Open Hardware/Modding: PocketBeagle, Raspberry Pi, ESP32, and More

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Feb 25, 2026

• CNX Software ☛ PocketBeagle 2 SBC gets industrial version with 1GB RAM, 64GB eMMC flash

  The PocketBeagle 2 Industrial is an update to the PocketBeagle 2 Rev A1 SBC featuring 1GB DDR4 RAM, a 64GB eMMC flash, and industrial temperature range support. The original board only comes with 512MB DDR4 memory, an eMMC flash footprint (unpopulated), and commercial temperature range support. Apart from those changes, the other specifications remain the same, with a Texas Instruments AM6254 quad-core Cortex-A53 SoC, an MSPM0L1105 Cortex-M0+ microcontroller, a microSD card slot, a USB-C port, UART and JTAG debugging support, and two 36-pin GPIO headers. Another difference is that the PCB is red for the PocketBeagle 2 Industrial (like the BeagleBone Black Industrial 4G), while the PocketBeagle 2 features a black PCB.

• Tom's Hardware ☛ ATAboy bridges old IDE drives to the 21st century with Open Source USB host bridge — powered by a Raspberry Pi RP2350 and with custom "Award" BIOS menu

  Using the power of the Raspberry Pi Pico 2's RP2350, ATAboy bridges the hard drives of old, with the computers of today.

• Hackaday ☛ Peltier Fridges Have Early Death

  The problem is that while it makes sense that an inefficient Peltier module needs more power to get more cooling. But the reality is in practical applications, many designs push the current up when it should be moving it down. The curve describes a parabola, and you can be on the high side or low side and still get the same result. But obviously, you don’t want to put in more current and get the same cooling that you could get with lower currents.

• Hackaday ☛ Railguns: Making Metal Go Fast Using The Lorentz Force

  Similarly, the Lorentz force that underlies railguns is extremely simple and effective, but scaled up to weapons-grade dimensions results in highly destructive forces that demolish the metal rails and other components of the railgun after only a few firings. Will we ever be able to fix these problems, or are railguns and similar sci-fi weapons forever beyond our grasp?

• Hackaday ☛ Elongating A BMX For Drag Racing

  BMX bikes are a unique frame geometry, essentially forgoing all travel efficiency for maneuverability and sturdiness. For how much abuse these bikes are designed to take, these are all good tradeoffs. But it turns out that these bikes also have an exceptionally low center of gravity, which could make them useful for drag racing, provided they’re given a suitably large electric motor and a few minor frame modifications.

• Ruben Schade ☛ NZXT parts out of the dishwasher

  Anyway, these will prove invaluable for a DIY build I’m doing. I was about ready to 3D print some 3.5 and 2.5-inch drive trays, but now I’ve been able to save a bit of plastic and avoided sending some metal to landfill :).

• CNX Software ☛ Inkplate 13SPECTRA 13.3-inch E-ink Spectra smart color display supports Arduino, MicroPython, ESPHome (Crowdfunding)

  Soldered Electronics has made ESP32-based e-paper displays for years, starting with the launch of the Inkplate 6 in 2019. The Inkplate 13SPECTRA is their latest model based on an ESP32-S3 WiFi and Bluetooth SoC and a 13.3-inch E-Ink Spectra color display with 1600 x 1200 resolution.

• Liliputing ☛ Lilbits: Pebble smartwatches, Linux 7.0, and the uncertain future for Lenovo Legion Go graphics drivers

  If you’ve got a PC that works, there’s not that much reason to worry about getting frequent driver updates unless you want to plug in some currently unsupported hardware. But if you’ve got a gaming PC, then frequent driver updates can be pretty important, as NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel often tweak graphics drivers to add support for new games and improve performance for existing titles.