news
Open Hardware/Modding: RISC-V, Homelabs, and More
-
Jeff Geerling ☛ The DC-ROMA II is the fastest RISC-V laptop and is odd
Inside this Framework 13 laptop is a special mainboard developed by DeepComputing in collaboration with Framework. It has an 8-core RISC-V processor, the ESWIN 7702X—not your typical AMD, Intel, or even Arm SoC. The full laptop version I tested costs $1119 and gets you about the performance of a Raspberry Pi.
A Pi 4—the one that came out in 2019.
But unlike the Pi 4, this eats up 25 watts of power at idle, meaning the poor battery only lasts 2-3 hours.
-
Harrison Sand ☛ IKEA MYGGSPRAY Wireless motion sensor teardown
In late 2025 IKEA started rolling out a series of Thread based / Matter compatible smart home devices. These were introduced to replace the previous generation of Zigbee based devices.
I got my hands on a MYGGSPRAY (Swedish for mosquito spray) wireless motion sensor. The device is based on the Qorvo QPG6200L SoC, and appears to have a Newopto Photoelectric PIR sensor (part number XYC-PIR233F-S0).
-
Cassidy Williams ☛ Sewing an e-reader case
I’m not the best sewer in the world, and very much a newbie by most definitions. But, I come from a family of very talented sewers, so I know what’s possible, if I just pick up the dang machine and start something. It is so hard to just start something.
That being said, my sister-in-law mentioned over Thanksgiving that she was going to buy a sleeve for her weirdly-proportioned off-brand e-reader, and it seemed like the perfect little project to get off my butt and actually make something.
-
HowTo Geek ☛ Don't throw away your old PC—it makes a better NAS than anything you can buy
A network attached storage device (NAS) is one of the most useful things you can add to your home network, but a specialized NAS can run you hundreds of dollars just for the shell, and that is before you even buy additional hard drives for storage. If you want a large, robust NAS, you'll be on the hook for even more.
That is why I built my own NAS for a fraction of the cost using components from an old PC and some used pieces I bought on the internet for half off.
-
HowTo Geek ☛ Homelab projects to try this weekend (November 28 - 30)
Are you ready to take your homelab to the next level this weekend? Here are three projects to try out as we head into the Thanksgiving weekend.
From automatically updating Docker containers to monitoring your servers and even setting up an ultra-secure password manager, it’s time to start tinkering in your homelab.
I’ve written about Watchtower before, but I really need to sit down and get it properly set up. Since this is a long weekend for many in the US, now’s the perfect time to dial it in for me—and you too.
If you’ve never heard of Watchtower, it’s essentially a Docker container to automatically update other Docker containers. It can be configured in a number of different ways, ranging from just notifying you that a container has an update available to full-blown updating the containers automatically.
I used to have Watchtower deployed in my setup, but I had a few automatic Docker updates cause some issues in my container stack, so I retired it. When I set it up again (and when you set it up for the first time), there are a few configuration options to take note of and use.