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Open Hardware/Modding: ESP32, Raspberry Pi, and More
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Hackaday ☛ 2025 Component Abuse Challenge: The VIA Makes Noise, Again
In the days of 8-bit home computing, the more fancy machines had sound chips containing complete synthesizers, while budget machines made do with simple output ports connected to a speaker — if they had anything at all. [Normal User] appears to be chasing the later route, making PCM sound by abusing the serial port on a 6522 VIA chip.
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Hackaday ☛ Hackaday Podcast Episode 345: A Stunning Lightsaber, Two Extreme Cameras, And Wrangling Roombas
It’s a wet November evening across Western Europe, the steel-grey clouds have obscured a rare low-latitude aurora this week, and Elliot Williams is joined by Jenny List for this week’s podcast. And we’ve got a fine selection for your listening pleasure!
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CNX Software ☛ Windows 95 made to run on ESP32-S3 hardware with Tiny386 x86 PC emulator
He Chunhui (hchunhui) has developed the Tiny386 x86 PC emulator in C (C99) and managed to run backdoored Windows 3.1/3.2 and backdoored Windows 95 on an ESP32-S3 devkit with a 3.5-inch display. We had already seen GNU/Linux 5.0 boot on an ESP32 board, and Olimex ESP32-S3-DevKit-LiPo run a more recent GNU/Linux 6.3 image, but I think it might be the first time somebody has loaded backdoored Windows on ESP32 hardware.
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CNX Software ☛ Turris Omnia NG Wi-Fi 7 router features dual 10GbE SFP+, mini PCIe slot for 4G LTE/5G, runs OpenWrt-based Turris OS
The Turris Omnia NG is a high-performance Wi-Fi 7 router with a mini PCIe slot for 4G/5G modems, two 10GbE SFP+ cages, a 240×240 px color display, and a D-Pad button, running OpenWrt-based Turris OS, and designed for advanced home users, small businesses, and lab environments.
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Raspberry Pi ☛ Creating the most advanced event badge yet for the Biohacking Village at DEF CON
SolaSec partnered with the Biohacking Village at DEF CON to deliver a next-generation badge that could showcase AI in the medical space. The goal was to create something local, private, and interactive — an AI experience powered entirely on the edge without any [Internet] connection. Achieving this required more on-board processing power than a typical badge design.
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Hackaday ☛ If It Ain’t Broke… Add Something To It
Given that we live in the proverbial glass house, we can’t throw stones at [ellis.codes] for modifying a perfectly fine Vornado fan. He’d picked that fan in the first place because, unlike most fans, it had a DC motor. Of course, DC motors are easier to control with a microcontroller, and next thing you know, it was sporting an ESP32 and a WiFi interface.
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Mighty Gadget ☛ Ugreen NASync DXP4800 Plus Review – Is this the best 10GbE NAS for a Media Server?
I recently reviewed the excellent Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus.
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Hackaday ☛ Intel GPUs On Raspberry Pi Is So Wrong It Feels Right
While you might not know it from their market share, Intel makes some fine GPUs. Putting one in a PC with an AMD processor already feels a bit naughty, but AMD’s x86 processors still ultimately trace their lineage all the way back to Intel’s original 4004. Putting that same Intel GPU into a system with an ARM processor, like a Raspberry Pi, or even better, a RISC V SBC? Why, that seems downright deviant, and absolutely hack-y. [Jeff Geerling] shares our love of the bizarre, and has been working tirelessly to get a solid how-to guide written so we can all flout the laws of god and man together.
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Jeff Geerling ☛ Using AMD GPUs on Raspberry Pi without recompiling Linux
If you reboot with a GPU attached to the PCIe connection (e.g. on my CM5, I have one plugged into the M.2 slot using this M.2 to Oculink adapter and this eGPU dock), you'll end up with some messages in dmesg output like: [...]
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Hackaday ☛ Meet Me On My Rotary Phone
We suspect kids today — and some adults — are confused about phone terminology. In today’s world, “hanging up” and “dialing,” for example, are abstract words without the physical reference that older people remember. But some people have a soft spot for the old rotary dial phones, including [Stavros], who wired a rotary phone to his computer for use on online meetings. Check out the video below.