GNU/Linux Devices and Moddable/Hackable Hardware

posted by Roy Schestowitz on May 23, 2026

• Devices/Embedded

  • Hackaday ☛ How The Banana Pi BPI-R4 Pro Violates The First Rule Of OpenWRT Club

    The first rule of OpenWRT Club is of course that you never run an unofficial image on any hardware that’s part of any network you care about. This is somewhat upsetting, as the testing shown in the video below reveals that performance is great when running it.

  • Brandon Rozek ☛ Praise the Smart Button

    Meet Giraffe. Equipped with an Innr AE 270 T smart bulb, it allows me to turn the light on and off from our phones using Home Assistant. The main issue? I need my phone to turn it on and off.

    Now don’t get me wrong, I can still walk up to the lamp and flip the switch. But, then I need to walk back up to it in order to turn it back on. Turns out, the smart bulb needs some power to receive control messages via the network.

  • Arduino ☛ Tell us what you think – and enter for a chance to win one of 10 mystery boxes of Arduino gear!

    Makers and educators, we want to hear from you! Expert or novice, your perspective as an Arduino user matters – and right now, sharing it could win you something pretty special.

    We’ve put together a short user survey to better understand how the community uses what we have to offer, what’s working well, and where we can do better. It takes about 10 minutes to complete, it’s open to everyone, and your answers directly inform how we develop our products, tools, and resources going forward.

  • Arduino ☛ Arduino Core on Zephyr 0.55: Getting ready for the final mile

    We’re releasing version 0.55.0 of the Arduino® Core on Zephyr today, and it’s a meaningful one. This update resolves one of the most common friction points users have reported, adds support for two widely-used libraries, and brings us noticeably closer to our June target for marking this core stable and ending the BETA program. Concurrently, we’ll begin deprecating the corresponding cores based on mbedOS.

    If you’ve been following the beta, this one is worth updating to.

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ LILYGO T-Deck Max is an ESP32-S3 handheld with LoRa, GPS, and E-Paper

    The LILYGO T-Deck Max is a handheld ESP32-S3 development platform combining LoRa communications, GPS, optional 4G connectivity, and an E-Paper display in a compact keyboard-equipped form factor. Similar to earlier T-Deck devices, the platform combines low-power operation with multiple communication interfaces while adding a larger display and additional onboard peripherals.

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ DietPi May 2026 Update Adds Orange Pi 5B Support and Security Fixes

    The May release of DietPi v10.4 adds dedicated Orange Pi 5B support, introduces mitigations for recent Linux vulnerabilities, and includes enhancements affecting logging, kernel management, and software installation workflows, together with multiple bug fixes.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • CNX Software ☛ ESP32-S31 development boards unveiled for IoT, Smart Audio, and HMI applications

    Two ESP32-S31 development boards are currently in the works, and the documentation is already available.

  • CNX Software ☛ Huion Note E – A 8.4-inch Android 15 electronic notebook with battery-free, pressure sensitive stylus

    Huion Note E is an Android 15 note-taking device/electronic notebook powered by a MediaTek Helio G99 SoC and equipped with an 8.4-inch color LCD designed to work with a battery-free PenTech 3.0 pressure-sensitive stylus. The device ships with 6GB LPDDR4 memory, 128GB storage, and a single USB-C port for charging and data.

  • CNX Software ☛ M5Stack StopWatch ESP32-S3 devkit offers 1.75-inch touch AMOLED, microphone, speaker, and GPIO expansion

    M5Stack Core StopWatch is an ESP32-S3-powered WiFi and Bluetooth development board with a 1.75-inch round AMOLED touch display, 16MB flash, and 8MB PSRAM designed for portable IoT devices, electronic badges, and wearables.

  • SQ Magazine ☛ Flipper One Brings AI and Linux to a Pocket Sized Device

    The Flipper One is designed around the Rockchip RK3576, an 8 core ARM processor that includes a GPU and a dedicated 6 TOPS NPU for AI acceleration. According to the company, the hardware is intended to support high performance computing tasks while remaining portable enough to fit in a pocket.

    The device will reportedly ship with 8GB RAM and support several modern connectivity options, including: [...]

  • Hackaday ☛ Improving An Aquarium Chiller With An Industrial Controller Transplant

    Being able to monitor also the temperature of the chilled water adds a layer of redundancy that’s very welcome after splurging thousands of clams on a fancy aquarium and its inhabitants. As a bonus the Wi-Fi interface allows for it to be monitored and controlled remotely, with [The Blunt Oracle] pushing the Home Assistant configuration in a PR as well that recently got merged. They’d also like to extend their thanks to Elitech for having pretty good documentation that really helped with creating the HA configuration file, which is a rarity with many of such controllers.

  • Hackaday ☛ Injection Molding Your Own Rubik’s Cubes Takes Work

    What started as a fun reverse-engineering project would lead to an 8-month journey to reproduce Rubik’s Cubes from scratch using injection molding. [EngBroken] started by identifying the basic pieces that make up the cheap cube they bought, including the center core, the edge pieces, and the corner pieces. Parts were then recreated in CAD, and [EngBroken] then set about designing and milling injection molds out of 6061 aluminium to make the parts.

  • Panagiotis Vryonis ☛ My Pi Zero desk clock

    Years ago, I built a digital desk clock using a Pi Zero and a Micro Dot pHAT. Probably an overkill to use a whole computer as a clock, but it has turned out to be very convenient, it’s easy to read day and night, and I like the style.

  • Jeff Geerling ☛ News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

    Following that cycle, one would expect a Pi 6 3-4 years after the Pi 5, which would put it in 2026 or 2027.

    My guess is Pi 6 development is already pretty far along... but there's that pesky global DRAM shortage that makes this a bad time to launch a new computer. There's no sense in releasing an SBC that costs twice as much as the $50 Pi 5.

    Eben stretched the timeline a bit to 4-4.5 years, and indicated a Pi 6 wouldn't come before early 2028... which means the Pi 5 will remain Pi's flagship for a while.

  • Marcin Juszkiewicz ☛ 3D printing at home

    The more reviews I watched/read, the more I started to cross out.