news
Open Hardware/Modding: Hackaday Podcast, Raspberry Pi, and More
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Hackaday ☛ Hackaday Podcast Episode 335: Beer, Toast, And Pi
What happens when you listen in on Elliot Williams and Al Williams? You get a round up of the best of last week’s Hackaday posts, of course. The topics this week range from beer brewing to lightning protection, with a little bit of everything in between.
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Raspberry Pi ☛ Raspberry Pi in the stratosphere
Last year, Elvis had the opportunity to participate in a NASA scientific mission, EMIDSS (Experimental Module for the Iterative Design of Satellite Subsystems), during which he launched the first version of the Trinidad system: an image acquisition module based on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W and a Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3, housed in a 3D-printed enclosure. This device was able to reach an average altitude of 42 km in the stratosphere, where it successfully captured images (example below) under extreme conditions, including temperatures below -50 °C.
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XDA ☛ This $20 device fixed all my RGB lighting woes on Linux
One thing I didn’t think about when I left Windows for Linux was how I would customize the RGB lighting on gaming PC’s fans. The apps I used to use for it are only available on Windows, so when I finished up my first Linux installation, I was stuck with the default colors for all my fans.
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The Verge ☛ Framework actually did it: I upgraded a laptop’s entire GPU in just three minutes
Today, I can confirm the system actually works. I traveled to Framework’s San Francisco offices to be the first journalist to upgrade an entire laptop graphics card, with my own hands, in just three minutes — including the time it took to reboot. I yanked an AMD Radeon RX 7700S video card out of the machine and plugged in a brand-new mobile Nvidia RTX 5070, with just six screws and using the pen-shaped screwdriver that comes included with the machine.
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Linus Åkesson ☛ The Qweremin
In the summer of 2022 I built a C64-based theremin, described and explained here. The theremin, of course, is one of the oldest electronic instruments. Its main drawback—and strength—is that it's incredibly hard to master. The performer has ultimate control over volume and pitch, but it takes months of practice before you can play even a simple scale.
Meanwhile, I've also developed a line of instruments featuring qwerty keyboards, where the keys are laid out as on a Type B chromatic button accordion. The earliest example is the Sixtyforgan, presented in spring 2021, but there's also Qwertuoso, the Commodordion, the Paulimba, and the C=TAR. For these instruments, the main challenge has been how to incorporate phrasing and other forms of musical expression; to move beyond the rudimentary note-on, note-off of an organ.
The Qweremin represents the unification of these two worlds. On the one hand (pun intended) you have ultimate control over volume and expression, and on the other you can play quick melodies with large jumps, and even chords. It is my most expressive 8-bit instrument yet.
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Linux Gizmos ☛ DietPi August 2025 Update Goes Trixie and Prepares Forky
The August 2025 release of DietPi v9.16 introduces full support for Debian 13 “Trixie,” initial support for Debian 14 “Forky,” and a wide set of software and system enhancements. Released on August 23rd, this update also includes optimizations to DietPi tools, additional RISC-V support, and numerous bug fixes.
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Linux Gizmos ☛ GOWIN-Based Tiny $14 FPGA Board with 1.5K LUTs, 96 Kb SRAM, and Onboard Debugger
The main FPGA used on the board is the GW1N-UV1P5QN48XF from GOWIN’s LittleBee series. It features 1584 logic units, 96 kilobits of block SRAM, and 256 kilobits of on-chip flash memory. The device includes two PLLs and six I/O banks, offering a total of 125 general-purpose I/O pins.
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Linux Gizmos ☛ OnLogic Karbon 521 Rugged Industrial PC Powered by Intel Core Ultra
The Karbon 521 supports Intel Core Ultra 5 and Ultra 7 processors (Meteor Lake, Series 1) with TDP ratings of 28 W. Graphics output is handled by Intel Arc, supporting up to four simultaneous displays via DisplayPort 2.1 and Thunderbolt 4.
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Linux Gizmos ☛ AAEON MIX-MTLD1 Delivers Intel Core Ultra and OOB Management to Mini-ITX
AAEON has released the MIX-MTLD1, a Mini-ITX motherboard featuring Intel Core Ultra processors, Intel Arc graphics, and an on-chip AI Boost NPU. Built on Intel’s multi-pillar die architecture, the design combines CPU, GPU, and NPU resources to accelerate inference workloads and expand deployment potential across AI-driven and edge applications.