Open Hardware: Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and More

posted by Roy Schestowitz on May 18, 2024

• Fairphone wins 2024 Koning Willem-I Prize

  Fairphone is a Dutch social enterprise. And for a Dutch social enterprise, it doesn’t get bigger than this. Fairphone is proud, honored and beyond thrilled to have won the prestigious Koning Willem I Sustainable Entrepreneurship Plaque for 2024.

• Chris Aldrich ☛ A Small Brother Charger 11 Repair Surgery

  I spent some time today doing surgery on my Brother Charger 11 Correction typewriter. It was quite relaxing to tinker around for a bit and appreciate the sparse, but clever and solid internals of this late model JP-1 machine that the serial number dates to January 1985.

• Raspberry Pi ☛ Raspberry Pi Pico W taught this car to avoid objects

  The brain of the robot car is a Raspberry Pi Pico W, chosen because it’s small enough to hide neatly inside the chassis but packs the necessary processing power to handle the control logic required for navigation. An ultrasonic sensor mounted on a servo motor enables the car to gauge its environment by taking distance readings in all directions. “That wall is seven metres away, so I should stop driving towards it in around 6.9 metres’ time,” is the kind of thing the car would say to itself. The robot is trained always to favour forward movement when the path is clear and only to evaluate alternative paths when an object is detected.

• ROS Industrial ☛ Robotic Blending Milestone 5 Wraps Up on the Foundry Shop Floor

  Launched in March 2023, the program was built around a team that included sponsor Steel Founders’ Society of America (SFSA), Iowa State University (ISU), Yaskawa Motoman, PushCorp and Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). The program would leverage legacy ROS-Industrial Scan-N-Plan developments over the course of prior Focused Technical Projects (FTP) developed via the ROS-Industrial Consortium, as well as university developed capabilities at ISU, funded previously by SFSA. The combined capability may be seen in the below graphic.

• Hackaday ☛ Raspberry Pi Files Paperwork With The London Stock Exchange

  If you’re a regular visitor to the Raspberry Pi website and you have a sharp eye, you may have noticed during the last few days a new link has appeared in their footer. Labelled “Investor relations“, it holds links to the documents filed with the London Stock Exchange of their intention to float. In other words, it’s confirmation of their upcoming share offering.

• Arduino ☛ A drone remote designed to enhance magic shows

  Maker culture has always been a major part of magic performance. Some tricks are well-rehearsed slight of hand, but many of them rely on clever engineering to sell an illusion. And modern technology offers a great deal of interesting possibilities.

• Raspberry Pi Weekly Issue #469 - Putting on my top hat

  Also including object-avoiding cars and a coral-cooling solution to help the environment. Howdy, The Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ is here. It's a peripherals party for your Raspberry Pi 5 and you can buy one now for $12. It's your last chance to register for the Raspberry Pi Foundation's Coolest Projects 2024. Registrations close on 22 May, so hurry! The free online showcase is open to any young digital creator aged up to 18, anywhere in the world.

• Tom's Hardware ☛ Two Raspberry Pi Picos power this sleek dual clock with an LED matrix

  Ajith Kumar B is using two Raspberry Pi Picos to power his dual clock project that has two separate displays.

• CNX Software ☛ ESP32-S3 1.69-inch touch display features 6-axis IMU, RTC, UART, and more

  The Waveshare ESP32-S3 1.69-inch touch display is a development board that uses an ESP32-S3 as the main controller. The board features a 240×280 touchscreen LCD that supports 262K colors and is equipped with an accelerometer, gyroscope, RTC, battery management IC, and a USB-C port for programming and power. Previously we wrote about the Waveshare ESP32-S3-LCD-1.28 1.28-inch fully rounded LCD screen that is also built around an ESP32-S3 MCU, and we have also recently written about the similar-looking Waveshare 1.69-inch IPS touch LCD with no onboard MCU that is meant to connect to Raspberry Pi, ESP32-S3, Raspberry Pi Pico, Arduino, STM32, and other boards with I2C or SPI interfaces.

• Andrew Hutchings ☛ Fixing a TV Stand With 3D Printing

  I have recently acquired two Sony KDL-15G2000 TVs, one via eBay and one via a local auction. These are great 4:3 LCD TVs for use with vintage computers. Unfortunately a piece was missing from the eBay one, which meant it couldn’t stand up properly.