Open Hardware/Modding: RP2040, ESP32, and More

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Aug 25, 2025

• Hackaday ☛ RP2040 Assembly Language Mix And Match

  [David] is building a project with an OLED, a keyboard, and an RP2040. He’s perfected a scanning routine in C to work with the keyboard, but he still had some places he wanted to use even lower-level instructions. That was as good an excuse as any to experiment with inline assembly language inside the C program.

• Hackaday ☛ A PLL For Perfect Pitch

  When Hackaday runs a contest, we see all manner of clever projects. But inevitably there are some we don’t see, because their builders didn’t manage to get them finished in time. [Park Frazer]’s phase-locked loop is one of them. The circuit is an all-discrete PLL that derives a 440kHz output from a 1Hz input, and it arrived just too late for our 1Hz contest.

• Ruben Schade ☛ The Gateron Smoothie linear switches

  I want to build a numpad for learning how to touch-type financial stuff, and was tempted to just go with the same switches again. But where’s the fun in that?

• Old VCR ☛ Reverse-engineering Roadsearch Plus, or, roadgeeking with an 8-bit CPU

  Yes, if your car inverter could handle a 45-ish watt load — and your wife doesn't want her seat back right away — you could navigate major routes across America on your home computer like this portable Commodore SX-64. I particularly enjoyed writing this article because my other irredeemably nerdy habit is roadgeeking, exploring and mapping highways both old and new, and it turns out that 8-bit roadgeeking on ordinary home computers was absolutely possible.

• Jonathan Pallant ☛ JP's Website · 2025-08-23 · How many SPARCs is too many SPARCs? Part 2

  OK, so last time out we looked at the Sun Fire V100, the Sun Netra T1, the SPARCstation 1, the two SPARCstation 2s. We still have:

  Three SPARCstation 20s (suisse314759, suisse130242 and tiny) - none of which have CPUs
  One SPARCstation 10
  Two SPARCstation 5s (suisse16511 and mo28282)

  Where I have duplicates I have named the machines after one of the stickers stuck on the front.

• Linux Gizmos ☛ Kickstarter Features Xerxes Pi: A Compact Compute Module Carrier for Home Labs

  Kickstarter is currently featuring the Xerxes Pi, a compact compute module carrier developed by Rapid Analysis in Australia. Designed for home lab and small business rack environments, the project aims to provide an affordable, well-documented platform for clustered computing, container hosting, and open source server workloads.

• Linux Gizmos ☛ Tiny Linux-Based Industrial Module Built on RK3506J SoC

  The FET3506J-C is a compact embedded module from Forlinx based on the Rockchip RK3506J. It is designed for long-term industrial use in automation, transportation, energy, and communication systems. The module runs Linux 6.1 and supports low power operation, a small footprint, and extended temperature ranges.

• Hackaday ☛ ESP32 Sets Sail As A Modern Bus Pirate Powerhouse

  Bus Pirate is nearly a household name in the hardware hacking world. The first version came out way back in 2008, and there have been several revisions since then. You can buy pre-built Bus Pirate devices, but there’s also the option now to build our own. The ESP32 Bus Pirate project has everything you need to turn an ESP32 device into a protocol sniffing/decoding powerhouse—all on a board you may have sitting around from another project.

• CNX Software ☛ Centron CT1832 Real.Pi – A Realtek RTD1619B SBC based on Raspberry Pi 3 Model B form factor

  Centron Design’s CT1832 Real.Pi is a RealTek RTD1619B SBC that mainly follows the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B form factor and is designed for AIoT applications, vehicle-mounted central control, entertainment/game equipment, and digital signage. It follows the RTD1619B-powered XpressReal T3 SBC based on a smaller form factor, which was introduced a few weeks ago by Fyde Innovations, with support for the Chromium-based FydeOS operating system.

• CNX Software ☛ NXP IW623 SoC supports 2×2 tri-band Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth LE audio

  NXP has recently launched the IW623, a Tri-band Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth LE Audio SoC, which can be considered as the 4th member of the IW62x family, as back in 2020, NXP launched the IW620, with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 connectivity. After that, in January 2022, they released the IW612 tri-radio SoC, adding 802.15.4 support for Matter-enabled smart home gateways, and later in September 2025, they launched the IW693 Wi-Fi 6E SoC with concurrent dual-Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for industrial IoT and automotive markets.