Open Hardware/Modding: PicoIDE, ESP32, Arduino, and More

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jan 30, 2026

• Ruben Schade ☛ The PicoIDE IDE emulator

  Do you use an older machine that requires IDE, but the drives for it are on their last legs? Platters? This metaphor fell apart before it really started.

  [...]

  PicoIDE is an open-source IDE/ATAPI drive emulator that replaces aging hard drives and CD-ROM drives in vintage computers with solid-state microSD card storage. Simply put your disc/disk images on a microSD card and swap between them as needed. Powered by open-source hardware and software, PicoIDE means you no longer have to deal with burning optical discs, worn out lasers, crashed heads, or bad sectors.

  If the name rings a bell, this is by the very same Ian Scott behind the PicoGUS, the ultimate modern sound card for old systems that I’ve been dying to get my hands on.

  The PicoIDE emulates CD audio, PIO 0-4, and MWDMA 0-2. It also ships with an injection-moulded case that lets you select and browse disk images. I’m intrigued!

• CNX Software ☛ Electronic components price and lead time increases announced across the board, and not only because of RAM

  Most people already know about rapidly rising RAM prices, but I’m receiving more and more emails about price increases for a range of devices, in a way that’s reminiscent of the impact the Coronavirus/COVID-19 had in 2020 to 2022. We’ve already covered the Raspberry Pi Compute Modules price increase in October 2025, followed by the Raspberry Pi 4/5 price adjustment last December.

• Linux Gizmos ☛ LILYGO Debuts ESP32-C5-Based T-Dongle C5 and T7-C5 Development Boards

  LILYGO has introduced its first ESP32-C5-based development boards, geared toward different form factors and usage models: the USB stick-style T-Dongle C5 and the more conventional T7-C5 development board. Both platforms support dual-band Wi-Fi 6 alongside Bluetooth LE.

• CNX Software ☛ UP Xtreme PTL Edge – defective chip maker Intel Core Ultra X5 338H/X7 358H Panther Lake Hey Hi (AI) mini PC features 40-pin GPIO header, RS232/RS485 COM ports

  AAEON UP Xtreme PTL Edge is an upcoming Panther Lake Hey Hi (AI) Mini PC powered by either an defective chip maker Intel Core Ultra 5 338H or Core Ultra X7 358H with up to 180 TOPS of Hey Hi (AI) performance, and offering industrial features such as a 40-pin GPIO header, two RS-232/422/485 COM ports, and a wide 19 to 36V DC input range.

• Raspberry Pi ☛ SmartCoop: Controlling chickens with Java

  Dave started working on SmartCoop over ten years ago, and the current version contains the fourth generation of his custom-made PCB. With this new design, he could bump the system to use a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W.

  The full system contains an array of automated doors, light sensors, manual push buttons, water tank measurement tools, feeders, and so on. On the software side, an MQTT broker distributes the data, while a Java application based on Pi4J uses live weather data from an API, along with measurements from the sensors, to open and close the gates, keep track of feeding, and perform other tasks.

• Ruben Schade ☛ Finding my childhood motherboard

  This changed last March when I found the invoice for that PC among some scanned manuals from the time. It was like a family archaeological dig uncovered a Rosetta Stone; not the computer itself, but instructions on how I could build it again. I’m not sure how much of this came up in that blog post, but I was hella excited.

• Robotic Systems LLC ☛ moteus hardware ADC triggering

  TLDR: As of firmware 2026-01-21 moteus now has a maximum modulation depth that is 6% larger than before. That means the maximum speed for a given voltage is that much higher. Read on for the effort invested in making that happen.

• Arduino ☛ This Twister-inspired coffee table controls things resting on it

  This is a coffee table with several large colorful dots on its surface, inspired by a Twister game mat. Put something, like an LED lamp, on one of those dots and it will react accordingly — matching the color of the dot, in the case of the lamp.

• Arduino ☛ Community spotlight: MyEmbeddedStuff

  One of the things we love most about the Arduino community is the way knowledge flows freely – makers, engineers, and hobbyists sharing what they’ve learned so others can build on it.

• CNX Software ☛ Naya Connect modular mechanical keyboard offers trackball, touchpad, rotary encoder, and spacial controller options (Crowdfunding)

  Dutch hardware startup Naya Create has launched the Naya Connect, a modular mechanical keyboard featuring magnetic connectors for additional keypads, and a dock to add a trackball, a multitouch touchpad, a rotary encoder, or a spatial controller. It is designed for 3D artists, video editors, audio professionals, and CAD engineers, as well as finance and business users.

• CNX Software ☛ MicroPythonOS graphical operating system delivers Android-like user experience on microcontrollers

  Yesterday, I wrote about Ariel OS RTOS for microcontrollers written in Rust, but there’s another interesting open-source operating system for microcontrollers that will be covered at FOSDEM 2026: MicroPythonOS. While Ariel OS is designed for secure, memory-safe, networked IoT applications on microcontrollers, MicroPythonOS targets applications with graphical user interfaces and is heavily inspired by Android and iOS, with an appstore, an LVGL-based touchscreen and button UI with plenty of widgets, gestures and theme support, and a wifi manager, as well as over-the-air (OTA) firmware updates.