A desk-side modular system built around a universal clamp (0-40mm range, 33mm depth, 4mm-pitch threads, anti-slip grooves). Core parts: headphone hanger (50mm shaft), phone holder, cup holder (80mm ID), 5mm Skadis section, cable organizer (3 cables), pen holder (50×50×80mm), two-stage hook, tray (62×67mm). ‘New Parts’ add-ons: Skadis adapter, storage box, trash bin, solder wire holder, GoPro mount, PS5 controller holder, watch stand, MagSafe holder (53°), Apple Watch charging stand, longer clamps. Mortise-and-tenon + snap-fit joints. Default (~12.5h/9 plates), New Parts (~16.8h/12 plates), No-Logo (~7.9h/9 plates). Auto-translated from Chinese. By Ms (@ms520)

download the files on: https://makerworld.com/en/models/1802763-modular-desk-organizer

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

Add a touch of magic to your Christmas tree with this 3D-printed bauble. Its unique design incorporates a rotating inner ring, embellished with three delicate snowflakes at the apex and an elegant deer at the base. A festive and original adornment, perfect for enhancing your holiday celebrations!

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 decorative pumpkin with ribbed texture for a cozy handmade look. Each stem is printed separately for color contrast; mix sizes and colors. No carving needed. Three sizes: Small (~59 min, 2 plates), Medium (~1.8h, 2 plates), Large (~2.5h, 2 plates). Designer’s profiles include height range modifiers that print the top of the pumpkins at 0.1mm layer. Classic Thanksgiving-friendly pumpkin — different in kind from the leaf-covered pumpkin (9AM) and the pumpkin-wreath (1PM) in this batch. By KL Worx

download the files on: https://makerworld.com/en/models/1860025-pumpkin-decoration

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

A face mask is one of the fastest ways to put together an instant Halloween costume! MakingThingsCLT shared this quick 3D print on Printables!

I drew this skull mask by manually meshing the polygons in Fusion 360 over a human skull scan from the NIH 3D print database. Thickening the surface didn’t work well in Fusion so I pulled the file into Meshmixer which handled it perfectly. Unfortunately, I can’t wear it with glasses at the same time, but it fits fairly well otherwise (a little tight in the cheeks). String a bit of elastic banding or strip of cloth through the back and you’re good to go.

Learn more!

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HAPPY HALLOWEEN! All month on the Adafruit Blog we’ll be bringing you ideas and projects for an Electronic Halloween

Learn, Shop and get inspired with the Halloween Gift Guide

Working on a project for Halloween this year? Let us know about it or tag us on socials!

Ramazan Eren Arslan turned a Deutsche Bundespost FeTAp 791 rotary telephone into a voice assistant, with the build documented on Hackster.io. Lift the handset and talk, and Google Gemini answers through the original earpiece.

A Raspberry Pi 3B sits inside the phone where the original PCB used to be. The hook switch wires to GPIO 17 so the Pi knows when the handset is lifted. The rotary dial pulses go to GPIO 22, and dialing a number selects the assistant language. Audio runs through a USB sound card.

Arslan expected to replace the handset parts, since the carbon microphone was not meant to work with a sound card built for electret mics. Both the microphone and the speaker worked when connected directly. The audio quality is poor, which he counts as part of the nostalgia. He notes that AI did much of the coding and documentation, so bugs are likely.

See more at hackster.io and content on GitHub.

Mack DeGeurin, writing at Popular Science, covered a team at the National University of Singapore College of Design and Engineering that built what it calls the first touchscreen woven into a garment. The display is 96 by 54 pixels and sits on the inner forearm, measuring 6.6 by 4.3 inches. It supports multitouch and 8-bit color.

Each display fiber is a thread about one millimeter thick holding a strip of LEDs. The group used laser-guided molten solder to bond connections at precise points along insulated wire, then drew the result into a multilayer fiber. More than 5,000 chips and over 20,000 electrical components went into the fabric.

In testing the shirt connected to a phone, scrolled photos, showed notifications, took voice commands over Bluetooth, and ran a calculator. Video plays at 30 frames per second without sound, dropping to 25 with audio. The team says the fabric is as breathable as denim and survived 1,000 bend cycles and 50 washing machine runs with the display and touch sensors still working. How the garment is powered is not clear. The findings were published in Nature.

See the video below and more at popsci.com.

Sid Bala wrote a walkthrough of how H.264 video compression works, published on sidbala.com. He starts with a demonstration: a screen capture of the Apple homepage, 300 frames long, encodes to 175KB as H.264. A single frame of that same video saved as PNG is 1015KB.

The post covers the main tricks. Raw 1080p at 60Hz runs about 370 MB/sec, so something has to go. H.264 transforms image data into the frequency domain and discards the high frequency components, which are the fine details. Bala shows the laptop close-up at 2% of the original information entropy, where the speaker grill holes disappear but little else does.

Then chroma subsampling, which stores brightness at full resolution and color at a quarter, cutting bandwidth roughly in half. Then motion compensation, where 16×16 macroblocks carry motion vectors and only I-frames hold a complete picture. That is also why scrubbing backward on YouTube pauses before it plays: the decoder has to rebuild from the nearest I-frame. A lossless entropy encoder cleans up the remaining redundancy at the end.

See more at sidbala.com. Via Hacker News.

sheikh shuhad has posted a tutorial on Hackster.io that moves Bluetooth Low Energy sensor readings into a serverless database. A HibouAir sensor advertises air quality data over BLE. A BleuIO dongle plugged into a computer’s USB port scans for that specific board ID and passes the advertising data to a Python script over the serial port.

The Python side decodes CO2, temperature, and humidity, prints the values to the terminal, and POSTs them as JSON to a Cloudflare Worker. The Worker checks an API key in the request header, then inserts the reading into a Cloudflare D1 database, which is SQLite running on Cloudflare’s edge. A second endpoint returns the most recent stored measurement.

Python only needs pyserial and requests. BleuIO is driven with AT commands, so the application never uses the operating system’s Bluetooth stack. Scan interval, serial port, board ID, Worker URL, and the API key all live in a config file kept out of version control.

See more at hackster.io and content on GitHub.

Synthhead at Synthtopia looks at a run of recent announcements that let musicians replace or extend the software running on their hardware. The starting point is the M-Vave FM-1, a low-cost FM synthesizer that drew independent developers writing their own synths, sequencers, and effects for it. M-Vave answered with an official development platform: source code, an SDK, and a browser-based workbench for projects, samples, voices, and firmware. The application code is GPL, but the FM-1 sound engine library stays a binary blob.

Other companies are moving the same way. Akai has teased SampleKey, a 25-key sampler, and parent company inMusic says it will offer community hardware access, some open-sourced software, and an SDK. Behringer published a large repository for its KICK sampler before the product shipped. Erica Synths open-sourced the LXR-02 drum machine firmware on October 23, 2026, while noting that modified builds are installed at the user’s own risk and a damaged bootloader means a paid repair.

On the unofficial side, Klangfeld Labs’ DOOM OS adds a graphical sequencer and piano-roll editing to Roland’s SP-404MKII, currently at version 0.6.2-alpha.

See more at synthtopia.com and content on GitHub.

MAXXTANG published a project on Hackster.io that puts a USB-only Brother HL-1110 laser printer on a WiFi network using an ESP32-S3. The computer prepares the job with the normal Brother driver and sends it to TCP port 9100. The ESP32-S3 passes the bytes  through its USB Host port to the printer.

The board’s native USB port goes to an OTG adapter and then the printer, while the separate UART port handles flashing and power. A charge-only adapter will not work. The firmware is an Arduino sketch built with the Espressif ESP32 board package, and it is set up for an N16R8 board with 16 MB flash and OPI PSRAM.

On first boot the board brings up a PrintServer-Setup access point at 192.168.4.1 for entering 2.4 GHz WiFi credentials. After that, a browser dashboard at http://hl1110.local shows printer status, WiFi settings and a restart control. The build also includes mDNS, a watchdog, OTA updates and a 512 KB PSRAM print buffer.

This is a raw port-9100 bridge with no AirPrint, IPP or LPD, and no authentication, so it is meant for a trusted local network. Code is MIT licensed.

See more at hackster.io and content on GitHub.

Ananthu Ashok, writing at Open Source For You, covers Hermes, an open source push-to-talk voice assistant that pairs an ESP32 with a Windows PC. The project comes from developer ROHITCRAFTSYT and is released under the MIT license, with firmware, wiring details and setup instructions published. The listed build cost is roughly ₹1,500 to ₹3,000 depending on parts.

The hardware is an ESP32 development board, an INMP441 digital microphone, a push-to-talk button, and an optional MAX98357A I²S amplifier with an 8Ω speaker. Holding the button captures audio. Releasing it sends the clip over WiFi to the PC, which replies with speech through the computer’s speakers or the ESP32 speaker. The documented firmware targets the standard ESP32, and the repository also has a schematic for the ESP32-S3.

On the PC side, Hermes runs on Python 3.11 or newer and uses Groq for transcription and model processing, with NVIDIA as an alternative. Commands can open apps and websites and talk to smart home devices. There is no on-device wake word detection, and the voice processing is not offline.

See more at opensourceforu.com and content on GitHub.

Shared by Fleetwood on Maker World:

These Christmas ornaments use twisted ribs to create a lightweight, flowing shape that changes depending on the viewing angle.
The collection includes three different designs: a Single Wave, Double Wave and Double Wave Hollow. Each design is available in several ready-to-print sizes, or can be customized using MakerWorld’s Parametric Model Maker.

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 tiny seasonal collection: pumpkin, pinecone, ghost, mushroom, chestnut, apple, acorn, and maple leaf — each with its own face. Small autumn decorations, gifts, or party favors. Separate monocolor profiles for individual figures (10.6h, 8 plates). Single-color profile (2h, 1 plate). H2C ‘all-at-once’ profile (10.6h, 1 plate). No AMS required. Serves both Halloween (ghost) and Thanksgiving (pumpkin, pinecone, apple, acorn, maple leaf) themes — ideal transitional-week pick. By WoodquarterLabs

download the files on: https://makerworld.com/en/models/3364256-cute-autumn-buddies

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: M-Vave FM-1 Firmware Flasher
• CircuitPython Parsec
• Learn Guides
• Gear Report
• Tool Tips
• CAD: Adafruit Circuit Designer
• Retro Gear
• Coupon Code
• 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 arcade games, 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!

A case for a Raspberry Pi 5 with the official AI HAT installed, plus a camera mount on top — an ‘all-in-one setup to tinker with the AI Module.’ Great fit for Adafruit’s Pi + machine-learning audience exploring vision pipelines or on-device AI. Compatible with Bambu A1 mini / P1S / X1 Carbon / others. By HackMy*

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!

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 > > >

A ribbed pumpkin centered in an intertwined branch ring, with layered flowers, maple + oak leaves, wheat, acorns, and buds. Open center. Fall wall decor. Printed in Wood & Matte PLA (just as beautiful only in Matte). Three profiles at 12.4h / 6.7h / 40.6h, each on 1 plate. One listed profile is 0.08mm layer, 2 walls, 5% infill. Standard Digital File License. Serves as both late-Halloween and Thanksgiving-era wall decor — natural transitional piece. By Lyn (@lynj)

download the files on: https://makerworld.com/en/models/3256474-autumn-pumpkin-wreath-fall-wall-decor

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

A free 3D-printable LED lamp driven by Arduino Uno + Adafruit NeoPixel ring. Electronics: NeoPixel ring with 24 LEDs, Arduino Uno (NeoPixel data on pin 2), uses the Adafruit NeoPixel library. Fire-effect light pattern flickers randomly. Arduino code is editable for other patterns. 0.2mm layer, 2 walls, 15% infill, PETG (~113g), ~4h, 2 plates. 4.9★ from 8 ratings. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Direct Adafruit-ecosystem project — uses the actual Adafruit NeoPixel library and ring. By Prestige Prototype

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 protective case for ESP32-S3 development boards (44-pin layout, ESP32-S3-WROOM-1 and N16R8 variants). Supports both PINNED and PINLESS configurations with separate print profiles. Wi-Fi pattern on top for a tech-themed look. Dual USB Type-C port openings. Compact minimalist design — keeps heat dissipation and functionality intact. Pin profile ~39 min / Pinless profile ~29 min, both 0.2mm/2 walls/15% infill, 1 plate. Standard Digital File License (commercial via designer’s Patreon). ESP32-S3 is Adafruit-ecosystem-relevant for CircuitPython users. By TuTu (@yujixun)

download the files on: https://makerworld.com/en/models/988691-esp32-s3-pin-pinless-enclosure-44-pin-edition

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

3D Hangouts – Holiday Wreath, DIY HomeView and Twisty Eyeball
https://youtube.com/live/60gsCGmLxzw?feature=share

This week @adafruit Noe is showcasing his guide for his lego brick inspired holiday wreath. Pedro is working on a DIY version of the Apple HomeView. Checking out this week’s Timelapse Tuesday model of a twisty eyeball.

Learn Guide
https://learn.adafruit.com/holiday-brick-wreath

NeoPixel JST Breakout
https://www.adafruit.com/product/5975

Sparkle Motion Mini
https://www.adafruit.com/product/6314

Metro EPS32-P4
https://www.adafruit.com/product/6536

7in Pi Touch Display 2
https://www.adafruit.com/product/6079

Timelapse Tuesday:

Twisty Stress-Relief Eyeball By MAX WORKSHOP
https://crealitycloud.com/model-detail/stress-relief-eye-ball-toy
https://youtu.be/x8ZG8F7bvnA

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!

Build a holiday inspired wreath that lights up with animated NeoPixel LEDs! This project uses the Adafruit Sparkle Motion Mini, 12 NeoPixel JST breakouts and matching cables so there’s no soldering required.

The 3D printed branches snap together and feature modular pieces that diffuse the LEDs. You can 3D print the parts in different colors to make it themed for Halloween, Christmas, Hanukah or just a festive party!

Just install the free WLED software onto the Sparkle Motion Mini to get amazing LED animations that pulse, sparkle, and fade. The WLED firmware features remote control over WiFi so you can easily change the colors and effects with a mobile device or computer. With the Sparkle Motion Mini’s built-in I2S microphone, you can even enable audio reactive LED animations!

Learn Guide:
https://learn.adafruit.com/holiday-brick-wreath

NeoPixel JST Breakout:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/5975

Sparkle Motion Mini:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/6314

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!

MIT Technology Review marks 50 years of EMACS, one of the first full-screen text editors and still in use today. It grew out of TECO, a text editor Dan Murphy wrote in 1962 for the PDP-1 at MIT, and Carl Mikkelsen’s Control-R add-on from 1971, which showed edits on video terminals as they happened.

In 1976, Richard Stallman saw a full-screen editor called E at Stanford and reworked Control-R so every key ran its own macro. Lab hackers then added commands of their own, which made helping each other hard. Guy Steele Jr. set out to standardize the command set, with David Moon and Stallman, producing the Meta key bindings that gave EMACS its name: Editor Macros.

Stallman mailed copies to anyone who sent a tape and a return envelope, on the condition that improvements came back. Commercial versions from Honeywell and from James Gosling followed, and that shift helped push Stallman to start the GNU Project. GNU Emacs shipped with Mac OS X until 2019, and macOS still answers Control-Option-B and Control-Option-F to move back and forward a word.

See more at technologyreview.com. Via Hacker News.

Every week we’ll 3D print designs from the community and showcase slicer settings, use cases and of course, Time-lapses! This Week:

Twisty Stress-Relief Eyeball
By MAX WORKSHOP
crealitycloud.com/model-detail/stress-relief-eye-ball-toy
Bambu X1C
PolyMaker PLA
15hr 19mins
X:67 Y:67 Z:60mm
.2mm layer / .4mm Nozzle
10% Infill / 1mm Retraction
200C / 60C
48g
230mm/s

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

Bonhams reports that the “Hatfield” Apple-1 sold for $1.15 million at its History of Science, Technology & Computing sale, which closed on October 14. Two bidders fought over it for 28 minutes. The price is a new world auction record for a commercially sold Apple-1, and more than double the estimate.

The machine was built by Steve Wozniak in 1976 and is signed by him on the motherboard. It comes with a 1978 letter signed by Steve Jobs to the original owner, Fred Hatfield, offering a trade-in upgrade to the then new Apple II.

It is listed as No. 48 on the Apple-1 Registry. Fewer than 75 verified Apple-1 computers are known to survive, and a smaller number of those still work. This one does. Ian Ehling, Director of Fine Books & Manuscripts, North America at Bonhams, noted the sale came during Apple’s 50th anniversary year.

See more at bonhams.com.

Happy National Cat Day! All animal friends are great, but here at Adafruit we happen to have a particular fondness for felines who love electronics and engineering, like the cats you see here, from our Cats of Engineering page!

Add your cat to the crew or make a project for your cat with help from the Adafruit Learning System:

• Automatic Cat Treat Dispenser
• Kitty Toe Bean Keypad with Color TFT
• CircuitPython Neko Kitty with Displayio
• Nunchuck Controlled Laser Cat Toy
• HalloWing Interactive Cat Toy
• Pet Bowl Water Level Sensing
• NAU7802 Pet Food Scale
• IoT Food Scale with Azure and CircuitPython

Repair Café International marked the first anniversary of its Linux Repair Café starter kit on repaircafe.org. The kit is a guide for running sessions where visitors bring an old laptop and leave with Linux Mint installed. One year in, 165 Repair Cafés around the world are doing this.

The reason is Windows 10. Microsoft ends support in October 2027, and roughly 400 million computers worldwide cannot update to Windows 11. Linux is free, open source, and keeps those machines working instead of sending them to the e-waste pile.

Repair Cafés that want to offer installations but have nobody with the skills can ask for help. In the Netherlands, the group works with the Nederlandse Linux Gebruikers Groep, which set up BuurtLinux, a volunteer network that provides free support after the install. The NLLGG also runs LaptopRevive, which puts Linux on discarded laptops and gives them to students, refugees, and others on a small budget. Similar groups exist in other countries.

See more at repaircafe.org.

Manon Bischoff, writing for Scientific American, traces a math problem back to a practical shipboard question. Sir Walter Raleigh wanted to know how many cannonballs were in a stack, so he asked his scientific advisor, Thomas Harriot. Harriot found a formula for a square pyramid, then wondered if that stacking was the densest way to pack spheres at all. He wrote to Johannes Kepler in 1606. Kepler’s answer, published five years later, became Kepler’s conjecture: the best packing leaves about 26 percent empty space.

Proving it took centuries. Lagrange settled the two dimensional case in 1773. Gauss handled regular lattices in 1831. In 1953 László Fejes Tóth showed the problem could be cut down to a finite number of cases using Voronoi cells, which made a computer attack possible.

Thomas Hales and his student Samuel Ferguson checked more than 5,000 sphere arrangements, about 100,000 computer problems, and submitted a 250 page proof with three gigabytes of files in 1998. Reviewers said they were 99 percent certain. Hales then started the Flyspeck project in 2003 to verify the proof formally. That took 11 years and confirmed it.

See more at scientificamerican.com and content on GitHub.

A flexible, cute skeleton printed all at once — can be posed in many positions. Toy + Halloween decoration. CAREFUL when removing supports. 0.2mm layer, 2 walls, 15% infill, PETG (~36g), ~2.7h, 1 plate. Pure-Halloween flexi pick for the final week — pairs with the Flexi Zombie, Werewolf, and Mythic Skeleton Hand of prior batches as the full articulated-Halloween-creature set now in play. By 3Dcrabi

download the files on: https://makerworld.com/en/models/634052-articulated-cute-skeleton-print-in-place

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:

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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

A minimalist snowflake Christmas ornament. 0.12mm layer, 2 walls, 15% infill, ~1.4h, 1 plate, 26g PLA. 5.0★ from 1 review. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Compatible with Bambu P1S/P1P/X1/A1/H2D lineup. Fast print — a good Christmas-week staple as the ramp continues. By Niro (@niro58)

download the files on: https://makerworld.com/en/models/874549-christmas-snowflake-ornament-minimalist

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

Two Gridfinity-compatible bins that keep measuring cups and spoons organized — each with a dedicated spot. Default ‘Hilbert’ top-layer texture can be changed in the slicer. Larger container fits measuring cups up to 92mm (3.6″) diameter; smaller container fits measuring spoons up to 21.5mm (0.84″) diameter. Prep-cooking essential — great Thanksgiving-week pick for makers already using Gridfinity in the workshop who want to extend into the kitchen. By enzo

download the files on: https://makerworld.com/en/models/935232-kitchen-gridfinity-measuring-cups-and-spoons

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

A LoRa/Meshtastic case for the RAK Wisblock 19003 that uses one 18650 battery. Modified/remixed from DeMeshe Node’s 19007 case. Compatible with the RAK 19003 only (tags also mention 19007 but description limits to 19003). Includes a small SMA-port guard protecting the antenna plug. 0.2mm layers, 3 walls, 10% infill, ~2.2h, 47g PETG, 1 plate. CC BY-NC 4.0. Continuing Meshtastic rotation after last week’s T-Deck + T-Beam showcase — this is the smaller single-cell RAK variant that pairs with the TonyG RAK19007 case from Oct 1 for different battery form factors. By juergen

download the files on: https://www.makerworld.com/en/models/431959-rak19003-meshtastic-1×18650-weather-resistant-case

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

Modular Gridfinity knife holders — mix and match 36 block sizes for different blade heights/lengths, plus two handle rest styles and spacer pieces for custom layouts. Customize directly on MakerWorld. 36-plate set: blocks with 3 regular slots, 2×1 to 2×6 length, 3u to 8u tall. Legacy Set (4 blocks): Large (2×6×8u), Medium (2×4×7u), Small (2×3×5u), Mini (2×2×5u). Print ‘Tester’ first to check fit — all slots same size. Known compatible: IKEA 365+ knives, Opinel folding knives. Alt kitchen pick (same designer as the Measuring Cups in main — distinct function). Legacy Set 17.8h/6 plates; 36-plate set 96.4h. By enzo

download the files on: https://makerworld.com/en/models/937703-kitchen-gridfinity-modular-knife-block-3-slots

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

From the mail bag!

ong time customer here. (maybe a decade? certainly not
as long as some, i’m sure)
i just wanted to send an “we appreciate you!” message (the royal
“you”, obviously. all the named and unnamed folks that make, and have
made, adafruit possible)

i have learned SO VERY much in that time and i cannot thank you enough for
that… im not very bright and have forgotten most of it, but i still did
it!

for example, the wife and i have a small travel trailer that i’m updating
(furniture, plumbing, electrical) and most of the updates that i’m making
are 100% due to confidence inspired from, and some of the knowledge gained
by, the learn guides/docs/forum that adafruit has put out over the years.
don’t worry, it’s only the safe stuff that i’ve applied that
knowledge. all the dangerous stuff was from youtube. promise. it’s very
empowering to encounter a problem and know that i can fix it, work around
it, or improve it using the tools and skills that i’ve gained from this
amazing thing you have built… and home assistant. a LOT of home assistant,
omg. so much HA.

A small Christmas tree for a shelf, windowsill, or desk. Base fits over an LED tealight so the tree glows and flickers in the dark. Base designed for a 36×18mm tealight (also versions for 37.2×18.4mm, 37×20mm, and 40×23mm; designer takes requests). Tree is printed in spiral vase mode — quick to print. Base needs internal supports for the flame opening; only lower ring needs support, the rest can bridge. LED tealight is a separate purchase. Alternative Christmas pick — build Christmas content runway. By Allpa_112

download the files on: https://makerworld.com/en/models/753710-mini-led-christmas-tree-vase-mode

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
shares:

download the files on:

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

JLCPCB posted on X about a board designed with the help of an AI agent working in KiCad. The builder, who goes by John, used the workflow to produce a GNSS module based on the u-blox MAX-M10S receiver.

The finished board measures 25 by 36.5 mm and uses a 4-layer stackup. It was manufactured and assembled by JLCPCB, so this is a physical board and not a screenshot of a layout.

The agent workflow itself is published as a repository, so you can see how the AI steps and the KiCad files fit together.

See more at x.com and content on GitHub.

Pinscope has posted a tutorial on hackster.io that makes an ESP32’s own web page reachable from outside the local network, without a port forward or a VPN. The device opens one outbound connection and gets an HTTPS address, live logs, charted metrics, decoded crash reports and over the air firmware updates.

Setup is one ESP-IDF component pulled from the ESP Component Registry, a project key pasted into menuconfig, and two lines in main.c. The call runs in its own task and does not block the application. Every ESP_LOG line is streamed and stored. Upload the .elf along with the .bin and crash addresses are decoded to function, file and line.

The memory story is the interesting part. Instead of TLS, the device uses the Noise protocol NK pattern with X25519 and ChaCha20-Poly1305 over plain TCP on port 443. The server’s public key is compiled in, so there is no certificate chain to parse. Measured on an ESP32-S2: 9,584 bytes of RAM while connected and 18 KB of flash. A TLS session alone typically costs 20 to 40 KB. The same component is available as an Arduino library and for PlatformIO.

See more at hackster.io and content on GitHub.

C Forde built an MP3 player shaped like a cassette tape, and posted the build on Hackster.io. It plays through headphones on its own, or it sits in a cassette deck and feeds audio to the player’s own head through a tape head mounted in the shell.

Version 2 replaces most of the point to point wiring with a 2 layer flexible PCB. The cassette shell is 3D printed in four pieces with cutouts already in place for the USB socket, MicroSD slot and headphone jack, so there is no need to cut up a real cassette. The spools are printed too, and they turn.

Inside is an ESP32-C3 mini with an integrated OLED display, running MicroPython, driving a DFPlayer Mini. A 150mAh LiPo powers it, with a resistor divider on GPIO2 reporting charge as a percentage on the display. Five tactile buttons under a printed front panel handle play, stop, volume and track skip. A switch behind the tape head starts playback when the deck’s mechanical play button presses in. Running current is about 50mA.

See more at hackster.io.

TMRh20Projects posted on the Seeed Studio forum about adding encryption to RF24Gateway. The work builds on nrf_to_nrf, a library for direct radio communication on XIAO nRF52840 and nRF54L15 boards. It does not use Bluetooth or Zigbee. It uses the Enhanced ShockBurst (ESB) protocol and direct radio access.

The library already included AES/CCM encryption, and that is now enabled for both nRF52x and nRF54x parts. The next step is bringing encryption to RF24Gateway, which lets nRF24, nRF52x and nRF54x devices act as wireless Ethernet adapters carrying TCP/IP and UDP. That means MQTT, HTTP and similar protocols can run over the radio network. The Gateway needs a Linux device with GPIO and SPI, such as a Raspberry Pi.

The code is written and the pull requests are in place. The author expects a full release within a day or two.

See more at forum.seeedstudio.com and content on GitHub.

Dave Farquhar at The Silicon Underground compares the two versions of the original IBM PC 5150, pegged to the October 27, 1982 date on the Revision B BIOS. The fronts look identical. The back tells you which one you have: Revision B is marked with a B in a circle and has positions for five screws, while Revision A has two. The Revision A also shipped with a black power supply instead of raw metal.

Revision A, sold from August 1981 to March 1983, is the scarcer and more collectible one. It is also the more limited one. Its early BIOS tops out at 544K rather than 640K, ignores option ROMs on EGA, VGA and hard drive controllers, and the machines often came with single sided floppy drives. Revision B takes a full 640K and runs anything short of 286 software.

Farquhar estimates roughly 600,000 Revision A units against about 2.7 million Revision B, out of 3.3 million 5150s total. He argues the 5160 XT is the better machine and the better bargain, despite being less common than the Revision B.

See more at dfarq.homeip.net.

Shri Khalpada walks through the two main kinds of touchscreen, with interactive demos, at PerThirtySix.

Resistive screens stack two conductive layers with spacer dots between them. The controller puts a voltage slope across one layer and reads the other. Press down and the layers meet at one point, and the voltage read there says how far across the press was. Two readings, one for X and one for Y, happen a hundred or more times a second. Pressure is all it takes, so a gloved hand or a stylus works. Two fingers do not: the readings blend into one point in the middle.

Capacitive screens instead use a grid of sender and listener electrodes under the glass. Your finger, being salty water, pulls part of the field away and the listener gets less signal.

Khalpada notes a phone has only a few hundred crossings, not thousands, and that controllers find the strongest crossing then average its neighbors for sub-grid precision. Palms are ignored because their cluster is too big. Water causes trouble when your finger touches it, smearing the touch across the screen.

See more at perthirtysix.com.

CultRepo posted a 51 second clip on YouTube about the moment Flash started to disappear from the web. It points to Steve Jobs announcing that the iPhone would not support Adobe Flash, which meant video on iOS had to run through HTML5 instead.

That decision pushed companies across the internet to move their video streaming off Flash. The clip is a lead-in to a longer CultRepo documentary about Video.js, the open source HTML5 video player that came out of that shift.

The trailer is set for October 29 and the full film for November 5.

See the video below.

Dmitriy Kostiuk gave a talk on the history of the computer mouse, published on media.ccc.de. It traces how pointing devices changed in three areas: how they detect motion, what protocols they speak, and how they fit the hand.

The hardware covered starts with early optical mice from Xerox and Mouse Systems, which needed a special printed pad to work. From there it moves to opto-mechanical designs from Depraz and Apple, analog mice built for 1980s home computers, and wheel mice from Torrington and Hawley. Logitech’s first optical trackball and Microsoft’s first modern optical mouse are both in the lineup.

The second half is about shape. Kostiuk looks at the first Sharp and Microsoft mice, multi-button units from Prohance, Microsoft’s “Dove Bar”, and the trackball from ITAC Systems. He also covers the work famous industrial designers did on mice.

See more at media.ccc.de. Via Hackaday.

JLCPCB posted a question to its followers on X: what is the tolerance of a 0Ω resistor? The company’s own parts library lists one as “0Ω ±1%”. One percent of zero is zero, so the spec says nothing useful. JLCPCB asked for wrong answers only.

The replies ran where you would expect. One person offered to buy a batch, keep the ones with negative resistance, and get rich. Another asked what range 100 percent tolerance would cover.

One commenter said it is not always a joke. A purchasing agent at his wife’s company, where she does PCB layout, seriously asked what tolerance of zero ohm part to order for production.

Real zero ohm resistors are jumpers, and manufacturers do spec them, just with a maximum resistance in milliohms and a current rating rather than a percentage. The tolerance field is a leftover from the database that holds every other resistor.

See more at x.com.

Peter Hraska built Enkiplate, a Japanese flashcard system for the Soldered Inkplate 4TEMPERA, and published the code and documentation on GitHub. Read the card, tap to reveal the answer, then rate how you did. The scheduler tracks what needs practice. Today’s temperature range and the next three calendar events sit above the card. No accounts, no streaks, no notifications.

The hardware is the Inkplate 4TEMPERA with a 600 x 600 touchscreen, an ESP32, 4 MB of flash and PSRAM. Other Inkplate models would need a firmware port. A companion service runs on the host machine, rendering typography and paper textures into 3-bit frames and sending them to the device over WiFi or USB. macOS is the tested host and Windows is not supported.

Setup pulls the JMdict English dictionary and imports common entries. Weather comes from Open-Meteo, and calendar events come from a private .ics feed, with all-day and cancelled events skipped. You can import your own vocabulary or short sentences, which are checked against the real paper layout before saving. Code is MIT licensed, with fonts and dictionary data under their own terms.

See more on GitHub. Via Hackaday.

Sam Freeman writing at Make: covers a Halloween mask by Sebastian Staacks of There Oughta Be that swaps faces using LED grids. The mask uses two 128×64 LED matrixes driven by a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W, mounted to a face shield with magnets, zip ties, and 3D printed brackets. Worn with a black hood, it lets him switch from one character to another on the spot.

The tradeoffs: the wearer sees through a narrow slit, and 3A of current runs millimeters from his face.

The staff that goes with the costume is the harder build. It also runs on a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W and a USB power bank, and it carries controls and an accelerometer for changing settings while wearing the mask. A Bluetooth speaker on his belt handles sound. The write-up on his blog lists part numbers and assembly steps for anyone wanting to build one.

See the video below and more at makezine.com.

Rui Santos and Sara Santos have released a new version of their ESP-IDF eBook on Random Nerd Tutorials. ESP-IDF is Espressif’s own framework for programming ESP32 chips, built around C and FreeRTOS, with lower level access to peripherals than the Arduino core gives you.

The book is a 520 page color PDF split into 8 modules, with source code, schematics, and screenshots. It starts with installing the ESP-IDF extension in VS Code and creating a project, then moves through GPIO configuration, FreeRTOS tasks and queues and timers, deep sleep and wake sources, I2C with a BME280 sensor, WiFi and a small web server, Bluetooth Low Energy as both peripheral and central, and ESP-NOW sender and receiver code.

Any ESP32 board works with the examples, though the authors used an ESP32-S3. They recommend some C and prior ESP32 experience first, so this is not a first microcontroller book. The price is $29, down from $39, during the launch discount, and purchase includes forum access and a 60 day money back guarantee.

See more at randomnerdtutorials.com.

A post on blog.enlyth.com asks a narrow question: what is the oldest GUI application that still runs on Windows 11 with no modifications and no emulation. Sixteen-bit Windows programs are out, since 64-bit Windows has no NTVDM, so the search starts with the early NT era.

The first answer came from Win32s: FREECELL.EXE, dated 22-Feb-93, is playable on current Windows 11. Digging further through NT 3.1 pre-release builds on the Internet Archive turned up older candidates that failed. The 1991 builds use a draft PE format modern Windows will not load, and builds up to mid-1992 assumed cdecl instead of stdcall for Windows API calls, so arguments get removed twice and the program crashes.

The winner is CDPLAYER.EXE from Build 347, linked 16-Nov-1992. Other programs in that build crash in their bundled C runtime, but CDPLAYER uses the system crtdll.dll, which Windows 11 still ships in SysWOW64. With a small cdemu.dll to fake a CD-ROM drive, it plays audio. The post also shows REVERSI.EXE from Windows 1.01, dated 15-Nov-1985, running under otvdm.

See more at blog.enlyth.com and content on GitHub.

Well what do we have here? It’s the Adafruit eInk Breakout Friend with 32KB SRAM! Follow along with John Park during the week’s product pick.

Want more JP’s Product Pick of the Week?! Tune in every Tuesday on Youtube LIVE, Twitch, Periscope (Twitter) and Facebook. LIVE TEXT CHAT IS HERE in the Adafruit Discord chat!

Catch previous editions on YouTube and don’t miss our gift guide!

Nick Indge, writing at Ars Technica, bought an M-Vave FM-1 for $59.72 and found an active custom firmware scene already built around it. The FM-1 was sold as a pocket take on the Yamaha DX7, with 27 soft-touch piano keys and a 1.54-inch TFT display. In July, people on Reddit’s r/synthdiy began reverse-engineering the stock firmware. Custom builds started showing up in September.

On October 17, M-Vave responded by releasing FM1 Open: an SDK, a browser-based workbench, and stock firmware v15 as an open platform, with the application source under GPLv3 and an in-browser emulator for testing before flashing. The synth engine itself is still a closed binary, so only the application layer is open.

Indge tried several community builds. Melodee adds CZ-1, DX7, drum, and Commodore 64 SID engines. Felucca runs more than a dozen engines at once with a sampler and a pattern sequencer. SLOOP turns the unit into an eight-track battery-powered groovebox. And yes, it runs Doom. He also botched a flash by skipping the v15 update first, then recovered the unit with the workbench force-flash tool.

See more at arstechnica.com and content on GitHub.

Andrew Dorey writes about a way to capture video from old computers that only have RF output. Machines like the ZX81 modulated their video onto a UHF carrier because televisions were the display of choice in the 1970s and 80s. UK analogue broadcasts ended in 2012, so a modern TV will not tune them, and filming a CRT gives you a rolling black bar.

His answer was a Philips AV7300, bought on eBay. First sold in 1987, it is an analog TV without the screen: aerial in, composite video and audio out on phono connectors. It stores twelve presets, each tuned by hand with its own dial and LED. Inside is a single sided board with through hole parts and no digital electronics, built around the IF section of the Philips System 4 (K40) chassis.

After replacing perished rubber feet and checking the capacitors, he found it only outputs video once it locks onto an RF signal. A BBC Micro and an Amiga 1200 both worked.

Buyers should check the label for PAL I, PAL B/G or NTSC, since the wrong system can mean picture without sound.

See more at andrewdorey.com.