Linux Devices, Open Hardware, and T9 Keyboard

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jun 25, 2026

• OMG Ubuntu ☛ Pine64 launch $50 smart speaker for Home Assistant tinkerers

  Open-hardware manufacturer Pine64 has launched a $50 smart speaker that runs open-source software on a RISC-V chip. PineVoice (previously known as PineVox) is built around a Bouffalo Lab BL606P RISC-V SoC with integrated Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0 and Zigbee radio interfaces. It’s equipped with dual microphone array and speaker with support for ‘local wake word detection’, and top-mounted buttons allow you to mute (with LED indicator), start/stop and adjust volume.

• CNX Software ☛ OpenC6 BIOS project brings PC-like firmware to ESP32-C6 MCU with network boot and OTA update support

  OpenC6 BIOS is an open-source project by Rompass that takes a different approach to MCU development. It adds a BIOS-like system to the ESP32-C6, so the system part and application code can run separately rather than being combined into a single firmware image.

• CNX Software ☛ RP2350B bells&whistles development board features on-board RP2040 debugger, HDMI, and microSD card slot

  While searching Tindie for a new project, I found a new Raspberry Pi RP2350B-based development board called “Bells&Whistles,” which is interesting because it also features an onboard RP2040-based debugger running Picoprobe firmware, removing the need for a separate debug probe.

• Hackaday ☛ VFD Clock Runs On A Single AA

  The heart of the build is an ATmega328P microcontroller, running off of a 32.768 kHz crystal. This allows the chip’s counters to neatly divide down the frequency to get a steady 1 Hz pulse for accurate timekeeping. Time is displayed on a vacuum fluorescent display (VFD) harvested from an old calculator. These displays need rather high voltages to run, which in this case are produced by a HV5812 driver chip and supporting circuitry. The display itself is neatly cradled in a pair of copper pipe elbows for a stylish look, with some addressable RGB LEDs present to provide some charming underglow.

• Hackaday ☛ Laser Scanning A Cave With Homebrew Gear

  The build is based around an Ouster VLP-16 mid-range lidar sensor. It shoots out pulses of light and measures how long it takes them to bounce back in order to determine the range of objects in the vicinity, and thus can be used to great effect for 3D scanning tasks. For [9nl], though, the sensor had a serious limitation. Since it only had a 40-degree field of view, it wasn’t ideal for the desired application of scanning a cave. However, by building a custom rig that could rotate the sensor, [9nl] ended up with a rig that could 3D scan an area through a full 360 degrees. There’s nothing wildly complex involved, just some good old mechanical engineering—putting the sensor on a shaft and spinning it with a belt drive. Then it’s just a matter of processing the data correctly. The hard part is then getting the rig in and out of the cave without breaking anything.

• Mobile Systems

  • Hackaday ☛ A T9 Keyboard For Your Smartphone

    The build is designed around the keypad of the Nokia E52, a Symbian smartphone released in 2009—two years after Apple changed the game with the first iPhone. The phone keypad itself is laid over a custom PCB with Alps SKRK tactile switches corresponding to each individual key. Each is wired with a diode and the switches are scanned as a row/column array as is typical for keyboards. Reading the matrix is an ESP32-C6 microcontroller, which counts the keypresses and spits out the right letters over its Bluetooth connection to an attached smartphone or other device. Power is via a small lithium-ion battery, looked after by a TP4200 charger chip.