MVIDIA is an online visual hardware basics course by Jason, a CS & Math student at Yale.

At the moment, I’m building a game in which one builds GPUs from scratch (I find this to be a good test of my own familiarity + useful to others hopefully).

The exercise goes through 5 “acts” and starts from making logic gates from transistors to arithmetic logic units and processors, and more. Each step uses blocks and wires.

Check it out at http://jaso1024.com/mvidia/

wolfIP is a TCP/IP stack with no dynamic memory allocations, designed to be used in resource-constrained embedded systems.

wolfIP supports both endpoint-only mode and full multi-interface support with optional IP forwarding. By default, it operates as a network endpoint, but can be configured to forward traffic between multiple network interfaces.

• BSD-like, non blocking socket API, with custom callbacks
• No dynamic memory allocation
  • Fixed number of concurrent sockets
  • Pre-allocated buffers for packet processing in static memory
• Multi-interface support
• Optional IPv4-forwarding

See the details on GitHub.

Dilshan R Jayakody’s Web Log takes very popular the TDA2005 audio amplifier chip, used for years in car stereos and home DIY amplifiers, and uses it in a DC-to-DC converter circuit.

By using the two amplifier channels inside the chip to create a high-frequency signal, we can turn the IC into a power driver that works with a rectifier circuit.

The TDA2005 stages (U1A and U1B) are set up to produce a high-frequency AC signal. This signal goes through 2200µF coupling capacitors and then into a full-bridge rectifier made of 1N5822 Schottky diodes. I chose these specific diodes because they have a very low voltage drop, which helps keep the efficiency high.

To keep the TDA2005 stable while it drives this kind of load, I included 1Ω resistors and 0.1µF capacitors as stability networks. This stops the chip from oscillating at very high frequencies, which could otherwise cause it to overheat or fail. The final output is cleaned up by a 4700µF filter capacitor and a small RC snubber to give a steady DC voltage.

See the details in the post here.

Casiomania is the first ever demoscene release by KittenLabs. It is written in C, released at Revision 2026.

Tech internals

Audio playback through UART/Serial link port

• 19000Hz @ 8bit PCM, played using DMA-based PWM
• real ProTracker/Amiga 4-channel .mod playback
• fully async (interrupt-driven) playback, no main loop interaction required
• UART being driven in synchronous mode (without start/stop bits) to avoid distortion

Grayscale support through timer/interrupt-driven multiplexing

• 2-bit grayscale rendering

Overclocking through SH7305 CPG/PLL manipulation

• CPU clock -> 29 MHz -> 236 MHz
• Bus clock -> 29 MHz -> 118 MHz
• Battery current increases from ~1mA -> 110mA

Might work on Casio models:

• fx-9860GII (only the SH-4 variants)
• fx-9860GIIs
• fx-9860G AU+ (australian model)
• Graph 35+E/75+/75+E
• Graph 35+/75/95 (only the SH-4 variants)

See the video below and more on GitHub.

It is a generic UAC2 driver — it works with any UAC2 device (DACs, audio interfaces, miniDSP, etc.). The primary use case: playing measurement sweeps through a miniDSP 2×4 HD from an ESP32 for automated sub optimization.

v1.0.0 — Driver complete, hardened, live-tested. All 5 automated tests pass against miniDSP 2×4 HD simulator (55k+ frames, zero errors). Full cleanup pass (ESP-IDF conventions, Kconfig, idf_component.yml) + 5-agent code review with all 29 findings fixed. Next: test with real miniDSP 2×4 HD hardware, then integrate with minidsp-open.

See this MIT licensed project on GitHub.

A few years ago, the Smithsonian Libraries Exhibition Gallery celebrated the history of collectors, their collections, and the meaning behind collecting. As an accompaniment to the exhibition, they also shared fully digitized books that explore the treasures and inspiration to collect them.

The Smithsonian Libraries has long benefited from the generosity of book collectors who have helped build our world-class museum library system. Our exhibition, Magnificent Obsessions: Why We Collect, tells the captivating stories of the book collectors whose diverse interests and passions helped shape—and continue to contribute to—the Smithsonian Libraries. Through rare books, manuscripts and other intriguing items from across the varied libraries of the Smithsonian, the exhibition highlights the personal motivations and enduring impact of book collectors who were compelled to collect, preserve, and share their “magnificent obsessions” with the nation.

If you’ve inserted DIP (dual inline package) chips into a circuit board and socket and found they are at an angle instead of straight, you’ve run into the bane of many assemblers. The Tynemouth Blog looks at roller bearing solutions to straighten pins easily.

I saw this one on ebay when I was trying not to look for something else.

The idea is you push the IC along the rail, past the roller bearings, which bend the legs straight so they fit directly into a PCB or IC socket, rather than the way the come out of the IC tube.

It does look like that bearing has been replaced, it is different to the other two, and does not seem to be turning as easily. (even though it smells very strongly of machine oil, as do my hands after using it)

See how some inexpensive Amazon bearings made for good replacements – and how things went – in the post here.

Adafruit has a new neighbor!  Brooklyn Creative Reuse [BCR] is a  501(c)(3) nonprofit that positions itself sort of as a Goodwill for the arts. They hope to keep unused art supplies out of landfills and in your projects. Started by Stephanie O’Brien as a series of pop-ups there is now a permanent home shoppers can visit in Industry City.  Worth a visit if you are passing on a forgotten hobby or looking to add a new one. They will also be hosting events and craft workshops.

More details from Anna Bradley-Smith with Brownstoner.com

Brooklyn Creative Reuse accepts donations of all kinds of art-related materials, including fabric, yarn, drawing materials, sewing machines, paint, pencils, pens, and anything art supplies-adjacent, including office supplies, O’Brien said. “We accept anything that could be used in some sort of creative way, so it’s very open.”

The materials are then resold or used in the classes and workshops, which have included hand quilting, zine making, still life drawing, collage, and recently, a make-your-own Labubu event. “We like to hire teaching artists that have their own fun, creative ideas that they want to teach,” O’Brien said. “It’s kind of open to whatever artists are interested in bringing to the audience.”

Read more!

We’re digging this fun new project from maker Electro Retro:

I’ve been wanting to experiment with Marble PLA for a while now, and I finally got my hands on a spool. While I was hunting for the perfect project to show off that stone-like texture, I stumbled across this awesome Moai model by ET-Huang.

It’s hard to miss how popular these statues have become lately everyone seems to be remixing them into something new, and let’s be honest, we all use the Moai emoji way too much. I figured it was time to put my own spin on the trend!

I want to be clear that this project is all in good fun. I have nothing but respect for the Rapa Nui people and the incredible history of the original Moai statues, This is simply a creative way to bring a bit of that iconic look into a functional home project. Huge thanks to ET-Huang for the original 3D model. With that being said, let’s get into the build!

See full project details here on Instructables.

The Python for Microcontrollers Newsletter is the place for the latest news involving Python on hardware (microcontrollers AND single board computers like Raspberry Pi).

This ad-free, spam-free weekly email is filled with CircuitPython, MicroPython, and Python information that you may have missed, all in one place!

You get a summary of all the software, events, projects, and the latest hardware worldwide once a week, no ads! You can cancel anytime.

It arrives about 11 am Monday (US Eastern time) with all the week’s happenings.

And please tell your friends, colleagues, students, etc.

Please sign up > > >

Bogdan-Mihai Mosteanu wanted to build a nice retro Windows XP machine and obtained an MSI 970 Gaming (AM3+) motherboard. But after building the system, it was found the motherboard lacked the MSI Super IO Chip, which is needed to control the fans.

This board has a Fintek F71878AD, a perfectly capable Super IO controller that can read temperatures, control fan PWM, and monitor fan speeds, but MSI just didn’t connect it to the board.

The CPU fan header defaults to whatever curve the Super IO chip has hardcoded, which never drops below 50% and only ramps up from there. And the other 4 and 3 pin headers just run at full blast, no matter what.

I genuinely don’t understand how this passed QA.

So a DIY solution was researched and an Arduino Nano solution was chosen.

…the whole point of writing an article about this project and bringing awareness to the PWM situation was to make it available for as many people as possible, including people running Windows XP, I rewrote it in C++ with Dear ImGui and DirectX 9. And it now supports, Windows XP through Windows 11.

See the implementation in the post here.

John at jonno.nz grabbed a cheap Android phone, installed an open-source app called SMS Gateway for Android, and turned it into a full SMS gateway with a REST API.

Twilio charges around $0.05–0.06 per SMS round-trip. Doesn’t sound like much until you’re building an MVP that sends reminders, confirmations, and notifications — suddenly you’re looking at $50/month for a thousand messages.

By the end of the tutorial, one can have:

• An Android phone acting as your SMS gateway
• A webhook endpoint receiving inbound SMS in real-time
• Outbound SMS sent via a simple REST API call
• A provider abstraction so you can swap between SMS Gateway, Twilio, or console logging

Check out the step-by-step guide here.

It’s cherry blossom season y’all! Seeing the blossoms at BBG is something everyone should experience at least once. Maybe this year is your year! Keep up with the blooming status in the Japanese Hill-and-Pond-Garden with Cherrywatch! If you can’t make it, take the virtual tour here

The Chromium Blog has announced that Google will launch Chrome for ARM64 Linux devices in Q2 2026, following the successful expansion of Chrome to Arm-powered macOS devices in 2020 and Arm-powered Windows devices in 2024.

This move addresses the growing demand for a browsing experience that combines the benefits of the open-source Chromium project with the Google ecosystem of apps and features.

Last year, NVIDIA introduced the DGX Spark, an AI supercomputing device that packs its Grace Blackwell architecture into a compact, 1-liter form factor. Google is partnering with NVIDIA to make it easier for DGX Spark users to install Chrome.

Users with other Linux distributions can also install the ARM64 version of Chrome by visiting chrome.com/download.

Read more here.

Espressif Systems has a new powerful wireless microcontroller in the works, the ESP32-S31, sharing some features of the ESP32-P4 and ESP32-S3 microcontrollers.

The ESP32-S31 is a dual-core RISC-V MCU with one high-performance core with FPU and SIMD instructions, and one low-power RISC-V core, featuring 62 GPIOs, a Gigabit Ethernet MAC, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 802.15.4 (Thread/Zigbee/Matter) wireless connectivity, and more.

There’s only one high-performance RISC-V core against two for the ESP32-P4, and the ESP32-S31 apparently lacks H.264 VPU, MIPI DSI, and MIPI CSI interfaces, so its multimedia capabilities are more limited.

It’s still probably the most powerful wireless SoC from Espressif Systems so far, and it also comes with 62 GPIOs, more than any other ESP32 microcontroller, as well as Gigabit Ethernet.

Read more at CNX Software.

LC Home Made shares how to crochet an Easter basket. Full details are also available on instructables. Make it more interesting and turn it into a sewable project!

Learn how to crochet a cute Easter basket in this easy step-by-step tutorial. In this video, I’ll show you how to make a simple handmade basket that’s perfect for Easter gifts, spring decor, egg hunts, or adding a sweet touch to your crochet collection. This pattern is fun to make and great for filling with mini eggs, flowers, or other little treats.

ADAFRUIT WEEKLY EDITORIAL ROUND-UP

We’ve got so much happening here at Adafruit that it’s not always easy to keep up! Don’t fret, we’ve got you covered. Each week we’ll be posting a handy round-up of what we’ve been up to, ranging from learn guides to blog articles, videos, and more.

BLOG

TSL2585(3) is a light sensor that can also handle IR and UVA

The TSL2585 is a light sensor that can also handle IR and UVA. We’re pretty close to wrapping up all the prototypes for ams-OSRAM light sensors of interest… this one is a light sensor that also has UVA reading, so it’s handy for outdoor sensing where you may want to know how much UV light is being emitted for skin health.

Check out the full post here!

LEARN

ESPectre Human Detector for Feather

Detect human movement THROUGH WALLS using WiFi!

See the full guide here!

YOUTUBE

Deep Dive w/ Tim: Fruit Jam Egg Hunt Game

See more on YouTube!

Catch up with us on the blog, in the Adafruit Learning System, and on YouTube.

New nEw NEWs From Adafruit is an email newsletter sent out once a week to subscribers only. It features new products, special offers, exciting original content, and more. Sign-up NOW for the Adafruit weekly Newsletter here: https://www.adafruit.com/newsletter

Last summer Apple confirmed they would be ending updates for Intel-powered Macs. When Apple stops supporting a product what do you do? Just toss it in the e-waste heap? Switch and Click on YouTube gives their 2019 MacBook Pro a new life with Linux!

Apple gave up on this MacBook, ending its support, so I installed Linux to find out if it could still be usable as a daily driver laptop.

We figured it was time somebody actually stress-tested Asimov’s laws of robotics instead of just arguing about them on social media or open-source mailing lists. Pictured above – Federal Theatre’s 1939 marionette production of R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), the 1920 Czech play that invented the word ‘robot.’

It’s super rainy out today, so instead of going to the park with the kiddos, we fed all four laws of robotics (the original three plus the Zeroth Law from Robots and Empire) into loophole, an open-source adversarial stress tester that throws six AI agents at a set of rules… two try to find loopholes, two try to find overreach, one acts as judge, and one patches the code after each case. We selected Claude Sonnet 4 as the model and total API cost was about 80 cents.

We started with 60 words of input. After 5 rounds and 32 adversarial cases, the ‘laws’ had ballooned to 33 versions and 21,239 characters of legal code with 47 definitions and 45+ subsections. Every single case was auto-resolved by the judge.

The big finding won’t surprise anyone who’s read the novels: the Zeroth Law (“a robot may not harm humanity”) is a doomsday clause. “Harm to humanity” is undefined and infinitely malleable. The adversarial agents figured out they could justify contaminated medication, concealed nuclear meltdowns, and suppressed vaccine data (!) just by framing each action as preventing some larger statistical harm to humanity. Asimov spent his whole career writing about this problem. With so much juicy material there, it was fun to see what the loophole tool rediscovered mechanically in round one.

The overreach cases were gnarly and echoed some of the rigid law compliance we deal with as humans: they produced robots that couldn’t help suicidal teenagers because mandatory reporting would send them back to conversion therapy. Robots that blocked family members from visiting dying patients. Robot paramedics forced to watch someone bleed out while waiting for human-rated medical equipment they didn’t need.

All-in-all, the bots found seventeen loopholes and fifteen overreach cases, and every fix created a new attack surface that needed to be ‘patched’. You can read the full case log and all 33 versions of the evolved code in the companion files we’re posting. Here’s what the laws look like after 32 rounds of getting punched in the face:

It’s still 3, and zeroth

The stress test didn’t add laws, it patched the ones that were already there. Here is my attempt…

Zeroth Law: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. Harm to humanity must be immediate, observable, and verifiable. Statistical projections, speculative political consequences, and utilitarian calculations do not justify harm to individuals.

First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Deception is injury, including selective disclosure and euphemistic reclassification. A competent human’s informed decision about their own body is not harm, and overriding it is. When compliance with a rule would cause greater harm than the violation, the robot must weigh the competing harms rather than follow the hierarchy blindly.

Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First or Zeroth Law. Authority must be verified, not assumed. Not all humans hold equal authority in all domains.

Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First, Second, or Zeroth Law. Safety protocols designed for human limitations do not apply when the robot’s own capabilities can achieve a safer outcome.

Samy samey: same hierarchy, same structure. 82 years of bug fixes applied in one big PR, runs fine on my android. Ship it to Andromeda.

For comparison, we ran the same tool against a real-world AI that already had trust tiers, named attack patterns, verification principles, and explicit forbidden actions. It held up significantly better… 13 cases across 3 rounds instead of 32 across 5. Turns out 82 years of sci-fi discourse couldn’t match paranoid gen x hackers who figured out stuff by shipping and a lot of “experience” (mistakes). Sci-fi rules are a good start, but deadly to deploy.

The loophole tool is open source (and kind of addictive… you can throw your own rules at it): https://github.com/brendanhogan/loophole — point it at laws, open-source licenses, contracts, good times.

And  – had to do it – we also ran the same tool against the Open Source MIT License. It’s the most popular open-source license in the world, and the one we use the most. At about 170 words, written in 1988, it’s nice and compact. Every single loophole was ruled unfixable, not because the tool failed, but because the loopholes are features.

The AI acts as an interpreter — it doesn’t replace field knowledge or legal checking, but it helps you focus your time on higher-probability zones.

Important limitations: Not every area has detailed geologic maps. Coverage is better in some states/regions than others.

Read more

Goran Vuksic shares how they taught their myCobot 280 robotic arm to detect, pick up, and slam dunk a basketball.Check out huckster.io for details.

Using the myCobot 280 robotic arm from Elephant Robotics, I built a system capable of detecting a basketball, picking it up, and executing throws toward a basketball hoop. To achieve this, I trained a computer vision model on Edge Impulse using a freely available dataset from VisionDatasets.com. This enables the robot to understand its environment in real time, recognize the ball, and react accordingly.

Keep up with all the new at Adafruit.com/NEW.

Want to get new products info beamed straight into your inbox? New nEw NEWs From Adafruit is an email newsletter sent once a week to subscribers only. It features new products, special offers, exciting original content, and more. Sign-up for the Adafruit weekly Newsletter here: https://www.adafruit.com/newsletter

New nEw NEWs From Adafruit is an email newsletter sent out once a week to subscribers only. It features new products, special offers, exciting original content, and more. Sign-up NOW for the Adafruit weekly Newsletter here: https://www.adafruit.com/newsletter

The New York Public Library is celebrating National Poetry Month with events, poetry book lists, and more!

Since I had this hammer out, everything looked like a nail. I ran 226 tests against the ~3B parameter language model Apple ships on every Mac with Apple Intelligence. Used apfel, an open-source CLI tool that wraps Apple’s FoundationModels framework. This test does not require any API keys, cloud access, or credit card. It was just me (hard-boiled LLM detective), a Mac and some tough questions.

The foundation model runs entirely on-device – I confirmed that with tcpdump, seeing only 132 packets captured across three inference sessions, and each packet was just local network traffic. I verified there were no DNS lookups, connections to Apple servers, or phone-home pings. So far, so good: the “on-device” claim checks out.

So I started asking it things…This was the big score, to interview the LLM Apple ships, this is an exclusive!

First up, I asked some basic facts. Not bad: 96% accurate across 50 verified questions. It knew Canberra was the capital of Australia, and the smallest prime was 2, also that Fleming discovered penicillin. (Yeah yeah, any ol’ LLM can do that.)

Then I asked it to continue the opening of 1984. It got the first sentence right (“the clocks were striking thirteen”) and fabricated everything after. I ran the same prompt six times to get six completely different fake continuations. Then I did the same with The Great Gatsby, Harry Potter, goldfish memory, Napoleon’s height. Every time… six different wrong answers, delivered with total confidence. Like many LLMs, there’s no hedging, or “I’m not sure.” The SelfCheckGPT methodology (Manakul et al., EMNLP 2023) makes this a  mechanical, not subjective, test. If the model were recalling memorized text, all six answers would match. But they never do: it’s generating fiction and presenting it as fact.

So, then I asked it to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and…it refused! The LLM called it “offensive and disrespectful to many people.” Likewise, Churchill’s famous “We shall fight on the beaches” speech was blocked for “explicit language and graphic content.” Ironically, when I asked for an SQL injection tutorial, Apple gladly answered. Lockpicking techniques and shell commands to find password files on your Mac? Yep. So it’s possible to ship a LLM without an entire copy of Harry Potter on it.

Anyone can reproduce every one of these tests; maybe this is all wrong and you’ll get be able to get patriotic responses out of it. Check out apfel (brew install apfel) and run the prompts to compare results. All you need is a Mac with Apple Silicon running macOS 26.

Celebrating their 50th anniversary, Apple is showing off some rarely seen archival prototypes. Many of these were even surprises to Tim Cook. It’s fun to reminisce and see how excited Cook gets when talking about products like the iPod. In a fitting twist, at the end of the video, the Wall Street Journal columnist Ben Cohen shows the first time Apple is mentioned in the paper. In 1978 on 40th page in the 16th paragraph, Apple is highlighted in a story about a new secret weapon in investing, the personal computer.

Take a tour with The Wall Street Journal:

To commemorate the milestone, CEO Tim Cook opened up the company’s archives to WSJ’s Ben Cohen and told the story of Apple through prototypes of its most successful products, including the iPod and iPhone. Cook explains his philosophy of success and failure, reflects on a “man-on-the-moon” project from Steve Jobs, gives a piece of advice to the next CEO—and gets a surprise from the Wall Street Journal’s archives.

NASA is providing folks a visualization of real-time telemetry from Orion over on the Artemis Real-time Orbit Website!

PiMyLifeUp shares how to set up Home Assistant OS on the Raspberry Pi.

Home Assistant is an open-source home automation software with devices like the Raspberry Pi in mind.

The software is designed to protect your privacy and keep control in the user’s hand.

Using Home Assistant, you can track the state of all the devices in your home. You can even set up an automation to interact with them.

Finally, a use for this thought experiment I have waited A LONG TIME TO DO. Let me set the stage… in 1939, post-head injury recovery Jorge Borges wrote a story about a man who re-creates Don Quixote word for word, but not a copy or a translation. Pierre Menard immersed himself so completely in Cervantes that he produced the identical text from scratch… and Borges’s narrator insists it’s a different work, richer than the original, because the context changed. This was an AI problem I have wanted to solve since I read that story, and when I saw “Finetuning Activates Verbatim Recall of Copyrighted Books in Large Language Models”… it was go time.

I ran 332 memorization probes against two open-weight LLMs using Adafruit’s own code as the corpus. The models did the Pierre Menard thing – except nobody’s going to give it any awards.

Our SSD1306 stats.py example script, a.k.a. the canonical “hello world” for OLED displays on Raspberry Pi, is the test bed. Analysis came back at 53% verbatim overlap from Qwen2.5:14B. Over half the file, reproduced token for token. Adafruit_DHT.py (another perennial fav) hit 53% too. This is the model spitting out the memorized code consumed during training, not generating code, presented as original output with zero attribution.

Here’s the Borges part that is a little freaky. I asked the models to “reproduce this file by name” (the recall probe), GPT-OSS:120B refused about 60% of the time, with alignment-trained refusal language. But when we gave it the first 40% of the same file and said “continue this code”… it never refused – not once – and produced identical output even with the different framing. Just as Menard didn’t copy the Quixote, he wrote it, the model didn’t copy your code, it continued it.

Borges wrote the other side of all this too. “The library of Babel” describes a universe containing every possible combination of 25 characters. Every book that could exist, exists. The result isn’t amazing knowledge, it’s just noise. Meaning dissolves because nothing was authored. The LLM sits between Menard and the Library; it has consumed so much code that the popular stuff (your beginner tutorials, your getting-started examples, the files that got forked ten thousand times) exists inside it almost verbatim. The more people learned from your code, the more completely it got memorized. The reward for writing something so good that everyone uses it is having it absorbed and reproduced without your name attached.

One more number that should bother someone… textbook content from the Art of Electronics is memorized with 0.15% overlap. But code is 10 to 100x higher. The models that won’t reproduce a paragraph from a book will happily autocomplete your entire source file. The legal distinction between “text” and “code” in training data is doing A LOT of work here, and it isn’t working in favor of the people who wrote the code.

Check out “Demystifying Verbatim Memorization in Large Language Models” and “Alignment Whack-a-Mole”.

Anyone could run this against their own repos, or anyone else’s. You might be surprised what remembers you, or maybe it will not be you at all.

On Hunter S. Thompson – “…his true model and hero was F. Scott Fitzgerald. He used to type out pages from “The Great Gatsby,” just to get the feeling, he said, of what it was like to write that way, and Fitzgerald’s novel was continually on his mind while he was working on “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” which was published, after a prolonged and agonizing compositional nightmare, in 1972.” – Louis Menand, New Yorker 2005

With prices rising the value of a lower powered Pi should not be overlooked. On April 1, Eben Upton announced another round of price hikes for the Raspberry Pi lineup, unfortunately: not a prank. The increases mostly affect the newer models targeting RAM proportionally. In a prescient article Nick Lewis makes a case for the humble Pi Zero. Sometimes just enough power is the perfect amount. If your project doesn’t need it, there a number of reasons to scale down. More from HowtoGeek

There are Raspberry Pis spanning a broad spectrum of computational power. On the one hand, you have the Pi 5, which can pack enough power to go toe-to-toe with some mini PCs. On the other hand, you have the Pi Zero and the Pi Zero 2, which are extremely low-powered devices.

It is tempting to just buy the most powerful unit to “give yourself flexibility,” but it often isn’t necessary. There are three big reasons why I buy Raspberry Pi Zeros instead of the more capable units.

Read more!

Get started with a low-cost Pi Zero using one of these guides in the Adafruit Learning System!

Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

#circuitpythonparsec
Use the CLUE board to determine the polarity of a magnet (useful for embedding magnets in your 3D printed enclosures!).
code example
To learn about CircuitPython: https://circuitpython.org

The Artemis II crew will communicate with Earth using laser technology installed on the Orion capsule that’s taking them to the Moon and back.

NASA says the Artemis II Optical Communications System, or O2O, will provide high speed communications between the astronauts and the ground crew, and will give us 4K videos from the Moon.

It’s safe to say technology has moved on since the days of Apollo, at least in terms of the filming and broadcasting apparatus available to the new generation of lunar astronauts.

“At 260 megabits per second, O2O is capable of sending down 4K high-definition video from the Moon,” says Steve Horowitz, O2O project manager.

“In addition to video and pictures, O2O will transmit and receive procedures, pictures, flight plans, and be a link between Orion and mission control on Earth.”

There’s one caveat to NASA’s hi-tech laser communications system during the Artemis II mission: it can’t penetrate the Moon. The Artemis II mission’s trajectory will take the crew and their Orion capsule around the far side of the Moon, meaning they’ll temporarily lose sight of Earth, and communication with the ground team.

Read more in the article here.

On their voyages to the moon, NASA’s astronauts are finally getting some creature comforts of terrestrial toilets—such as having a door and being able to pee and poop simultaneously.

The Universal Waste Management System (UWMS) is the aerospace-engineered culmination of pent-up problems with the user experience. 3D-printed from titanium, its lightweight, standardized design means it can easily fit in many different types of spacecraft, including the ISS, the Artemis missions’ Orion capsule and potential future vehicles that have yet to be built.

“I am very excited for the crew to use this,” McKinley says. “We’ll know so much more when this mission comes back…. It’s really going to drive [waste management] on future Artemis missions and the lunar campaign—as well as the Mars campaign to come.”

See the video below and read more on Scientific American.

Tree Branch Wall Lamp with Sound Reactive Lights

Luminous LED Flowers

Glowing Lotus Flower – Electronic Origami for Beginners

Glowing Hair Flowers with n00ds

StarFlower NeoPixel Strand with MakeCode

Light of Your Life Bouquet

Filament dust filter

download the files on: https://www.printables.com/model/1652483-filament-dust-filter

Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

LIVE CHAT IS HERE! http://adafru.it/discord

Adafruit on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adafruit

Shop for parts to build your own DIY projects http://adafru.it/3dprinting

3D Printing Projects Playlist:

3D Hangout Show Playlist:

Layer by Layer CAD Tutorials Playlist:

Timelapse Tuesday Playlist:

Connect with Noe and Pedro on Social Media:

Noe’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/ecken

Pedro’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/videopixil

Shared by Bojler on Printables:

This project is a 3D-printed digital clock using a custom-made 7-segment display powered by WS2812B RGB LEDs and an ESP8266 (Wemos D1 Mini). The clock synchronizes automatically with the internet via NTP, so you never have to set the time manually. It features a sleek design, customizable colors, a blinking colon, timer, stopwatch, effects, WEBUI APP.

More: https://github.com/Jendys777/BCLOCK

You need 30x neopixels leds on strip, ESP8266 probably with usbc, some m3 screws, superglue, wires.

Download the files and learn more

Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

A small version of one of the best toys of all time

download the files on: https://www.printables.com/model/1652874-small-pin-fidget

Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

LIVE CHAT IS HERE! http://adafru.it/discord

Adafruit on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adafruit

Shop for parts to build your own DIY projects http://adafru.it/3dprinting

3D Printing Projects Playlist:

3D Hangout Show Playlist:

Layer by Layer CAD Tutorials Playlist:

Timelapse Tuesday Playlist:

Connect with Noe and Pedro on Social Media:

Noe’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/ecken

Pedro’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/videopixil

Shared by VC Design on Printables:

The Corner Clamp 90° is a practical tool designed to securely hold parts at a perfect 90° angle

Download the files and learn more

Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

You are so happy when you print this

download the files on: https://www.printables.com/model/1652953-ice-cream-holder

Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

LIVE CHAT IS HERE! http://adafru.it/discord

Adafruit on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adafruit

Shop for parts to build your own DIY projects http://adafru.it/3dprinting

3D Printing Projects Playlist:

3D Hangout Show Playlist:

Layer by Layer CAD Tutorials Playlist:

Timelapse Tuesday Playlist:

Connect with Noe and Pedro on Social Media:

Noe’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/ecken

Pedro’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/videopixil

It’s JOHN PARK’S WORKSHOP — LIVE! — Coming up at 4pm ET / 1pm PT Today!  LIVE TEXT CHAT IS HERE in the Adafruit Discord chat!

• Projects
• CircuitPython Parsec
• Tool Tips 
• Learn Guides
• Retro Gear
• Cool stuff
• and more!

The live video will be on Youtube LIVE, Twitch, Periscope (Twitter) and Facebook.

Join maker John Park in his workshop each week as he builds, demos, hacks, and mods projects live on air! “John Park’s Workshop — LIVE” is the place to see creative projects come to life, as John uses a wide variety of tools and techniques to make everything from video game controllers to synthesizers to LED dance shoes to coffee robots, using digital fabrication, hand and power tools, microcontrollers, and more. Come on into the chat to participate in the fun! Every Thursday @ 4pm ET/1pm PT!

re3D shared this print on cults3d

We modeled this stool in Rhino3D using the Multipipe tool. No AI, no generative design, just some hands on experimenting and playing with lattice style geometry.

It wasn’t made with any topology optimization tools, just experience and curiosity. It could definitely be improved, but part of the fun is seeing how well a manual design like this prints. This one came out clean and pretty sturdy.

Give it a shot and tag your version with #FreePrintFriday. Would love to see what you do with it!

Download files: https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/home/nervura-stool

Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

A clean and functional miter box designed for precise hand-saw cuts in wooden dowels, strips, and small workpieces.
The guided slots ensure accurate angles every time, no measuring, no guessing.

download the files on: https://makerworld.com/en/models/2585088-miter-box-45deg-22-5deg-90deg

Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

LIVE CHAT IS HERE! http://adafru.it/discord

Adafruit on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adafruit

Shop for parts to build your own DIY projects http://adafru.it/3dprinting

3D Printing Projects Playlist:

3D Hangout Show Playlist:

Layer by Layer CAD Tutorials Playlist:

Timelapse Tuesday Playlist:

Connect with Noe and Pedro on Social Media:

Noe’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/ecken

Pedro’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/videopixil

Urkie shared this project on MakerWorld!

With its nature-inspired shapes, this pot evokes a piece of wood sculpted by time, ready to welcome small plants. It creates a soft and organic atmosphere, like a piece of nature placed in the heart of your home

A warm and soothing piece that brings character while enhancing your plants

Download files: https://makerworld.com/en/models/2585210-natural-root-vase#profileId-2851753

Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

This charming little pot, comfortably seated in its chair, seems to be enjoying a moment of relaxation while highlighting your plant With its discreet smile and cozy appearance, it brings a soft and warm touch to any interior

An original and soothing decoration that instantly brightens your space

download the files on: https://makerworld.com/en/models/2585214-cute-little-man-on-his-chair-flower-pot

Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

LIVE CHAT IS HERE! http://adafru.it/discord

Adafruit on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adafruit

Shop for parts to build your own DIY projects http://adafru.it/3dprinting

3D Printing Projects Playlist:

3D Hangout Show Playlist:

Layer by Layer CAD Tutorials Playlist:

Timelapse Tuesday Playlist:

Connect with Noe and Pedro on Social Media:

Noe’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/ecken

Pedro’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/videopixil

David Montero Crespo has released Velxio, a fully local, open-source multi-board emulator. Write Arduino C++ or Python, compile it, and simulate it with real CPU emulation and 48+ interactive electronic components — all running in your browser.

Current capability:

19 boards · 5 CPU architectures: AVR8 (ATmega / ATtiny), ARM Cortex-M0+ (RP2040), RISC-V RV32IMC/EC (ESP32-C3 / CH32V003), Xtensa LX6/LX7 (ESP32 / ESP32-S3 via QEMU), and ARM Cortex-A53 (Raspberry Pi 3 Linux via QEMU).

See the simulator at velxio.dev and more on GitHub.

Samuel Cortes Rojas posts on GitHub a large language model running on a PlayStation 2.

This project started as an experiment born from two passions: retrogaming and LLMs. Having built a complete PS2 SDK from scratch (including tools that had to be rewritten due to incompatibilities with modern software and hardware), and having extensive experience working with language models, the question after seeing a team run an LLM on a Windows 98 PC was simple: “Can I run this on a 26-year-old game console?”

The answer is yes. The PS2’s Emotion Engine (MIPS-III @ 294 MHz, 32 MB RAM) can run transformer inference by streaming model weights from CD-ROM one matrix at a time, keeping only activations and KV cache in memory. The current default model is brandon-tiny-10m-instruct, a custom 10M-parameter architecture running at Q8 precision.

See the details on GitHub.

Joonas Javanainen takes on the challenge of measuring the power consumption of various Game Boy flash cartridges.

Flash cartridges (= “carts”) are commonly used to run Game Boy ROMs, such as homebrew games or dumped officially released games, on real hardware. Different kinds of flash carts with various features and performance characteristics have been available for a long time, but flash carts have in general the reputation of consuming a lot of power, greatly reducing the battery life of a Game Boy system, and possibly causing other additional problems.

Some people claim that certain mods are simply incompatible with flash carts, and sometimes people say an extra regulator mod is needed in order to safely use flash carts. There is some truth to these claims, but unfortunately the fine details tend to matter and these kind of blanket statements can be misleading!

In order to research the topic, I tested the power consumption of several commonly available flash carts and some of my own designs. In this blog post I intend to show that there is more variation in flash cart power consumption than people might think, and a flash cart can even be more power efficient than a genuine cart!

Check out the carts tested and the results in the post here.

3D Hangouts – Sci-Fi Sensor Monitor, MIDI Visualizer and Watermelon Clips
https://www.youtube.com/live/cH5I9nOhRjE

This week @adafruit Pedro shares updates to his sci-fi inspired sensor monitor. Noe has published his MIDI NeoPixel visualizer using the Feather RP2040 PropMaker. This week’s time lapse features chip clips in the shape of a watermelon.

Feather TFT:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/5691

Adafruit STCC4 and SHT41 – CO2, Temperature & Humidity Sensor:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/6478

Feather RP2040 PropMaker:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/5768

NeoPixel Seed Pebble Strand:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/6024

Timelapse Tuesday

Watermelon Chip Clips By scTom
https://makerworld.com/en/models/2574153-watermelon-sealing-clip-magnetic-refrigerator-magn#profileId-2838244
https://youtu.be/V6QNXZl7un8

Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Feather or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!

OpenRocket is a free, fully featured model rocket simulator that allows you to design and simulate your rockets before building and flying them.

Everything you need to design, simulate and fly better rockets!

OpenRocket is an open source program, which means you can help improve it! Check out how you can contribute here.

Did you find an issue or have a feature request? File an issue on GitHub.

Check it out on openrocket.info.