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Open Hardware/Modding: Arduino, Snagboot, and More
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CNX Software ☛ ESP32-C3 based IR remote hub offers touch sensor, haptic feedback, 360° coverage
The XIAO Smart IR Mate is a compact circular-shaped IR remote hub/blaster built around the XIAO ESP32-C3 and designed for IoT applications. It comes pre-flashed with ESPHome and turns traditional IR-controlled appliances like TVs, air conditioners, and projectors into smart devices that can be automated, controlled, or integrated into home automation systems. The module includes three high-power IR LEDs for 360° transmission, a high-sensitivity IR receiver supporting up to 10 learned IR commands, and there’s also haptic feedback through a touch sensor and status LED.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Chinese scientists tout infinitely recyclable 3D printer resin — can be broken down at the molecular level using a thermally reversible photo-click reaction
A team of scientists from Zhejiang University has developed 3D printer resin that can be easily recycled over and over again.
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Arduino ☛ VirCHEW Reality finally lets people gnaw on VR food
Modern virtual reality headsets provide really great visuals and audio, but many experiences can’t be conveyed through those alone. There have been many attempts to expand on that to create more immersive experiences — we’ve even seen hardware to provide scent and thermal feedback.
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Bootlin ☛ Snagboot 2.4 release overview
Snagboot is an open-source and vendor-neutral tool to recover and reflash a wide variety of embedded platforms, leveraging the communication protocols offered by the boot ROMs of most modern system-on-chips. It replaces unpractical, vendor-specific and often closed-source tools provided by silicon vendors. Spring 2025 has been especially rich in Snagboot contributions.
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Tomeu Vizoso: Rockchip NPU update 6: We are in mainline!
The kernel portion of the Linux driver for the Rockchip NPUs has been merged into the maintainer tree, and will be sent in the next pull request to Linus. The userspace portion of the driver has just been merged as well, in the main Mesa repository.
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Hackaday ☛ 2025 One-Hertz Challenge: Clock Calibrator
Wall clocks! Are they very accurate? Well, sometimes they are, and sometimes they lose minutes a day. If you’ve got one that needs calibrating, you might like this device from [Lauri Pirttiaho].