GNU/Linux Devices and Open Hardware Projects

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jun 01, 2026

• Devices

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ Olimex brings LTE Cat 1 bis connectivity to embedded Linux systems

    Olimex’s USB-LTE4G-EU is a compact USB modem designed to provide 4G LTE connectivity for IoT, industrial, telemetry, and embedded Linux applications. The device is based on the Quectel EG800K-EU cellular module and supports LTE Cat 1 bis technology, which is increasingly being adopted in connected devices requiring moderate data throughput, low power consumption, and long-term network availability.

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ Hive is a Raspberry Pi CM5 rackmount platform with hot-swappable nodes

    blackdevice, a Spanish hardware engineering company and Raspberry Pi Design Partner, has shared details of Hive, a modular compute platform built around the Raspberry Pi CM5. The platform is designed to scale from small homelab installations to rack-mounted infrastructure deployments through interchangeable compute nodes called “beenodes”.

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ Alinx HEA13 combines AMD Virtex UltraScale+ VU13P FPGA and NVIDIA Jetson Thor

    The Alinx HEA13 combines an AMD Virtex UltraScale+ XCVU13P FPGA with support for NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin and Jetson Thor modules. The platform links the FPGA and Jetson module through a PCIe Gen3 x8 interface for applications such as robotics, industrial vision, edge AI, and compute acceleration.

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ Sixfab AI HAT+ and Edge AI Expansion Board add DEEPX acceleration to Raspberry Pi 5

    Sixfab has unveiled two Raspberry Pi 5 expansion products based on DEEPX NPUs: the AI HAT+ and the Edge AI Expansion Board. Both platforms are designed to accelerate computer vision workloads locally on Raspberry Pi 5 systems, but they target different deployment scenarios.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • CNX Software ☛ Radxa’s 2026 Qualcomm hardware: Dragon Q8B and Q5E SBCs, DragonStation and DragonBay NAS systems

    Radxa started its partnership with Qualcomm last with the Dragon Q6A SBC, but it turns out it was just the start, and the company showcased more Qualcomm SBCs and NAS systems at a Radxa + Qualcomm developer day on May 30, 2026. The Radxa Q8B SBC will be based on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen3 octa-core SoC, the Q5E SBC on a Dragonwing QCS6690 octa-core Kryo SoC, and the company also teased DragonStation and DragonBay NAS systems, and a 2026 roadmap features a total of 22 Qualcomm systems made by Radxa.

  • CNX Software ☛ ODROID-H5 Review – Part 2: A dual 10GbE mini PC tested with Ubuntu 26.04

    I received a kit for review last week with an ODROID-H5 SBC, a Type1 case, an M.2 10GbE module, and other accessories. In the first part of the review, I went through an unboxing, assembled the kit, and tested whether it could boot an M.2 NVMe SSD with Ubuntu 24.04 and backdoored Windows 11. I’ve now updated the system to Ubuntu 26.04, run a few benchmarks, tested the two 10GbE RJ45 ports, as well as other features. I’ll report my experience about all that today. Upgrading from Ubuntu 24.04 to Ubuntu 26.04 The 512GB M.2 NVMe SSD I use in the ODROID-H5 comes from a laptop, which I upgraded with a 2TB SSD. That means the operating systems were not upgraded for a few months.

  • Hackaday ☛ A Camera Viewfinder Makes A Great TV

    On one side, this is a very straightforward hack, simply a case of tracing wires to identify the power and video pins. Given a tool battery, the monitor fires up and gives a super-sharp picture. What we like about this is the wooden base he’s made for the thing, at the same time rough-and-ready, and professional-looking from the outside. It has a routed space for the cables, and once mounted flush with the monitor base and given a bit of wood stain, it looks almost as though it was manufactured that way.

  • Hackaday ☛ 4-bit Relay Logic Counter Begs To Have Its Buttons Pushed

    The key to the build is implementing D-type flip-flops using relays. This is done by holding the coil voltage of each relay between its set and release voltage levels. A small voltage bump will energize the coil, closing the relay and leaving it closed. Conversely, a small negative spike releases the coil, leaving it open. This forms the basis of the counter, and [Agatha] has a separate write-up all about the details of using relays in this way.

  • Hackaday ☛ Loading Sega Genesis Games Off A Vinyl Record

    As demonstrated, a Pico 2 board with its RP2350 MCU is used to convert the audio signal containing the binary data into data for transmission via USB to the Everdrive cartridge. After confirming that it works with a tape drive, he drags in a plastic-y PO-80 5″ record cutter and player, where the mono audio limitation is not a problem.

  • Hackaday ☛ Ebike Display Uses Reflective LCD

    The display is called a reflective LCD (RLCD) and is actually a fairly old but overlooked piece of technology. Displays like these have a reflective layer that bounces ambient light back to the user, increasing contrast and readability in high light, especially when compared to more common transmissive displays. This build is based on a board from Waveshare, which includes the screen and its driver components, and [Volos Projects] integrated this into a test stand that mimics an ebike’s speed sensor and other hardware like turn signals. The display shows the bike’s speed and a few other indicators, and thanks to the screen, this information can be easily seen in full sun.

  • Hackaday ☛ Modern Graphics Via DisplayLink For Your ISA-Era PC

    In hardware terms, it’s using a PicoMEM, a more general-purpose ISA card for emulating cards with a Pi Pico. The Pico hosts a USB DisplayLink adapter, which can connect to the screen of your choice. The software on the PicoMEM does the heavy lifting and provides MDA, Herc, EGA, and VGA support, as well as support for one of the 1990s Cirrus Logic SVGA chipsets. And yes, it appears to work with DOOM.

  • Ricardo Gomes da Silva ☛ Having fun with the SNES

    I have a very old, yellow and crusty Super Nintendo not really being used at the moment. I could be playing games, sure, but where’s the fun in that? It was stored in a box for many years, and now I’ve decided to have some fun with it - some weird fun.

    Just like the previous saga of the PlayStation 2, I enjoy spending more time hacking, messing with and sometimes plain simple abusing consoles to run my own code instead of actually gaming. Plus, I always wanted to mess with the SNES anyway, so why the hell not? :)

  • Bunnie Huang ☛ On Reading SRAMs in IR Images, and Establishing Bounds on Trust

    An important step in establishing trust in a computer is measuring all of its state and confirming that nothing is amiss. A typical trusted boot would make a point of zeroing and/or patterning & hashing all the known bits of memory in a system. This process helps constrain the amount of malicious or foreign code that could be hiding in the system.