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Open Hardware/Modding: RP2040 and More
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Hackaday ☛ New Tool Makes 3D Printed PCBs, Fast
You can design your PCB traces in any vector editor, and then export a SVG. Upload that into the tool, and it will generate the 3D printable PCB for you, automatically including the right clearances and alignment features to make it a simple press-together job to pump out a basic PCB. It bears noting that you’re probably not going to produce a four-layer FPGA board doing advanced high-speed signal processing using this technique. However, for quickly prototyping something or lacing together a few modules and other components, this could really come in handy.
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Hackaday ☛ RP2040 Powers A MIDI-Controlled Soundboard
The build is based around an RP2040 microcontroller. It’s paired with an I2S digital-to-analog converter for sound output, which in turn feeds a small amplifier hooked up to a speaker or a line output. The RP2040 is programmed to respond to MIDI commands by playing various sounds in response, which are loaded off a microSD card. It’s able to act as a USB MIDI host, which allows it to work seamlessly with all sorts of off-the-shelf MIDI controllers like the MIDI Fighter or the Novation Launchpad.
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Hackaday ☛ Poking At The ESP32-P4 And -C6 Dies In An ESP32-P4-M3 Module
With the ESP32-P4 not having any wireless functionality and instead focusing on being a small SoC, it makes sense to combine it with a second chip that handles features like WiFi and Bluetooth. This makes the Guition ESP32-P4-M3 module both a pretty good example of how the P4 will be used, and an excellent opportunity to tear into, decap and shoot photos of the dies of both the P4 and the ESP32-C6 in this particular module, courtesy of [electronupdate]. There also the blog post for those who just want to ogle the shinies.
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Hackaday ☛ Thermoforming Printed Parts With Hot Water
Theoretically using hot water instead of hot air would provide a more equal application of heat, but putting your hands into 70°C water does require some more precautions. There’s also the issue that PLA is very hygroscopic, so the part requires drying afterwards to prevent accelerated hydrolysis. Due to the more even heating, the edge of the PLA that clamped into the mold also softened significantly, causing it to pop out of the mold and requiring a small design modification to prevent this.
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BoingBoing ☛ Lego stuffed an entire computer into a standard brick
Lego discontinued Mindstorms at the end of 2022. Here's what replaced it: a custom chip smaller than a pencil eraser inside a standard-sized 2-by-4 brick.
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Wired ☛ An Inside Look at Lego’s New Tech-Packed Smart Brick
In front of me, on a plain white table, is a batch of prototypes of Lego’s new Smart Brick, the final version of which is a small, sensor-laden 2-by-4 black brick with a big brain. No outsider has seen these prototypes, all of which represent stages of a journey Lego has been charting over the past eight years.