diy projects
Reverse Engineering a Cotton Candy Machine’s Robot Brain
A $6,400 cotton candy vending machine refused to run offline. One maker used ADB, SQLite and a patched APK to cut the cord and…
iot & smart home
Run Gemma AI Offline on a Raspberry Pi 5 with Google’s LiteRT
Google's LiteRT runs Gemma models on a Raspberry Pi 5 at 99 tokens/sec prefill in 1432 MB of RAM, with no cloud and no…
diy projects
Motion-Reactive LED Devil Horns Built on an RP2040 Prop Feather
Paper-mache horns lined with 4 mm NeoPixel strip, an RP2040 Prop-Maker Feather reading your head gestures, and two animations that answer with fire.
diy projects
This ATmega328P Clock Keeps Swatch’s Failed Internet Time Alive
Swatch's 1998 .beat time died fast, but one maker rebuilt it around an ATmega328P, a DS3231 and a 1990s HPDL-1414 bubble display.
esp32 & esp8266
ESPHome Starter Kit: ESP32-C6 Smart Home, Zero Soldering
Apollo Automation and the Open Home Foundation shipped a $40 ESP32-C6 kit that gets a local smart-home sensor node running without a single solder…
diy projects
Raspberry Pi Book of Making 2027: A Weekend Build Queue
The Book of Making 2027 collects a year of magazine builds: origami paper circuits, a PVC-pipe underwater rover, and a first-PCB walkthrough to try.
diy projects
Louder ESP32: A $50 Multi-Room Audio Amp That Rivals Sonos
A $24 ESP32-S3 board with an onboard Class-D amp, a USB-PD trigger set to 20V, and Music Assistant add up to a networked stereo…
microcontrollers
XCORE-VISION: Real-Time Embedded Vision, No Pi Needed
XMOS' XCORE-VISION runs YOLOv8 and MobileNetV2 on-device with an 8MP camera, landing between the ESP32-CAM and a Raspberry Pi for real-time vision.
esp32 & esp8266
OpenMote Turns Your Old Wii Remote Into an ESP32 Smart Home Hub
A team gutted a dusty Wii Remote and dropped in an ESP32-S3 board, so the old wand can now fire Home Assistant scenes and…
microcontrollers
XCORE-VISION: On-Device AI Camera Vision, No Raspberry Pi
XMOS XCORE-VISION runs YOLOv8 and MobileNetV2 on-device with an 8MP camera and no Raspberry Pi overhead. Here is what you could build this weekend.
microcontrollers
Forlinx AM62L32 Local EVM: Industrial SBC on One Board
Forlinx's AM62L32 Local EVM squeezes a dual Cortex-A53 SoC, a real-time M4F core, and a wall of buses onto one four-layer board, no carrier…
esp32 & esp8266
ESP32-S3 WALL-E: An AI Desk Robot That Sees and Talks
Huy Vector's ESP32-S3 desk robot sees through a camera, chats by voice, and turns its head to face you. Here's how the vision, servos,…