Open Hardware/Modding: ESP32, Tinkercad, and More

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 26, 2025

• Hackaday ☛ A Simple $25 Robot Based On The ESP32

  [Paul McCabe] wrote in to let us know about his $25 robot. This small wheeled robot is based on an ESP32 and made using cardboard and hot glue.

• CNX Software ☛ CrowPanel Advance 7-inch ESP32-P4 HMI display supports Zigbee, LoRa, and 2.4GHz radio modules

  The CrowPanel Advance 7.0-inch ESP32-P4 HMI Hey Hi (AI) display is an ESP32-P4 HMI terminal that is similar to the GUITION 7-inch touchscreen display. It also adds an ESP32-C6 module for WiFi 6, Bluetooth LE, and 802.15.4 connectivity, and is suitable for Smart Home, industrial automation, and AIoT applications.

• Hackaday ☛ What If Tinkercad Was Self-Hosted?

  While we use a lot of CAD tools, many of us are fans of Tinkercad — especially for working with kids or just doing something quick. But many people dislike having to work across the Internet with their work stored on someone’s servers. We get it. So does [CommonWealthRobotics], which offers CaDoodle. It is nearly a total clone of Tinkercad but runs on Windows, Linux, Mac, or even Chrome OS.

• Linux Gizmos ☛ Radxa Rolls Out Dragon Q6A Featuring Qualcomm QCS6490, 12 TOPS NPU, and 6th-Gen AI Engine

  Radxa has rolled out the Dragon Q6A, a compact single-board computer built on Qualcomm’s QCS6490 octa-core platform. Designed for industrial, IoT, and edge computing environments, the board combines high-performance CPU and GPU cores with integrated AI acceleration, multiple display interfaces, and flexible storage options.

• Silicon Angle ☛ Anthropic strikes multibillion-dollar deal with Google to access a million TPUs

  The deal will give Anthropic access to up to one million of Google Cloud’s tensor processing units or TPUs, which it wants to use to train and run large language models such as Claude. The company, which is the closest independent competitor to OpenAI, will also use Google’s cloud services, it said.

• The FSF Tackles Mobile Freedom Where It Counts

  For years, many of us in the free software movement have watched with a mixture of hope and frustration as the mobile computing world has exploded. Mobile phones have become the primary computing devices for many, yet they remain fortresses of proprietary control, locking people into systems that undermine their freedom. This is a profound ethical failing. Proprietary software gives developers unjust power over people, turning them into mere subjects in their digital kingdoms. Free software is the only moral solution to this problem, returning control to those who use the machines.

• Tom's Hardware ☛ IBM's boffins run a nifty quantum error-correction algorithm on standard AMD FPGAs, and it is' 10 times faster than what is needed' — research propels IBM's Starling quantum computer project forward

  IBM's Starling project gets a boost from quantum error-correction algorithms running on conventional AMD FPGAs

• Hackaday ☛ Identifying Fake Small-Signal Transistors

  It’s rather amazing how many electronic components you can buy right now are not quite the genuine parts that they are sold as. Outside of dedicated platforms like Mouser, Digikey and LCSC you pretty much enter a Wild West of unverifiable claims and questionable authenticity. When it comes to sites like eBay and AliExpress, [hjf] would go so far as to state that any of the power transistors available for sale on these sites are 100% fake. But even small-signal transistors are subject to fakes, as proven in a comparison.

• Hackaday ☛ Get Ready For Supercon

  It’s just about all we can think about over here: the week leading up to the 2025 Superconference. From what we hear, it’s all-hands-on over in Pasadena right now, as everyone is putting the finishing touches on preparations for Hackaday’s annual  US gathering.

• Hackaday ☛ Relay Computer Knows The Sequence

  When we first saw [DiPDoT’s] homebrew computer, we thought it was an Altair 8800. But, no. While it has a very familiar front panel, the working parts are all based on relays. While it isn’t finished, the machine can already do some simple calculations as you can see in the video below.