July has rolled to a close, so it’s time to take stock of everything I’ve had published in digital outlets over the past calendar month – and, as always, it’s quite the list.

Highlights this month include a look at a calculator aimed at the microcontroller developer, booting Linux from a Google Drive filesystem, ensmartening a cheap off-the-shelf robot mower, a pocket-size DECStation emulator powered by the popular Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller, the impressive Zeal 8-Bit Computer, a 3D-printed “Faux TRS-80,” and a magnetic exoskeleton for your hand – capable, its creators claim, of boosting your performance in games.

Not all news covered was good, though: Shapeways, a pioneer in 3D printing as a service and just-in-time manufacturing marketplaces, announced its bankruptcy this month.

Links for all my articles for July are available below, and there’s plenty more to come this August!

• Diving Deep Into the RCWL-0516 Sub-$1 Microwave Radar — and Turning It Into an S-Band Transmitter
• NVIDIA Proposes DoRA the Fine-Tuner as a LoRA Replacement for Better AI Models
• Dillan Mills Reverse Engineers the Sleep Number Smart Bed Hub — and Finds an SSH Security Hole
• Tyler Klein’s HexCalc Is a Compact Calculator for the Microcontroller Developer
• Erich Styger’s Raspberry Pi RP2040-Powered Business Card Is a Real Swiss Army Knife — Literally
• Anders Nielsen Brings an IBM Model M2 Keyboard Back From the Brink — and Offers a ChatGPT Warning
• Saren Ta?ç?yan’s Business Card Reveals Its Secrets Through Microfluidic Magic
• This Business Card Doubles as a Handy Battery Tester, Thanks to a WCH CH32V003 Microcontroller
• A Lightweight, High-Efficiency “Fluidic Engine” Could Drive Future Assistive Devices, Soft Wearables
• Shranav Palakurthi Taps into the Espressif ESP32-S3’s SIMD Powers, Doubles TinyML CV Performance
• The Tiny UmboMic Piezo Microphone Brings Us a Step Closer to Fully-Internal Cochlear Implants
• Ersei Picks an Unusual Boot Device for This Arch Linux System: Google Drive
• A Two-Laser 3D Printer Delivers Power, Cost Savings for High-Resolution Nano-Scale Objects
• Lambertus Gorter Gives a Low-Cost Robot Mower a Home Assistant Overhaul with an Espressif ESP8266
• Orange Pi’s CM5 Offers a High-Performance Alternative to the Raspberry Pi CM4
• Bob Harbour Taps Industrial Design for This Slick Two-Box Weather Station
• Martijn Braam’s Unusual Ethernet Switch Has One Reversed Port — for Linux Management Experiments
• Benjamen Lim Saves Some Smartwatches From the Scrapheap with a Little Reverse Engineering
• Seeed Studio Offers Meshtastic Support in Its Latest Wio Tracker 1110 Update
• The DECStation 2040 Puts What Was Once the Fastest UNIX System in the World in Your Wallet
• STMicroelectronics Brings Its Global Shutter BrightSense Image Sensors to the Mass Market
• Tim Kuhlbusch’s BetaBoard Is a Pocket-Sized, Raspberry Pi RP2040-Powered Particles Physics Lab
• Mixtile’s Edge AI Box Turns a Blade 3 or Edge 2 Kit Into a Computer Vision Processor for IP Cameras
• The Netagotchi, “Pwnagotchi’s Older Brother,” Sits on Your Desk and Protects Your Network
• 3D Printing Specialist Shapeways Has Gone Bankrupt — Leaving Customers Adrift
• The n-fuse PoE HAT Provides Power and Range of mPCIe and M.2 Storage Options to the Raspberry Pi 5
• A Better Electrolyte Promises Less Fluorine, More Power From Future Lithium-Metal Batteries
• These Popular Brother, Zink Label Printers Prove Extremely Hackable — Thanks to Ancient Software
• Sipeed Turns the Lichee Nano Into a RISC-V-Powered IP-KVM, the $22 Lichee NanoKVM
• LinknLink’s eMotion Max Is a Compact 60GHz mmWave Radar for Person Sensing and More
• Michael P. Gets an Industrial Electroluminescent Display — and Doom — Running on a Raspberry Pi Pico
• Noam Zeise’s Clever Raspberry Pi Software Hack Turns a 2″ SPI Display Into an HDMI-Like Monitor
• Pineboards’ HatDrive! Nano Is a Teeny-Tiny Alternative to the Raspberry Pi 5 M.2 HAT+
• IHP Offers Open Source Chip Designs a Shot at a Free 130nm BiCMOS Production Run
• The Zeal 8-Bit Computer Complete Edition Is Everything You Need for Some Retro Zilog Z80 Fun
• KritB’s Links a Lidar Sensor to Python and JavaScript to Create Impressive Color Visualizations
• The Mariday’s BAPPR Is a Smart Buck Converter Built to Address Addressable LEDs’ Quiescent Current
• The 3D-Printable Kubic PC Case Takes Its Inspiration From NeXT, Apple, and Nintendo
• A Germanium-Tin Alloy Could Let Future Chips Harvest Their Own Heat Energy
• AMD Splashes Another $665M on Its AI Vision, Acquires European Specialist Silo AI
• A Multi-Layer Randomization Firmware Shows Promise in Protecting Against BLE Tracking Attacks
• Blasting Plastic Waste with Low-Powered Lasers Creates Carbon Dots, Delivers Novel Recycling
• Boris Puts Two Raspberry Pis to Work in This Impressively-Industrial Home Assistant Control Panel
• Waveshare Shrinks Its Raspberry Pi 5 Power-over-Ethernet HAT, Boasts Official Case Compatibility
• Arduino’s Plug and Make Kit Offers an Easy Introduction to the Internet of Things
• A Little Thinking and a Lot of Work Gets Microsoft’s Original Xbox Running on Four Times the RAM
• Samsung Unveils Its First Smart Ring Wearable, the AI-Backed Samsung Galaxy Ring
• Researchers Turn to AI to Create “Semantic Maps,” Delivering Better Navigation for the Blind
• Fusion Tech’s CANipulator Is Designed to Bridge CAN Buses, Modify Messages, and More
• Punto Maximo’s Von VisionAI is an All-In-One Open Source Computer Vision Development Station
• PINE64 Launches the Quartz64 Zero, a Cut-Down Single-Board Computer Hitting a Sub-$15 Price Point
• Wearable Accelerometers Proven to Warn of Catastrophic Injury Risk — in Racehorses
• Bradán Lane Is Back with a New Sara Cladlow eChallengeCoin — Doubling as a CircuitPython Dev Board
• Ilia Ovsiannikov Offers Simple Lidar Control with a New, Open Source Arduino LDS Library
• “Lord Feistel” Puts an Oscilloscope to Work Demonstrating Why Rolling Your Own Crypto Is a Bad Idea
• Michael Compton’s Midina Is an Impressive Python-Powered Raspberry Pi MIDI Sequencer
• MYIR’s Tiny MYC-LR3568 Packs a Rockchip RK3568 for Your Footprint-Constrained Edge AI Needs
• Soumya Deb’s PiOSK Is a One-Shot Script to Turn Your Raspberry Pi Into a Web Kiosk Device
• 52Pi Launches Its U2500 HAT, Adding M.2 Storage and Two 2.5-gig-Ethernet Ports to Any Raspberry Pi 5
• WIZnet Puts the Raspberry Pi RP2040 and Its W5500 Ethernet Chip in a Blender, Pours Out the ioNIC
• PrivacyLens Delivers Truly Private Video Monitoring — By Replacing You with a Stick Figure
• Peter Quinn Details a Whole-Home Energy Monitoring Project — and ML-Powered Next Steps
• This Smart Traffic Management System Can Handle 5,000 Autonomous Drones, Researchers Say
• Paulo Kiefe Wants the World to Make with STEMFIE, the MECCANO-Like 3D-Printable Construction Kit
• This Stretchable Lithium-Ion Battery Proves a Powerful Solution for Better Wearables
• GitLab Up for Acquisition by Datadog, Sources Claim
• Purism Branches Out From Smartphones and Laptops with the MiMi Telepresence Robot Concept
• Vasily Zhuravsky’s PiZeroHat Is a Quick-Start KiCad Template for Raspberry Pi Zero USB Add-Ons
• Google Drops Its Blocks VR Building Project — But Releases the Source Code to All
• Alex Porto Ends a Five-Year Mission on Camera Security Analysis with a Clever Firmware Hack
• Joe Pasqua’s Faux TRS-80 Is a 3D-Printable Raspberry Pi-Powered Homage to Tandy’s Iconic Systems
• Edge Impulse Partners with Microchip to Offer Support for On-Device AI/ML on the SAMA7G54
• Orange Pi Launches the Orange Pi 5 Max, Boasting a 6 TOPS NPU, Four-Lane PCIe Gen. 3, and More
• Sebastian Holzapfel’s Tiliqua Puts a Little Lattice FPGA in Your Eurorack Synth Setup
• Tommy Liao Gets Low-Cost Micrometers Talking Serial with an Arduino-Compatible Adapter Build
• Researchers Turn to Roll-to-Roll Manufacturing for Mass Production of Stretchable Electronics
• Matias Iturbides’ Strad Is an Open-Hardware Fully-Mechanical Ready-to-Build Espresso Maker
• Anders Nielsen Proves Steve Wozniak Right, Builds a Single-Stepping Board for the MOS 6502
• Ted Fried Builds “the World’s Fastest CoCo” with the Motorola 6809-Emulating MCL6809
• Lattice Launches New “Logic-Optimized” Certus-NX FPGAs, Promises Leading Efficiency
• Radxa’s X4 Packs an Intel N100 Processor and 2.5-gig-Ethernet Into a Raspberry Pi 5-Like Footprint
• Matt Venn Blends the Old and the New, Launches the Tiny Tapeout Demoscene Contest
• Careful “Sulfonation” Turns Waste Polystyrene, Styrofoam Into a Valuable Electronics Resource
• RAPTOR Turns a Beady Eye Onto Counterfeit or Maliciously Modified Chips
• Joshua Kennedy’s 555-Based “Modchip” Tells His Bleeping Refrigerator to “Shut Its Gob”
• This Boxy Multimeter Traces Its Lineage Back to a UK Post Office Design in the 1920s
• Radxa Targets the Maker on a Budget with Its PCIe-Equipped ROCK 2A, ROCK 2F Single-Board Computers
• Castellated Dreams Delivers a Compact, Surface-Mountable CAN Bus Module Built on Microchip’s MCP2515
• Moritz von Sivers’ Clever Lenticular Clock Turns Angular Shifts Into Time-Telling
• Rocketeer Kofi Asare Walks Through the Design History of the Flight Computer One
• Joe Scotto’s Latest Keyboard, the 3D-Printed “ScottoHazard,” Is His “First ‘Real’ Split” Design
• Angry Miao’s AM RGB 65 Borrows the Nintendo Game Boy Aesthetic, Shines with 200 RGB LEDs
• Efinix Targets Mass-Market Devices with Its New Topaz FPGA Line
• Mark Zuckerberg Goes to Bat for Open Source AI, Releases the Massive Llama 3.1 405B
• Apple Cloner “DosFox” Returns with the First Apple Macintosh Plus Compatible Built in 34 Years
• Seon Rozenblum’s TinyWATCH S3 Is an Espressif ESP32-S3-Powered DIY Smartwatch Platform
• Matt Brown Digs Deep Into an IP Camera’s Firmware — and Finds a Hard-Coded Root Password
• The Zerowriter Ink Is an Espressif ESP32-Powered Distraction-Free ePaper Writing Tool
• Magnus Is a Finger-Drumming, Rapid-Fire, Arduino-Powered Magnetic Exoskeleton for Your Hand
• Pimoroni’s Picade Bartop Arcade Kit Goes Big with the Raspberry Pi 5-Powered Picade Max
• Tuya’s Low-Cost T2-U Development Board Aims to Tempt Makers to Try Out Its IoT Ecosystem
• Tommi Laukkane’s Cyberdore 2064 Blends Retro-Futurism with a Raspberry Pi Zero
• Avnet Partners with Arduino for Exclusive Arduino Pro Hardware Kit Bundles
• Pierre-David Oriol Targets a Cloud-Free Summer with a Dreo Smart Fan Home Assistant Hack
• Mark Wilson’s WeatherRenderRound Shaves the Edges Off for a Smoother Weather Dashboard
• The ODrive Micro Packs a Lot of Motor Control Power in the Company’s Smallest Footprint Yet
• This “Pi-Slim” Case Protects and Cools a Raspberry Pi Without Bloating Its Height
• Olimex Teases a Low-Cost Dual-Core RISC-V Dev Board Built Around the Espressif ESP32-P4
• Kaj Toet’s BlindVisor.com Turns Webcams Into a Wearable 3D-Audio Accessibility Aid for the Blind
• Arnov Sharma’s “Raspberry Pi 1000” Is Ready for Those Impatient for the Raspberry Pi 500’s Release
• This Adafruit ItsyBitsy-Powered “Transformer Bot” Shifts Into 1,000 Shapes with Just Three Motors
• Three Decades On, DMA Design’s Lemmings Gets the Arcade Cabinet Treatment
• Zitao’s Compact Handheld HackberryPi Family Boasts Twin Batteries and Upcycled BlackBerry Keyboards
• NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang Predicts a Future Where “Everybody Will Have an AI Assistant”
• LILYGO’s T-ETH-ELite Offers Expansive Connectivity for Espressif ESP32-S3 Projects
• Seeed Studio’s ReSpeaker Lite and Voice Assistant Kit Offer Low-Power On-Device Voice Control
• Johannes Stelzer Navigates the “Latent Space” with This Knob-Controlled Generative AI Demo
• Sean Malseed’s “Mac Minus” Imagines a World in Which Miniature Apple Macintoshes Run Acorn’s RISC OS
• Arduino Cloud’s New Custom Templates Aim to Get Your Projects Up and Running Fast
• Espressif’s ESP RainMaker Delivers Easier Key Handling, Safer Updates with “Secure Signing” Feature
• Tarantula3 Puts a Ghost, From Bungie’s Destiny, to Work Monitoring His Internet Connection
• FOSSi Foundation Newsletter El Correo Libre, Issue 76
• MyriadRF Over The Air Newsletter: LibreCellular Gets a Versatile RFE, Lime Suite NG Ported to Android, DME with a LimeSDR, and More