computer Interface Tech: Meet the ardEEG
- Researchers Turn Fallen Leaves Into Working Electrochemical Sensors — By Blasting Them with Lasers
- Sipeed Goes for Computer Vision at the Edge with the Sophgo SG2002-Powered MaixCAM Dev Board
- SparkFun’s Latest RFID Reader Scans up to 300 Tags Per Second — But Don’t Stand in Its Way
- Owen Carter Makes it Easier Than Ever to Find and Use Fonts for Small-Screen MicroPython Projects
- Luwu’s XGO-Rider Is a Raspberry Pi CM4-Powered Companion Robot with ChatGPT and Gen AI Smarts
- Matthew Alt’s PiFex Turns a Raspberry Pi Into an Accessible Tool for Reverse Engineering
- Holybro’s New Pixhawk 6X Pro Promises Better IMU Results While the Jetson Baseboard Adds On-Board AI
- 52Pi’s Product W01 U2500 Adds High-Speed NVMe and Multi-Gig Ethernet to the Raspberry Pi 5
- Waveshare’s ESP32-S3-Matrix Pairs a Dual-Core Espressif Microcontroller with an RGB LED Matrix
- The Oura Ring Wearable Aims to “Address Health Holistically” with New Heart-Monitoring Features
- This Cyberdeck Build Uses the Iconic, Underpowered Sinclair ZX81 as Its Base
- LeoDJ’s USB2Speakon Crams an Entire USB DAC and Amp Into a Single speakON Connector
- Luke Maximo Bell and Father Built the World’s Fastest Drone — As Verified by Guinness World Records
- Heber’s Richard Horne Brings Back the Classic Computer Space Arcade Cabinet — Via 3D Printing
- Raspberry Pi Launches the M.2 HAT+, Improves NVMe Boot Support in the Raspberry Pi 5 Firmware
- Hubble Network Beats the Doubters, Makes Its First Earth-to-Space Bluetooth Satellite Connection
- This Zinc-and-Lignin Battery Promises Cheap, Eco-Friendly Storage for Solar Power
- Eric Nam’s Latest Project Clones the IKEA VINDSTYRKA Air Quality Monitor Onto an Espressif ESP32
- Waveshare’s Latest Sensor Adds a Thermal Camera to Your Raspberry Pi — or Any Device with a USB Port
- Kevin McAleer’s Voltara Is a Pint-Sized Raspberry Pi-Powered Zoltar Fortune Teller Replica
- Raspberry Pi Announces an “Expected Intention to Float” as It Seeks a Cash Influx for Further Growth
- The Humble Snail Inspired This Strong, Speedy, Single-Suction Cup Wall-Climbing Robot
- NetBurner’s SOMRT1061 Module Aims to Deliver ‘Networking in One Day’ for Space-Constrained IoT Work
- Seeed’s Latest reComputer, the R1000, Turns a Raspberry Pi CM4 Into an Industrial IoT Edge Box
- Olimex Unveils the RVPC, a Near-One-Dollar All-in-One RISC-V Retro-Style Computing Platform
- Studio LUFF’s Air Quality Sensor Turns Any Wall Into an Air Quality Index Gauge
- Your Arduino Cloud “Things” Can Now Integrate Into Google Home
- Light and Air Prove Dope Enough for Low-Cost, Environmentally-Friendly Semiconductor Devices
- Machdyne’s Raspberry Pi RP2040-Powered Blaustahl Wants to Store Your Text for 200 Years
- Avnet Unveils the Qualcomm-Powered QCS6490 Vision-AI Development Kit
- Nanoscale Glass Structures, 3D-Printed on the Tip of an Optical Fiber, Offer Robust Sensing
- Hands-on with the unPhone: A Compact Educational Gadget for the Internet of Things and More
- KoloKush’s DeskPal Puts a Classic 16×2 Character LCD to Work as a Smart Desktop Display System
- This 3D-Printed Roof Mounting System Turns a Raspberry Pi Into an Aurora-Capturing Flight Tracker
- Mike Norgate’s Airlytix ES1 Is a Feature-Packed ESPHome-Powered Environmental Monitor
- Gefinger Poken’s BlinkenLights Dev Platform Is a DIY Kit for Electronics Experimentation
- Voidbox Industries’ FLIP_C3 Espressif ESP32 Board Can Drink Up to 50V Without Breaking a Sweat
- M5Stack’s New LoRa Modules Offer Multi-Stack Support, External Antenna Connectivity
- Making Devices’ NightUSB Is a Compact Board for Experimenting with Microchip PIC18F14K50 USB Support
- Radxa Launches the ROCK 5C, 5C Lite Single-Board Computers — And Adopts Raspberry Pi’s PCIe Pinout
- Lex Bailey’s Fax Server Compiles Your Source Code — And Calls You Back with the Output
- Derek Woodroffe’s Pi Tele Cow Aims to Turn a Raspberry Pi Pico W Into a Portable VOIP Handset
- A New Chemical Mix Delivers Carbon Nanotube Yarn for Powering Wearables From Body Heat
- Jolla Partners with Venho.Ai on the Mind2, a “Privacy-First AI Computer” Accessory for Your Phone
- n°Garage’s LEDO Aims to Be the LEGO of LED PCB Origami Sculptures
- Modos Prepares to Launch Its Paper Monitor and AMD-Powered ePaper Driver Board
- Llama Group Pledges to Set Winamp Free with a Windows Source Code Release
- Waveshare’s BG95-M3 Zero Puts a Python-Powered Quectel Cellular Module in a Raspberry Pi Zero Format
- Qualcomm Puts Its Snapdragon X Elite Into a Compact SBC for Windows Artificial Intelligence Work
- New Control Approaches Could Deliver Commercial Energy-Harvesting Drones, Researchers Hope
- Erich Styger Demonstrates How to Drop a Microcontroller’s Power Draw by Orders of Magnitude
- With No Exposed Blades, the Totally Tubular AVERO Aims to Deliver an Intrinsically Safe Drone
- This Stamp-Size Silicone Patch Provides Continuous 3D Monitoring of Brain Blood Flow in Comfort
- EdgeCortix Unveils the 60 TOPS SAKURA-II Accelerator, Optimized for On-Device Gen AI
- Lidor Shimoni’s Tiny Titan Was the World’s Smallest Humanoid Robot — for a Brief While, At Least
- This Oceanographic Business Card Offers a Clever Way to Test OpenCTD Components
- Firefly Technology’s RK3562J Packs a Wealth of Isolated Connectivity for Industrial Projects
- A Stretchy Skin-Like Material, Embedded with Nanoparticles, Could Deliver Better Wireless Wearables
- Un Kyu Lee’s Dr. Love Puts a Classic “Love Tester” GSR Machine in Your Pocket
- El Correo Libre Issue 74
- MyriadRF Over-The-Air
Digital Roundup – April 2024
April has seen my interview with Matt Venn on the Tiny Tapeout project and related topics land on the Make: website, fresh newsletters for the MyriadRF project and the Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation (FOSSi Foundation), the launch of new Raspberry Pi Compute Module boards – though, sadly, not the ones for which everyone’s waiting – Espressif’s acquisition of M5Stack right before it launches a device powered by competitor STMicro’s silicon, a tiny ZX Spectrum-inspired games console, a major hardware upgrade for the MNT Reform laptop, and the promise from Syntiant that its latest “Neural Decision Processor” can deliver 30 giga-operations per second (GOPS) of compute in a microwatt power envelope.
The biggest news, however, was Zilog’s decision to discontinue the venerable eight-bit Z80 microprocessor family – just short of it reaching its 50th anniversary. The move does, at least, finally put to rest many a 1980s playground argument over whether the Zilog Z80 or the MOS 6502 is the superior chip – the 6502 having been selected to prove a foundry model for the production of fully-flexible semiconductors, a paper on which was published this month.
Special thanks to Professor Hamish Cunningham who, following my covering the project on Hackster.io, kindly sent me an unPhone to try – expect to see a hands-on review of that clever little gadget in the near future.
Now to see what May brings!
- DIY Silicon: Design Your Own Chips
- This Energy-Harvesting Keychain Accessory Takes Temperatures at the Tap of a Smartphone
- Nerdiy’s 3D-Printed Framework Turns an IKEA RIBBA Into a Seeed XIAO ESP32C3-Powered ePaper Dashboard
- M5Stack’s BugC2 Converts an M5StickC Microcontroller Into a Compact, Omnidirectional Robot
- YuzukiHD’s Eight-Core Avaota-A1 Includes a 2 TOPS NPU, RISC-V “Remote CPU,” and Connectivity Aplenty
- Frank Bernhardt’s 3D-Printable Housing Turns a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 Into a Slick Passively-Cooled NAS
- Apple’s ReALM Aims to Deliver Context-Aware LLM-Powered On-Device Edge AI Assistants
- Murata’s Type 2GT Module Offers a Tightly-Integrated Route to Tri-Band LoRa for the IoT
- US, UK Pledge AI Safety Collaboration in a Newly-Signed Memorandum of Understanding
- Peter Fairlie’s Meshtastic High-Altitude Relay Station Aims to Extend the Reach of His Home Node
- Arduino Targets Industrial Automation Education with Its New Opta-Based PLC Starter Kit
- NVIDIA Demonstrates Better LLM AI Through LoRA-Tuned Models Optimized in TensorRT-LLM
- Tim Alex Jacobs’ Orchestrion Puts Four Slide Whistles Under MIDI Control
- LLM Guardrails Fall to a Simple “Many-Shot Jailbreaking” Attack, Anthropic Warns
- Variscite Unveils the High-Performance Pin2Pin-Compatible DART-MX95 System-on-Module
- This 3D-Printed Electrospray Source Could Deliver Low-Cost At-Home Sample Analysis
- Hailo’s Latest Accelerator, the Hailo-10H, Promises On-Device Gen AI in a Sub-5W Power Envelope
- This Is the World’s Largest Astronomy Camera, a 3,200 Megapixel Beast to See Through Space and Time
- AMD Aims to Drive On-Device Gen AI with Its New Ryzen Embedded 8000 Series Processors
- Semidynamics Targets Easier, More Efficient Artificial Intelligence with Its RISC-V All-In-One AI IP
- Toradex Targets Edge AI with Its 32 TOPS-Capable Aquila AM69 System-on-Module
- ANAVI’s Dev Mic Is a Raspberry Pi RP2040-Powered Customizable Microphone for Machine Learning Work
- n°Garage’s FlexiBall Is an Icosidodecahedral Surface-Mount Soldering Challenge
- u-blox Unveils New Matter-Capable Bluetooth Low Energy Modules, the ALMA-B1 and NORA-B2
- NXP’s MCX W Series Offers Thread, Zigbee, and BLE Support — with New Bluetooth Channel Sounding
- Espressif’s Guide Offers Easier Risk-Free ESP32-C3 Security Experimentation via the QEMU Emulator
- The unPhone Puts a Hackable, Educational, ESP32-S3-Powered LoRaWAN Gadget in Everyone’s Hands
- Kiu’s KHA Is an “Over-Engineered” Subrack System for RS-485 Smart Home Control
- This Plug-and-Play “Exceptional Point” Tuning Platform Can Boost Optical Sensors’ Sensitivity
- Arm Targets the AIoT with High-Performance Ethos-U85 NPU and Corstone-320 Platform
- Quectel’s BG95-S5 Is a Drop-In Satellite Communications Upgrade for Your IoT Projects
- Syntiant’s Third-Gen “Neural Decision” Chip, the NDP250, Packs 30 GOPS in a Microwatt Envelope
- Seeed Studio’s SenseCAP Watcher Combines Local TinyML with Cloud LLMs to Deliver Smart Monitoring
- SiFive Unveils the High-Performance, AI-Accelerating HiFive Premier P550 RISC-V Development Board
- Alif’s Balletto Microcontrollers Combine BLE and Matter Capabilities with AI Acceleration
- Qualcomm Announces the Edge AI RB3 Gen 2 Chip for IoT and Robotics and a “Micro-Power” Wi-Fi SoC
- Blues Unveils the $19 Notecard XP for Cellular IoT, New “Minimalist” Notecarrier X Series
- The Arm-and-RISC-V RVAM16 Aims to Make It Easier to Move From One Embedded Architecture to Another
- Canonical Extends Long-Term Support and Compliance to the IoT with Ubuntu Pro for Devices
- Embedded World Attendees Spot Unannounced Raspberry Pi Monitor, AI Camera Products
- Silicon Labs’ Latest xG26 Chips Boast the “Highest Combination of Flash, RAM, and GPIO” for Matter
- Intel Goes Gunning for NVIDIA’s Gen AI Crown with Its Gaudi 3 Accelerator
- SparkFun Taps Renesas for Its New, High-Performance Bluetooth Low Energy Thing Plus RA6M5 Board
- Imagination Goes After Linux and Android Smart Devices with Its New Catapult APXM-6200 RISC-V CPU
- Oak Development Technologies Revamps the IcyBlue Feather FPGA Board, Launches a V2 Variant
- Lixie Labs’ Emotiscope Is a “Powerful Bridge Between Sight and Sound”
- The LattePanda Mu Packs an Intel N100 Processor Into a Compact Computer-on-Module
- Tod Kurt’s “picoslidertoy” Delivers 25 Capacitive Touch Inputs to a Raspberry Pi Pico — with Sliders
- The BitByte Is a Teensy 4.1-Powered Handheld Console with a Beginner-Friendly “Micro VM” Environment
- Meta’s OpenEQA Benchmark for Embodied AI Finds Current Vision and Language Models Are “Nearly Blind”
- The 8BitFlux “Poor Man’s Keyboard” Gives Your Apple I or Apple II Flip-Switch ASCII Powers
- This Shrunken ZX Spectrum+ Emulator Boasts a Fully-Working, Albeit Minimalist, Keyboard
- Jay Doscher Revisits the Raspberry Pi Recovery Kit with a Simplified Build, Faster Raspberry Pi 5
- Espressif’s ESP32-H4 Offers Dual-Core Low-Power Bluetooth 5.3 Low Energy, IEEE 802.15.4 Capabilities
- Shade Reogen’s PicoNtrol Brings Modern Bluetooth Pads to the Atari 2600
- MNT’s Highly-Open Reform Laptop Gets a Major Speed Boost From New RCORE SOM Upgrade
- GigaDevice Embraces Arm Again with Its Performance-Centric Cortex-M33 GD32F5 Microcontrollers
- James Lewis Puts a Nordic nRF7002 Design Kit to Work Making a Dehumidifier Smart
- OptiGap Turns 3D Printer Filament Into a Bend Sensing and Localization System for Soft Robots
- Sebastian Harnisch’s Slick Programmable Power Resistor Handles Up to 400W
- Radxa’s AICore SG2300x Module Brings 32 TOPS to Bear on Edge AI, On-Device Generative AI
- The RaceBox Micro Is a Teeny-Tiny 25Hz Bluetooth GNSS Data Logger for RC Racing and More
- Hardkernel Unveils the ODROID-H4 Family, Boasting of a 36-83 Percent Performance Boost
- 3D-Printed Document Scanner Captures Sharp Scans with a Raspberry Pi and Camera Module
- Adafruit’s Latest QT Py BFF Offers CAN Bus Connectivity in a Compact Form Factor
- Steve Chamberlin’s VGA Mac Sync-inator Gets Vintage Apple Hardware Playing with Modern Monitors
- MLCommons Releases a Proof-of-Concept Benchmark for Classifying the Safety of Generative AI Models
- Dmitry Dmitriev’s Arduino-Powered Control Unit Gets Vintage Flip-Dot Displays Ticking Once Again
- Atlas Is Dead, Long Live Atlas: Boston Dynamics Drops Hydraulics as It Targets Commercialization
- Intel Aims for Efficient Brain-Scale Neuromorphic AI Research with the Loihi 2-Powered Hala Point
- These 3D-Printed TPU “Soft Skin” Pads Give Robots a Low-Cost, Highly-Sensitive Sense of Touch
- Arm’s Rene Haas Coughs to AI’s “Insatiable Energy Needs,” But Says His Company Can Help
- MLCommons Releases Latest MLPerf Tiny Benchmark Results for On-Device TinyML
- Probabilistic Computers Driven by Stochastic Nanomagnets Hint at Major AI Efficiency Gains to Come
- CRTypist Mimics How Humans Use Touchscreen Keyboards to Improve Future Autocorrect Systems
- Zilog Calls Time on the Venerable Z80, Discontinues the Standalone Z84C00 CPU Family
- This 3D Printer DNGE “Ink” Delivers Flexible Devices Without Mechanical Joints
- STMicroelectronics’ Latest Six-Axis IMU, the LSM6DSV32X, Packs a Machine Learning Core for TinyML
- Kingham Xu’s FryPi Aims to Deliver a Compact Open Source STM32F4 Platform for TinyML Projects
- Eric Benson Emerges From the Vault with This Fallout-Inspired Vault-Tec Cyberdeck Build
- Turn Any HDMI or DVI Display into an Adafruit IO Dashboard with the Ruiz Brothers’ Latest Guide
- This Carbon Dioxide-Guzzling Nanogenerator Hints at Carbon Negative Power for Future Devices
- Tomeu Vizoso’s Open Source NPU Driver Project Does Away with the Rockchip RK3588’s Binary Blob
- Home Assistant Is Now an Open Home Foundation Project — As Its Creators Cast a Wider Net
- Grubby Brings Sonic the Hedgehog 2 to the TI-84+ CE Calculator — Thanks to the Zilog eZ80 CPU
- Blagojche “Bill” Kolichoski’s Soil Moisture Sensor Delivers Wireless Data for Smarter Irrigation
- Chris Combs’ Take on The Great Wave Is a Splash of Electronic Artwork That Watches You Back
- Espressif Snaps Up a “Majority Stake” in Internet of Things Specialist M5Stack
- Researchers Turn to Game Theory to Boost Throughput in Shared Wi-Fi Access Points
- Silicon Labs Targets the “Ambient IoT” with Its Ultra-Efficient xG22E Wireless SoC Family
- Daniel Theurich’s Sleek 3D-Printed Phone Stand Hides an Integrated Qi Standard Wireless Charger
- Arduboy’s Kevin Bates Is Back with an ESP32-S3-Powered All-in-One: The Singleboard Alpha
- Prusa’s Firmware 6.0.0 Brings Easier Object Cancellation and a Surprise Touch Interface
- Alon Borenshtein’s Arduino-Powered BotGammon Robot Plays a Mean Game of Backgammon
- This 3D-Printed Desk Toy Serves as a Tutorial in Servos and Flex Sensors
- Elehobica’s Digital Audio Recorder Captures S/PDIF Sound with a Raspberry Pi Pico
- OctoPrint 1.10.0 Brings Big Performance Gains, a Security Fix — and Earnable Achievements
- Raspberry Pi Expands Its Backwards-Compatible Compute Module 4S Family, Adds More RAM
- Oleg Tarasov Smartens Up a Basic Gas Boiler with an ESPHome-Driven OpenTherm Thermostat System
- These Rubber-Like Micro-Supercapacitors Keep on Ticking Even When Stretched, Folded, or Wrinkled
- Researchers Turn to the Humble MOS 6502 to Prove a Multi-Project Foundry Model for Flexible Chips
- Glen Akins’ Bike Rack Gets Smart Yet Accessible Lighting, Thanks to Zigbee, MQTT, and Python
- Marco Romboli’s Arduino Nano ESP32-Powered Environmental Monitor Celebrates Earth Day in Style
- Arducam’s Pivistation 5 Pairs Hawkeye, Darksee, or Klarity Image Sensors with the Raspberry Pi 5
- Microsoft Announces the Surprise Release, Under a Permissive License, of the MS-DOS 4.00 Sources
- A Single-Photon Lidar System Promises Lighter, Lower-Power 3D Scanning for Drones and More
- Eivind Holt’s Portenta H7-Powered TinyML Camera Tracks Dangerous Icicle Formations
- Nuvoton’s New Dual-Core NuMicro MA35D0 Chips Aim for the Industrial Edge
- Renaldas Zioma Aims to Do What Zilog Won’t: Keep the Vintage Z80 in Production with the FOSS Z80
- Chad Kapper’s Outlet Checkers Tap Into Espressif’s ESP-NOW for Peer-to-Peer Circuit Breaker Tracking
- M5Stack Launches the STMicro STM32MP135-Powered CoreMP135 Module for the Industrial IoT
- Espressif Hits Some Major Milestones with Its Newly-Expanded ESP ZeroCode Development Platform
- Okuboheavyindustries’ “Stellar Proximity Detector” Warns of Solar Radiation Through Blinking Lights
- Edward Kisiel’s SBC Case Builder Will Generate Customizable Designs for Over 100 SBCs and More
- James Fowkes’ Raspberry Pi Mains Power HAT Aims to Reduce the Board’s Total Footprint
- Bantam Tools, Fresh From Its Evil Mad Scientist Acquisition, Launches the New NextDraw Plotter Range
- Google Removes RISC-V Support From the Android Common Kernel — But Denies Abandoning the ISA
- El Correo Libre Issue 73
- MyriadRF OTA: A LimeSDR DMR Tier III Trunked Base Station, EM Eye Eavesdropping, Software-Defined GPS, and More
Digital Roundup – March 2024
I’ve covered Andrew “bunnie” Huang’s continued work on the Infrared In-Situ (IRIS) silicon inspection project, a vacuum-tube PDP-8 clone, the third-generation “wafer scale” chip from Cerebras, and a 30-cubit quantum computer for your desk – in simulation, at least — along with an “invisible drone,” the KingKong edge AI camera system, and an “inception” attack against virtual reality users.
In chronological order:
- The Open Beam Interface Offers Digital Image Capture From Almost Any Scanning Electron Microscope
- Renesas Promises High-Efficiency Edge AI, Computer Vision for Your Next Robot with the RZ/V2H
- Digilent’s Analog Discovery Pro 2230 Aims to Deliver Pro-Grade Oscilloscope Functions in Compact Box
- Chen Liang Brings the Multimedia PC to Modern Microcontrollers with an FMV MPEG-1 Decoder
- James Brown Publishes a Bill of Materials for His Impressive Volumetric POV Display
- The ThingPulse ePulse Feather C6 RISC-V Development Board Promises an ~18µA Low-Power Sleep Mode
- Peter Seibold Finds a New Use for the Vintage AGP Slot, Doubling the Throughput of a Retro-Style NAS
- Stefan Wagner’s Development Board Adapter Is a Flexible Friend for Microcontroller Experimentation
- Kevin Santo Cappuccio’s Jumperless Breadboard Gets a High-Speed Probe Mode for Rapid Rewiring
- Scott Leggett Cracks a GoodWe Solar Inverter, Smart Meter for Local Prometheus Monitoring
- Orlie’s Coffee Machine Upgrade Boosts Accessibility By Swapping a Touchscreen for Chunky Buttons
- Yuri Electric Co.’s Kaki Pi Packs a Renesas RZ/V2H for High-Performance Edge AI Robotics and More
- Liz Clark’s MEMENTO Smart Camera Sends Images to OpenAI for Textual Descriptions and More
- Cal Bryant Takes Charge of His PC’s Cooling System with a Clever Python Script and Grafana
- BrainChip’s Neuromorphic Akida Goes Orbital as Optimus-1 Takes the ANT61 Brain Computer Into Space
- David R. Carroll’s M5Stack M5StickC Plus Tetris Uses a Clever Single-Button Input Scheme
- Tenstorrent Launches Its RISC-V-Powered AI Inference Acceleration Boards, the Grayskull e75 and e150
- Evan Allen’s TTL-to-Composite Adapter Board Aims to Give Video Outputs to Retro Gear — And More
- Richard Körber Brings a Commodore A1060 “Sidecar” Back to Life — with a Few Modern Tweaks
- STMicro Goes Concurrent with Multi-Protocol BLE, Zigbee, Thread, and Matter STM32WBA55, -54 Chips
- This Thin Magnetic Rectangle Could Power High-Performance, High-Efficiency Spintronic Computers
- Golioth Platform Updates Hands Device Management, Over the Air Updates to Free-Tier Users
- This NVIDIA Jetson-Powered “Invisible Drone” Disappears From Radar in a Flash
- Lime Micro Unveils the LimeNET Micro 2.0, a Raspberry Pi CM4-Powered LimeSDR XTRX Radio Powerhouse
- STMicro’s STM32 Family Makes the 64-Bit Jump with New Edge AI, 3D-Capable STM32MP Parts
- Edge Impulse Partners with Arm to Integrate with the Arm Keil MDK for Easier, Faster Edge AI
- CHAI Acts as a Smart Espressif ESP8266 Gateway Between Home Assistant and CAME Gates
- AudioWanderer Puts Llamas on Notice with a Raspberry Pi-Powered Physical Winamp-Themed MP3 Player
- Security Researchers Use a Flipper Zero to “Steal” a Tesla Model 3, Fanning the Flames of Ban Plans
- Alex Cranz Finds a “Digital Ghost” Lurking in Her Brother’s Newly-Purchased Smart Home
- Andrew “bunnie” Huang’s IRIS Robot Peers Behind Silicon Chips to Uncover Their Secrets in Minutes
- ILABS’ RP2040 Connectivity Board Offers Wi-Fi, BLE, and Cellular with Raspberry Pi’s Low-Cost MCU
- RAKwireless Releases the RUI3 Source Code, Aims to “Benefit Everyone” Using Its Hardware
- Reconfigurable “Electrostatically Doped” Transistors Could Mean Smaller, More Efficient Chips
- Juan Manuel Fernandez’s Python Library Aims to Improve Stepper Motor Handling on the Raspberry Pi
- Mike Rieker’s PDP-8/V Swaps Digital’s Transistors for a Beastly Vacuum Tube Processor
- Buy It Fix It Turns to ROM Dump Analysis to Pick Out the PIN Locking a Deep Sea Generator Panel
- IO Rodeo Goes Ultraviolet with Its New UV Open Colorimeter Tool for Citizen Scientists
- STMicro Unveils Its “Highest-Performing” Arm Cortex-M-Based STM32s Yet, the STM32H7R/S Range
- Arducam’s KingKong Pairs an OAK-SoM with a Raspberry Pi CM4 for an All-In-One Approach to Edge AI
- Salvatore Sanfilippo Gets the Raspberry Pi Pico Playing Audio Back, No External DAC Necessary
- Rop Gonggrijp Takes the Pain Out of Heltec HTIT-WB32LA Development with an “Unofficial Library”
- TECHiFAB Wants to Prove Memristors’ Capabilities with the Data-Correlating COR-RiSTOR Basic
- Cerebras’ Wafer-Scale Engine 3, the “Fastest AI Chip in the World,” Aims at Rapid Gen AI Training
- These High-Speed Flexible Circuits Can Drive Micro-LED Displays or High-Resolution Touch Sensors
- Stefan Antoszko’s Pink Noise Generator Packs a TI MSP430 and “a Handful of Resistors and Capacitors”
- These “Hair-Thin” Semiconductor Fibers Drive Smart Hats, Shirts, and Watch Straps
- RedirectedDoors+ Puts Door Handles on Robots for Better VR — While Keeping Its Users Contained
- The Raspberry Pi 5’s 3GHz Limit Is Lifted, Thanks to a “Very Not At All Recommended” Firmware
- This Cardboard Boba Fett Helmet Includes a Raspberry Pi-Powered Thermal Vision Mode and Mini-Map
- Valentyn’s Watch-Like Open Source Full-Body Tracker Aims to Deliver Better VRChat Immersion
- SB Components’ Trekko Pico GPS Logger Is a Compact RP2040-Powered Location Logger
- João Santos’ Two-Microcontroller Project Brings Back the Pager with a Web-Connected Twist
- V. Hunter Adams’ Raspberry Pi RP2040 Bootloader Spreads Like a Worm — But with Good Intentions
- Eric Schlaepfer’s “Goodgreat DS3” Clones the Classic Greengate DS3 Apple II Sampler — From Album Art
- LeoDJ’s DongleHider+ Packs Up to Three Logitech-Style Dongles Into a Single Framework Expansion Card
- M5Stack’s Programmable Power Supply Module 13.2 Offers 100W at Up to 30V for Core Boards and More
- MicroPython Plans a New Feature for the Raspberry Pi RP2040: Runtime-Defined USB Device Support
- NXP Partners with NVIDIA to Add TAO Toolkit to eIQ, Speeding Edge AI Development and Performance
- The CSA’s IoT Device Security Specification Promises Better Security, More Transparency
- STMicro Unveils the Entry-Level STM32U0, Drawing as Little as Half the Power of Its Predecessors
- PINE64 Enters the Home Automation Sector with the Privacy-Preserving PineVox Smart Speaker
- Olimex Makes It Easier to Get Old and Retro Systems Talking to Modern Displays with the VGA2HDMI
- Researchers Demonstrate “Inception Attacks” Against Virtual Reality Users
- Cyrill Künzi’s “Cute CO2 Gauge” Puts a Smile on Home Assistant Ventilation Monitoring
- Quokka Aims to Put a 30-Cubit Quantum Computer on Your Desk — in Emulation, at Least
- Tony Goacher Turns to a Laser Cutter as a Silkscreen Alternative for Home-Milled PCBs
- Sonocotta’s Raspberry Pi Media Center Is a Sleek Compact Streaming Box for Your Hi-Fi Setup
- These Energy-Recycling Actuators Can Cut a Robot’s Power Consumption By Up to 97 Percent
- Mike Rankin’s Compact Thermal Camera Packs a High-Performance Parallel Display in a Tiny Footprint
- AcqRel’s Factorio Yosys Project Puts a Fully-Functional RISC-V Core in the Popular Sandbox Game
- Corey Earl’s Taco Chicken Is a Tasty Espressif ESP32 Board for Industrial Control Projects
- The Pickle Pi Is a TRS-80 Model 100-Like Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W Tablet with Mechanical Keyboard
- NVIDIA Launches Its AI Workbench, Aims to Make ML and Gen AI Accessible to All
- A Vulnerability in Hotel RFID Door Locks Opens All Rooms “with a Single Pair of Forged Keycards”
- Renesas Targets Analog Digitalization with the New RA2A2 and Its 24-Bit Sigma-Delta ADC
- GoFetch Rips Secret Keys From Apple’s M-Series Processors Through a New Side-Channel Attack
- Pwn2Own Vancouver 2024 Hands Out More Than $1 Million in Prizes for Wide-Ranging Vulnerabilities
- The Retro Channel’s Video Debug Board Provides Easy Scope Probing for Vintage Hardware
- Nguyen Vincent’s Amulet Is a High-Power Moteus Alternative for Brushless Motor Robotics Projects
- Ryan Murphy’s Line-Power Smart Thermostats Expand Off-the-Shelf Sockets for Home Assistant Heating
- TechxArtisan’s Openterface Mini-KVM Promises an Open Source Approach to Handling Headless Systems
- Self-Heating Concrete, Powered by Paraffin, Could Mean an End to Snow Shoveling
- John Catsoulis’ Upgraded Scamp Family Offers a Platform for Embedded Forth Experimentation
- Undersea “Caller ID” Can Pinpoint Exactly Which Whale Is Calling
- Avnet’s MaaXBoard OSM93 Offers a Raspberry Pi-Like System for Energy-Efficient Edge AI Work
- Renesas’ In-House RISC-V Microcontroller Core Hits the Market as the 48MHz Low-Power R9A02G021 MCU
- Toshiba Expands Its TXZ+ M4K Motor Control Microcontroller Range, Offering Up to 1MB of Code Flash
- Espressif Leaks an ESP32-C5 “BETA3” System-on-Chip and Compact Development Board
- Matthias Rosezky’s Lightweight Head-Tracking Clip Brings a New Dimension to Sim Games
- Ambiq Unveils Its Next-Generation Edge AI Apollo510 Chip, Boasts of Major Efficiency Gains
- BeagleBoard.org Pledges to “Make Computers Open Again” with the New BeagleY-AI Single-Board Computer
- These “Super Permeable” Wearables Promise Comfort in Even the Sweatiest of Scenarios
- SIXSPEED’s Poki Is an Espressif ESP32-S3-Powered Companion Robot for Your Car
- SolidRun Partners with Hailo for a 20 TOPS Hailo-15H-Powered Edge AI System-on-Module
- Alex Fish’s Pescado Delivers Smooth “3D” Rendering on an Espressif ESP32-S3
- Databricks Releases DBRX, a State-of-the-Art Generative AI LLM, Under a Semi-Open Source License
- SparkFun Expands Its Thing Plus Range with a New Edge AI Ready ESP32-S3 Model
- Seeed Studio Announces Official ESPHome Support for Its mmWave Presence Sensor, SenseCAP Indicator
- Nuvoton Launches the M433, a Power-Sipping Microcontroller Built Around the Arm Cortex-M4F
- Jeff Epler’s Adafruit Feather RP2040 Adapter Gets Vintage TTL Computers Talking Modern HDMI
- Seeed Unveils the Compact Matter-Ready XIAO ESP32C6 Dev Board
- Pepe’s PCPU-NANO1 Is a One-Bit Processor Made From a Mere Five Transistors
- El Correo Libre Issue 72
- Over-The-Air: GRCon24 Call for Participation Opens, “Wireless Open Source Supremacy” with Osmocom, Scrap Antennas, and More
Digital Roundup – February 2024
It’s been a busy February, and a day longer than usual to boot, but if I had to pick some personal highlights they’d include this dual-display sunlight-readable PDA build, a tiny $5 mechanical keyboard, Paul Krizak’s amazing Wire Wrap Odyssey microcomputer, an anonymously-published 6,000 PPI boardview of the Nintendo Switch Lite, Wojciech Graj’s audio-only Doom port, and Tankgrrl’s Commodore 1541-style housing for a USB floppy drive.
- Marcel’s BeetleMeter Provides a Push Button Reading of Pet Beetles’ Environmental Comfort
- MadRadar Triggers “Hallucinations” in Autonomous Vehicle Sensor Systems, Researchers Say
- Colton Baldridge’s OS3M Mouse Is a Smart Open Source, 3D-Printable SpaceMouse Alternative
- C. Scott Ananian’s OpenEVSE Upgrade Adds a Touchpad, RFID Reader for Safer Energy Sharing
- Tankgrrl’s 3D-Printable USB Floppy Housing Is a Commodore 1541-Inspired Throwback for 3.5″ Drives
- This Compact Modular Robot Can Map, Inspect, and Even Repair Gas Pipes — No Digging Required
- Evan Grove Turns a 1990s Basketball Scoreboard Display Into a Zephyr IoT Device
- AI2’s OLMo 7B Is a “Truly Open Source” Large Language Model for Gen AI — Training Data and All
- Snap Recalls Its Autonomous Pixy Camera Drones, Warns of Battery Fire Risk
- These 3D-Printed “Pneumatic Logic Gates” Make for Robust, Electronics-Free Soft Robotics
- Eco-Friendly “Plant-Wearable” Sensors Can Pick Up Pesticides on Fruit and Vegetables
- Morten’s IoT Thing Is a Smart General-Purpose Project Board — and a Detailed KiCad 7 Tutorial
- IdeaZero’s Low-Cost Bench Supply Turns USB Power Delivery Into Whatever Voltage You Need
- Stefan Wagner’s USB PD Tester Is a Tiny Power Supply Gadget Built Around a RISC-V Microcontroller
- Banana Pi Unveils an Eight-Core Edge AI Development Board Built around a RISC-V Chip: the BPI-F3
- A Mid-Century Modern Clock Radio Gets a Surprisingly Simple Overhaul in Barry’s Upcycling Project
- Hrvoje Cavrak’s DeskHop Is a Slick Dual-Raspberry Pi Pico Keyboard-and-Mouse Sharing Switch
- Joe Burks’ OtterX Is an Eight-Bit “Neo-Retro” Machine with Commander X16 Compatibility
- Electro Boy Blends New and Old, Builds an Arduino UNO-Style Board for the Classic Intel 8051
- Chen Liang’s “Mirrorless Camera for Makers” Is a Tiny Photography Powerhouse
- Steven Bergeron Meza’s FrameDeck Is a Valve Steam Deck-Inspired Handheld for On-the-Go PC Gaming
- Data Recovery Experts Warn of Faulty Flash Components Popping Up, Relabeled, in USB Storage Sticks
- Thomas Roth Breaks Microsoft’s BitLocker in Under a Minute — with a $4 Raspberry Pi Pico
- The MCULink-Mini Is a Shrunken, Cost-Reduced But Fully-Featured Open-Hardware Debug Probe
- This Seeed XIAO ESP32C3-Based Alarm Is a Teeny-Tiny Motion Sensor with Smart Potential
- James Warner Frees a “Smart” Air Purifier From Its Proprietary App with a Bit of Reverse Engineering
- Sophgo Blends a Proprietary TPU with RISC-V and Arm Cores — and, Apparently, an Intel 8051 Clone
- Arduino IDE 2.3 Brings the Standards-Based Debug Feature Out of Beta
- 52Pi’s NVdigi HAT Combines an M.2 NVMe Slot with HiFiBerry Digi+ S/PDIF Digital Audio Outputs
- Sipeed Unveils the LicheeRV Nano Range, Tiny Edge AI Camera Boards Built Atop the Sophgo SG2002
- Brent Rubell’s Adafruit MEMENTO Smart Doorbell Offers a Privacy-Respecting DIY Alternative
- Seeed Studio’s Local Voice Chatbot Puts a Speech-Recognizing LLaMa-2 LLM on Your NVIDIA Jetson
- Google’s Bard Gen AI Is Now Gemini, While Gemini Advanced Promises to “Outperform Human Experts”
- A Robot Called the “Swiss Army Knife of Marine Research” Is on the Prowl for the “Jelly Web”
- Oliver Hagen’s DivingBoard Aims to Unleash the Power of the Roland DJ-Xi Synth
- Brilliant Labs Unveils Frame, Smart Glasses Delivering “AI Superpowers”
- CERBERUS 2100, Bernardo Kastrup’s Multi-Headed Educational Computer, Is Now on Sale
- Top DNG Builds a $600 Digital Radio Scanner on the Cheap — with a Raspberry Pi 5 and RTL-SDR
- The Government of Canada Seeks to Ban the Flipper Zero, SDR Dongles Over Car Theft Fears
- Scott Rapson’s Exhaustive Testing Finds the Easiest, Lowest-Latency Wireless Microcontrollers
- SparkFun Launches the Multi-Function Thing Plus ESP32-C6 with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and IEEE 802.15.4
- Will Warren’s GARAGINATOR Wants to Smarten Up Basic Garage Door Openers with Apple HomeKit Support
- Bit Eclectic Boots Your Apple II From an Unusual Source: A Website Pretending to Be a Disk Drive
- 3d Printz’s Case Turns a Raspberry Pi Into a Neat, 10TB-Capacity Network-Attached Storage Appliance
- Arvind Sanjeev’s SPIN Is a Synth with a Generative AI Twist — and a Turntable, Too
- Milk-V Drops the Unusual Sophgo SG2002 Into an Upgraded, AI-Ready Duo Development Board
- STMicro, Mobile Physics Partner Up to Turn Smartphones Into Always-On Air Quality Monitors
- Wojciech Graj’s Doom Port Eschews the Display Device in Favor of Rendering Everything in Sound
- Hypnotriod’s BeagleBone AI-64 Robot Has a Go Heart and a First-Person View
- Oliver Child’s Raspberry Pi Pico-Powered Sonolithographic Machine Makes Pretty Patterns with Sound
- Flipper Zero Gets the Big Screen Treatment with a Raspberry Pi RP2040-Powered Video Game Module
- Kingham Xu’s OV-Watch Is a Slick, $20 Open Source STM32 Smartwatch Built Around FreeRTOS and LVGL
- Pegor Karoglanian’s smahtSticker Is ChatGPT-Powered Social and Political Camouflage for Your Car
- Don Wilcher’s Radio Shack Science Fair Microcomputer Trainer Gets a Raspberry Pi Pico Accessory
- NVIDIA Launches Chat with RTX, a Free, Personalizable Large Language Model Chatbot for GeForce GPUs
- Edgen Aims to Deliver an Open Source Drop-In Replacement to OpenAI’s API, for Gen AI at the Edge
- Microchip Offers a Lower-Cost Entry Point for PolarFire SoC Experimentation with the Discovery Kit
- Luxonis’ Latest OAK Edge AI Camera Packs a Thermal Sensor for Data Fusion and Computer Vision
- Jay Carlson Hunts Down the Cheapest Flash-Equipped Microcontroller: a Puya 32-Bit Arm Cortex-M0+
- Vodafone, Lime Micro Unveil a Next-Generation 5G Network-in-a-Box Built Around a Raspberry Pi 5
- Limitbit Tech’s Doly Launches with the Promise of an Edge AI-Powered “Unique Personality”
- SparkFun Aims for Easier 10BASE-T1L Experimentation with Its MicroMod Single-Pair Ethernet Kit
- James Brown’s High-Speed Rotary Volumetric Display Experiments Take on New Depth — Literally
- The RC2014 Gets a Smart Emulated Sound Module as Spencer Owen Aims for a New Board Every Month
- Asus Refreshes the Tinker Board 3 Single-Board Computer with the New 3N Plus, 3N Lite
- Ken St. Cyr Gives a TRS-80 Model 100 a Serious Speed Boost with Steve Adolph’s “Turbo Mode” Mod
- Bojan Jurca’s ESP32 Oscilloscope Turns Low-Cost Microcontroller Boards Into Web-Connected Tools
- Olimex’s USB-NeoHub Promises Perfect Compatibility with TinyUSB on the Raspberry Pi RP2040
- Dr. Scott M. Baker’s MasterBlaster Puts Eight Intel 8008s to Work in a Game of Life “Supercomputer”
- This Low-Cost Compact Carrier Board Turns a Seeed XIAO SAMD21 Into an 18V Six-Channel Voltmeter
- Vlad Tomoiaga Puts Linux on the $0.15 WCH CH32V003 RISC-V Microcontroller
- Waveshare Launches New SIMCom-Equipped Espressif ESP32-S3 Boards for Cellular IoT Projects
- Blade Runner’s Image Enhancement Tool Nears Reality with an Algorithm for Seeing Around Corners
- Blues Partners with Skylo on the $49 Starnote, Offering Low-Cost Satellite Connectivity for the IoT
- BrainChip Opens Pre-Orders for Its Brain-Inspired Neuromorphic Akida Edge AI Box at $799
- The VoltSchemer Charger Attack Can Fry Your Phone, Credit Cards, Passport, and Even Whisper to Siri
- Nordic Semi Unveils the New nRF9151, a System-in-Package for Power-Efficient Cellular Projects
- CiferTech’s “EvilDuck” Is a Microchip ATmega32U4-Powered BadUSB for Security Testing, Automation
- Jake Wachlin’s MetaShunt Is a 10,000,000:1-Range Current Measurement Device for Low-Power Projects
- J. Chitpin’s ThinkDeck Is a Penkesu-Style Raspberry Pi Zero W Homage to Classic IBM ThinkPads
- Haruki Toreda’s HelTXT Lite Is a Compact, Standalone Node for Meshtastic Communication Networks
- Particle Announces M-Series “Multi-Radio” SoMs, Muon Dev Board, with LoRaWAN, Satellite
- Renesas Shows Off a High-Performance STT-MRAM Design for 200MHz-Plus Microcontrollers
- Liam Jackson Saves an Old HP MicroServer From the Scrapheap with a 3D-Printed Drive-Bay PC Bracket
- Jordt Bartolome’s DrivePACK Is a Smart, Highly-Flexible Replacement for Casio Keyboards’ ROM PACKs
- Andrey Konovalov Turns a Hacked Lenovo ThinkPad Laptop Into a Flexible USB Device Emulator
- Tristam R. Rolls His Own Slick ESP32 Smart Speaker for Private, Local Home Assistant Voice Control
- STMicro Unveils the High-Resolution All-in-One VL53L9 Direct Time-of-Flight LIDAR Sensor
- Joe Scotto’s Latest Hand-Wired Keyboard Boasts Flat-Topped “ScottoCaps” and Bluetooth Support
- Alistair Francis Hacks a Husqvarna Automower 305 for Bluetooth-Driven Home Assistant Control
- An Epic Journey in Reverse Engineering Ends with a 6,000 PPI Boardview of the Nintendo Switch Lite
- Qualcomm Launches Its AI Hub, Offering Optimized On-Device AI Models with Four Times the Performance
- Shake the Dust Off Your Minitel Terminals with the MiniPlay, an Arduino-Powered Game Cartridge
- Quectel Launches New Compact, Low-Power Yet High-Performance Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Modules
- The Arduino Nano 33 BLE Gets a Rev2 Refresh with Dual-IMU, Power Supply Upgrade, and More
- ADLINK’s New MXA-200 Can Handle Wi-Fi and 5G Gateway Operations with a Side of Edge AI
- Husqvarna’s “One Hell of an Update” Puts a Copy of Doom on Selected Automower NERA Robo-Mowers
- The Hardware-Oriented Microprocessor Simulator, HOMS, Unveils the Secrets in Black Box Chips
- Paul Krizak’s Wire Wrap Odyssey Is a Real Labor of Love for the Vintage Microcomputer Era
- DIY Guy Chris’ “Octopus” VI Curve Tracer Draws Oscilloscope Patterns to Identify Component Types
- TangibleFuture’s LOOI Turns Smartphones Into Ambulatory Companion Robots with ChatGPT Support
- This Sunlight-Readable Dual-Display PDA Acts as Its Own Software Development Tool
- Arduino’s Portenta Machine Control Gets a Revamped Library, New User Guide
- Christian Lo’s Tiny Mechanical Keyboard Costs Just $5 in Parts — and Makes a Perfect Giveaway
- Eirik Brandal’s “Shell-Tethered Vespa” Is Part Circuit Sculpture, Part Synthesizer, All Awesome
- Can You Steal a Car with a Flipper Zero? “Yes,” Says Nic, “But It Certainly Has a Few Caveats”
- FOSSi Foundation: El Correo Libre Issue 71
- MyriadRF Over The Air: A Raspberry Pi 5-Powered Network-in-a-Box, Decoding Moon Messages, Gqrx for Windows, and More
Digital Roundup – January 2024
- Negimeister’s Clever USB Debug Probe, Built Using an RP2040 “Compute Module,” Simplifies SWD
- Keigen7’s Sleek 3D-Printed Raspberry Pi 4 Cyberdeck Rings in 2024 in Style
- Eric Nam Showcases Meshtastic’s Capabilities with a LoRa-Powered Off-Grid iPhone Demo
- Bob Harbour Brings Modern Usability to a 1970s Electronic Load Box with an SCPI-Inspired Interface
- Roy Longbottom Pits 1976’s Cray-1 Supercomputer Against the Raspberry Pi Single-Board Computer Range
- Greg Zweigle’s “Stem Piano” Is a Teensy 4.1 or Raspberry Pi Powered Open Source Hybrid Digital Piano
- Inspired by Futurama’s Holophoner, the Soundweaver Aims to Turn Mood Music in Visualizations
- StenoKeyboards’ Asterisk Is a Stenographic Keyboard Capable of Hitting 200+ WPM with No Moving Parts
- Anthony Douglas’ Thermistor-Based Anemometer Is a Sub-Dollar Marvel — If You Can Calibrate It
- Charles Giguere’s GPIOViewer Library Gives You “X-Ray Vision” Into Espressif ESP32-Based Projects
- Dr. DIY’s Digital Level Is Built Based on ChatGPT’s Source Code and Wiring Instructions Outputs
- Nicholas Lekatsas’ Raspberry Pi Retrofit Project May Make This the Smartest Cuckoo Clock in History
- Leaning Tower’s “Pure Analog” GPS Receiver Is a Five-Board Marvel with a TinyFPGA BX at Its Heart
- The “Networked Hardware” Is an Espressif ESP32, Node-RED-Powered Gadget for Education and Art
- Ben Hardill Pens a New Guide to Getting a Raspberry Pi 5 Talking in USB Gadget Mode
- Dmytro’s ProPico Is an “Improved Raspberry Pi Pico” with Better ADC, USB Type-C, and More
- Intel Announces Articul8, a Spin-Out Focused on Turnkey Generative AI for Large Enterprises
- Orbbec Launches Long-Range AI-Packing Gemini 2 XL Depth Camera for Robotics and More
- Radxa Launches the Compact, Low-Cost Intel Celeron J4125-Based X2L Single-Board Computer
- Himax, Seeed Studio Partner on the WiseEye 2-Powered Edge AI Grove Vision AI Module V2
- Bosch, Infineon, Nordic, NXP, and Qualcomm Give a Name to Their RISC-V Joint Venture: Quintauris
- Jay Convertino Reverse Engineered the Classic ColecoVision to Create the Righteous Tentacle Clone
- SparkFun’s LTE Stick Packs a u-blox LARA-R6 for Voice and IoT Data Across North America
- Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 Boosts Performance for High-Resolution AR/MR, On-Device AI and ML
- Preetham Kyanam’s ArduRoomba Library Puts Your iRobot Roomba Under Arduino UNO Control
- Dimitris Dimitrakoudis Turns a Junk Drawer Espressif ESP32 Module Into a Hi-Fi Internet Radio
- Voltage Glitching Puts Tesla’s “Autopilot” Secrets on Display, Claim Researchers
- Low-Power Internet of Things Specialist HaiLa Samples Its First “Monolithic” Wi-Fi Backscatter Chip
- AONDevices Promises Ultra-Low-Power Always-On Edge AI with Its AON1120 RISC-V Chip
- Mistral’s MRD5165 Eagle Kit Packs a Powerful Compute Bundle for Advanced Autonomous Aerial Robots
- Dr. Scott M. Baker Builds Cees Meijer’s Jupiter Ace Clone — and Three New Add-On Modules
- Ambarella Promises High-Efficiency Generative AI, LLMs with the New N1 System-on-Chip
- Advanced Tinkering’s Adjustable Power Supply Goes From 20kV to 50kV — Thanks to a 1932 Multiplier
- Joe Scotto’s First Hand-Wired Keyboard of 2024 Is the Compact, Mirrored ScottoKatana
- Samsung Declares the “Age of AI,” Will Launch a Revamped Ballie Companion Bot This Year
- A New Fast-Charging Solid-State Battery Designed Like a “Chocolate Truffle” Shows Serious Longevity
- LogLeg Silences a Noisy DIY Sim Racing Motion Rig — By Switching to a New Microcontroller
- OV Tech’s Pi.MX8 Offers a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 Alternative with On-Board AI Acceleration
- SparkFun Teams Up with Digi International for New Digi XBee 3, XBee RR IoT Carrier Boards
- Quectel Launches “Cost-Effective” KG200Z LoRa Module, Built Atop the STMicro STM32WLEx
- Intel Acquires Silicon Mobility, Aims at Automotive AI with New “Software Defined Vehicle” SoC Line
- Atmosic Unveils the Ultra-Low-Power ATM34/e System-on-Chip, Adding Thread and Matter Support
- Nino Ivanov’s CHRISSI Is a Microchip ATtiny85-Powered “Polybius Cube” Telegraph Machine
- DPPFA-Net Combines 3D LIDAR and 2D Camera Data to Help Autonomous Vehicles Spot Small Objects
- Orbbec Announces Hiwonder Partnership for NVIDIA Jetson-Powered Educational Edge AI Robots
- The PDBrick Is a USB Power Delivery Box with Serious Oomph, Pushing an Impressive 1.7kW
- DFRobot Brings RISC-V and Matter Compatibility to Its FireBeetle 2 Board with New ESP32-C6 Variant
- Coobie V2 Is a Web-Driven 512-LED RGB Cube Display, Built by a Student Trio
- Arduino’s Annual Open Source Report Celebrates Five New Boards, Major Growth, and More MicroPython
- SB Components’ Duo Display Sandwiches Two Roundy or Squary Smart Displays Into One Clever Bundle
- Jon Mackey’s WWVB Simulator Uses an STMicro STM32 to Fill in for NIST’s Colorado Radio Time Signal
- Bambu Lab Offers a “One-Way Ticket” to Installing Third-Party Firmware “X1 Plus” on Its 3D Printers
- GreatScott! Offers Low-Cost Solutions to a Big USB Power Bank Problem: Low-Current Shut-Off
- Kévin Courdesses Breaks the ESP32-V3, ESP32-C3, and ESP32-C6 Wide Open with a Side-Channel Attack
- The ULAdigitizer Sucks “Semi-Digital” Video Out of a ZX Spectrum for Pixel-Perfect Upscaling
- Betavolt Wants to Put a Nuclear Generator in Your Gadgets with Its 50-Year 3V BV100 Battery
- A “Critical Supply Chain Attack” on the PyTorch Infrastructure Raises Concerns — and a Bug Bounty
- Renesas Targets the Edge of the Internet of Things with Its New RZ/G3S Triple-Core System-on-Chip
- Bantam Tools Acquires Evil Mad Scientist, Brings Its Co-Founders In-House for New Art Machines
- Fang-Pen Lin Eschews Multi-Gig Ethernet for a USB4 Mesh Network Hitting Nearly 12Gbps Throughput
- Waveshare Launches an M.2 HAT+ Board for the Raspberry Pi 5 — for Under $10
- Samsung’s EX1 “Hip-Assist Robot” Shows Promise as an Exercise Assistant for Older Adults
- Maker’s Fun Duck Reverse Engineers a Cheap Kitchen Timer to Build a Custom User Interface Gadget
- Florin “VoltLog” C. Offers a Surprisingly Quick-and-Easy Wi-Fi Upgrade Trick for Rigol DHO800 Scopes
- Moises de Paulo Dias’ Arduino-Compatible Flower Is an Interactive Piece of Perfboard Art
- Waveshare Releases a Raspberry Pi 5 PoE HAT Design, Offering Cooling and Power in One
- Mohit Bhoite’s First Circuit Sculpture of 2024 Is the Cute “Cumin” Environmental Monitor
- The Web-@nywhere Lives Again, Thanks to Cameron Kaiser, Putting 93kb of the Web on Your Wrist
- Renesas Unveils Its “Lowest Power Consumption” Dual-Core Flash-Equipped BLE Chip, the DA14592
- SparkFun’s Pro Micro Range Gets a Little RISCier with the New Pro Micro ESP32-C3 RISC-V Dev Board
- Makerfabs Launches the Maduino Zero SIM868 GPS Tracker with Bluetooth Low Energy and Cellular Modem
- Augusto Marinucci’s Solid State Tank Is a Sealed Low-Power PIC16 Watch with a Homebrew ePaper Screen
- Marb’s Lab Builds an Arduino-Compatible Molecular Switch, Flipped with Laser Beams
- Joe Scotto’s Latest Hand-Wired Keyboard Is a Compact Gadget for Live Streaming: The ScottoDeck
- Glen Akins Pythonizes a Set of XMCOSY RGBW Patio Lights for Automated Per-Light Control
- Tavis Shows Off a Simple, Low-Cost Way to Build Meshtastic Nodes — with Harbor Breeze Solar Lights
- Cologne Chip Starts Making Its Toolchain Open Source, Releases a GateMate Integrated Logic Analyzer
- Dangerous Prototypes Unveils the Next-Generation Bus Pirate 5, Now Powered by a Raspberry Pi RP2040
- Olimex Unveils the ESP32-H2-DevKit-LiPo, Built for Low-Power Matter and the Internet of Things
- Revitalize Your Older Electronics with MagSafe-Style Wireless Charging — in 15 Minutes
- Arduino Education Unveils Alvik, an Arduino Nano ESP32-Driven MicroPython Robot
- SupTronics Launches a Range of Raspberry Pi 5 NVMe Storage Boards — and a SATA One, Too
- The Apple Touch Bar Lives a Life Free of Its MacBook Pro Prison, Thanks to Some Reverse Engineering
- Morse Micro Pushes Wi-Fi to the Limits with a Two-Mile Wi-Fi HaLow Video Call Demo
- This Step-By-Step Guide From “Coreyfro” Gets Your Raspberry Pi 5 Running on >2TB NVMe Drives
- The National Science Foundation Leads the AI Charge with Its NAIRR Pilot Program
- Sam Hocevar’s Project-piCo Is an Open-Hardware Raspberry Pi Pico Clone with a Shiny USB Type-C Port
- This Raspberry Pi-Powered Smart Fridge Keeps an Eye on Ingredients with OpenAI’s GPT-4 with Vision
- Wesley Elfring’s AirQuality V3 Is a Low-Cost Broad-Function Do-It-Yourself MQTT Air Quality Monitor
- EIM Technology Unveils Its Revamped STEPFPGA-Based Electronics Education Bundle
- Arducam Unveils the PiNSIGHT, a Luxonis OAK-SoM Add-On for Raspberry Pi 5-Hosted Edge AI Work
- Ben Henshaw’s Ouch! Offers Delay-Free Interactive Video Art on a Raspberry Pi
- Augusto Baffa’s Baffa-2 Homebrew Micro Gains Apple II+ Compatibility — Including Expansion Cards
- Libre Computer’s AML-S905D3-CC Solitude Is a Low-Cost Raspberry Pi-Like SBC for Edge AI Projects
- Pwn2Own Automotive 2024 Comes to a Close with Near 50 Vulnerabilities and Over $1 Million in Prizes
- Questwise Aims to Take a Battery Out of Push-Button IoT Signaling with Its Energy Harvesting Kit
- Markus Opitz’s Tiny Camera Takes a Brute-Force Approach to Power Saving
- Femtosecond Laser Light Etching Could Turn Future Windows Into Transparent Solar Panels
- Umut Sevdi’s WearPico Turns a Raspberry Pi Pico W Into an RP2040-Powered Smartwatch Platform
- Ken Shirriff Offers an Introduction to Reverse Engineering CMOS Chips From Die Shots
- A Look at a Flickering Candle LED Through a Microscope Reveals a Surprise: A Microchip PIC Clone
- Unethical Info Fights Back Against Forced Filter Replacement with a Xiaomi Air Purifier DRM Guide
- Jake Wachlin’s Nanosleeper Is a “Feather-ish” Development Board Delivering a Sub-100nA Sleep Mode
- Flo’s Espressif ESP32-S3-Based Under-Floor Heating Controller Aims to Smarten Up Your Toasty Feet
- Ryan Susman’s NodeMCU-Powered Battery Monitor Tracks UPS Status and Fires Off Twilio SMS Alerts
- Simon Monk Puts Three Popular Microcontroller Boards Head-to-Head in an ADC Showdown
- Hugo Landau Finds an Unexpected Denial of Service Vulnerability in Modern Trains: The Toilet Lock
- Inkbox Builds a Custom Computer with a Difference: It Lives Entirely Within Microsoft Excel Files
- Raspberry Pi Confirms a Planned IPO, But Says Hobbyists Will Remain “Incredibly Important”
- Renesas Goes After Motor Control with Machine Learning Smarts, Launches the RA8T1 Microcontroller
- Qualys Warns of a GNU C Library Flaw Leading to a Privilege Escalation Vulnerability in Linux
- MyriadRF Over The Air: Ebrahim Bushehri Talks LimeSDR XTRX and LMS8001, LibreCellular Progress, Clever Antennas, and More
- FOSSi Foundation El Correo Libre Issue 70
Make: Magazine, Volume 87
First, the insert itself. For those unfamiliar, Make: Magazine’s Guide to Boards is a definitive pamphlet designed to provide the specifications – from size and power requirements to processor cores and memory – of the most popular, interesting, or unusual microcontroller and single-board computer development boards around. Updated annually, it offers at-a-glance comparatives to help you pick the hardware for your next project – and, as in previous years, I was given the opportunity to select boards for inclusion and update the data ready for the new year.
At the front of the 12-page insert, which covers a total of 81 boards this year, I also penned a piece on the industry’s exit – by and large, with a few exceptions – from the long-running component shortage crisis. The majority of boards which had been out-of-stock or in short supply for a year or more are now flowing freely, and both Arduino and Raspberry Pi have even been able to launch new designs: the Arduino Uno R4 family and the Raspberry Pi 5. Thanks here go to Adafruit’s Limor Fried and Raspberry Pi’s Eben Upton for taking the time to talk to me for the piece.
Thanks, too, are due to Matt Venn, creator of the Zero to ASIC Course and recently-launched Tiny Tapeout – educational courses which teach anybody how to make their own application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), with hardware delivered at the end for you to try. From its origins in being prepared at just the right time to the success of its initial production runs, this four-page feature in the magazine proper offers an insight into Venn’s impressive work in democratising chip design.
As an added bonus, I was also selected to provide my opinion on the world’s greatest fictional spy to tie in with the issue’s feature on DIY spy gadgetry: see the contributors’ boxout on Page 4 for my answer!
All this and more is available in Make: Magazine Volume 87, available in well-stocked bookshops and newsagents now or online with global delivery from the Maker Shed.
The Official Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide, 5th Edition
The new Beginner’s Guide has enjoyed a complete overhaul. Brian Jepson, the new head of publishing at Raspberry Pi Press, has introduced a new production approach which has resulted in a book that’s sleeker, cleaner, and more accessible than ever before – and at a beefy 278 pages, it’s also the longest edition yet.
That extra length comes courtesy of the inclusion of a bonus chapter on the Raspberry Pi Pico and Pico W microcontrollers, which serve as excellent companions to the main Raspberry Pi single-board computers. There’s also a fully updated getting started guide for setting up the Raspberry Pi 5, as well as the Raspberry Pi 400 and Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W.
This is my first time working with Brian, and it’s been a blast – from getting to grips with a whole new and considerably sleeker production process, which will mean easier updates in the future, to going through the material with a fine-tooth comb to make the book the best it could possibly be. Thanks too go to everyone else involved in the process: editor Liz Upton, interior designer Sara Parodi, Nellie McKesson in production, Brian O’Halloran for new photography, graphics editor Natalie Turner, head of design Jack Willis, and of course returning illustrator Sam Alder, plus all the others at Raspberry Pi Press.
The publication of the 5th Edition in English won’t be alone on the shelves for long, either, with Brian having confirmed translations into more languages than ever before: Danish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.
The Official Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide, 5th Edition is available in all good bookstores now, in Raspberry Pi Stores and authorised resellers, and online with global delivery from the Raspberry Pi Press store; a digital copy will also appear, free of charge, in the Raspberry Pi Bookshelf app on Raspberry Pi OS in the next few days.
I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it.
Custom PC, Issue 235
Custom PC was my first print byline, and I’ve been writing for the magazine near-continuously my entire career. Hobby Tech itself has been running in the magazine for two months short of a full decade without a single missed deadline, over which time I’ve seen hobbyist products launch and prosper or wither on the vine – along with, of course, a sprinkling of vapourware. I’ve created benchmarks for microcontrollers and single-board computers, put together a custom workflow for high-resolution thermal imagery with visible-light backdrops, taken and edited quite literally thousands of photographs, reviewed hardware, software, and books, interviewed a broad range of people, and penned guides for everything from a hardware RSS feed reader to compiler optimisation.
I am determined that this will not be the end of Hobby Tech, which has long been a popular section of the magazine. In the coming months I’ll be seeking a new outlet for the column – and if you have a publication you think may be interested, please do send the editor my way!
For this final issue of Custom PC, meanwhile, I took a look at the impressive Open Circuits, the CRUMB Circuit Simulator, and the news of Sipeed’s upcoming LM4A system-on-module and PINE64’s PineTab2.
Open Circuits, to start, is Eric Schlaepfer and Windell H. Oskay’s love-letter to electronics. Published by No Starch Press, the hardback tome is a full-colour investigation of what actually goes into electronic components – from multi-layer printed circuit boards and integrated circuits to vintage devices like valves and simple gadgets like switches. We’re not just talking theory, here: the authors literally grind the components down to reveal their inner workings, capturing cross-sectional imagery which you won’t find anywhere else.
Originally a mobile app and now available on Valve’s Steam, Mike Bushell’s CRUMB is another way of looking at electronics – allowing you to build surprisingly complex circuitry in a realistic 3D environment from virtual components. Using SPICE for the actual simulation work, CRUMB offers a drag-and-drop approach to breadboard projects which keeps your desk free of clutter and which is surprisingly detailed – though perhaps a little tricky to operate at times.
All this, and more, is available for a limited time at your nearest newsagent or supermarket – for the last time ever. Goodnight, Custom PC Magazine, and rest well.