news
Open Hardware/Modding: Commodore, ESP32, and More
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It's FOSS ☛ Open Book Touch is Crowdfunding: A Buttonless, Open Hardware Answer to Kindle
It's $149, runs on an ESP32-S3, and skips DRM entirely and lets you skip the Kindle ecosystem.
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Ruben Schade ☛ Tindie and alternatives
I’ve mentioned here before that I think we’re living during the golden era of retrocomputing. Designing, producing, and selling PCBs and other components has never been more accessible. The fact people are teaching these old computers new tricks, and in some cases even replacing unobtainium components to keep the joy alive is awesome.
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CNX Software ☛ Raspberry Pi gets 10BASE-T1S/T1L Single Pair Ethernet (SPE) HAT+ board
Germany-based Brechel Electronic has launched two new Single Pair Ethernet (SPE) expansion boards for Raspberry Pi platforms: the BE-IIS-HPP-T1S and the BE-IIS-HPP-T1L. Designed for technology evaluation, industrial network prototyping, and educational laboratory use, these boards add 10 Mbit/s Ethernet communication over a single twisted pair to standard Raspberry Pi SBCs. The BE-IIS-HPP-T1S is based on the Microchip LAN8651 10BASE-T1S MAC-PHY and supports IEEE 802.3cg Single Pair Ethernet over multidrop networks with up to 8 nodes, enabling distances up to 25 meters on a shared bus.
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Ruben Schade ☛ The Commodore Callback 8020 phone
I’ll admit, I’ve felt a little trepidation approaching this new device, despite it ostensibly ticking all my boxes. It has retro styling. It’s taking a stand against the smartphones and social control media platforms with which I’ve increasingly harboured resentment and frustration. It’s Commodore, damn it!
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CNX Software ☛ Open Book Touch – A DRM-free, WiFi-connected 4.26-inch open-source hardware e-reader (Crowdfunding)
Oddly Specific Objects has launched a crowdfunding campaign for the Open Book Touch, an ESP32-S3-based e-reader with a 4.26-inch e-paper display with 480 x 800 resolution and a capacitive touch screen. The open-source hardware device comes with 16 MB flash, 8MB PSRAM, a frontlight with warm and cool LEDs, a microSD card for storage, and an 800 mAh user-replaceable LiPo battery with everything housed in a 3D printed enclosure.
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Hackaday ☛ Building A Better CNC Hot Wire Foam Cutter
Key in hot wire foam cutting is getting the nickel-chromium wire hot enough to gently slice through the foam rather than annihilating it or having the wire encounter significant resistance. For an automated cutter it either needs to be able to adjust the current on the fly, or have a predetermined optimal current for the cutting speed.
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Hackaday ☛ Speak Silently With An Ultrasound Probe
Speaking is much faster than typing, and while it’s an increasingly convenient way to interact with computers, it’s hardly private. Providing speech privacy in a way we haven’t seen before is this prototype tongue-reading system that uses machine learning and ultrasound to read tongue movements and turn them into decoded speech. Not only can a user speak without emitting a sound, since it doesn’t read sound waves it’s completely immune to noisy environments.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Sotheby’s video showcases working Apple-1 serial number 01-0033 — part of its upcoming History of Science & Technology sale
Sotheby’s is preparing a blockbuster History of Science & Technology sale packed with amazing artifacts and collectors’ items. While there are many items that could justify being singled out, the famous auction house has chosen to spotlight a working sample of the Apple-1 computer serial number 01-0033 (1976) on its YouTube channel. Remember this first 50 hand-built-by-Wozniak batch has a place in history as the first commercial Apple computers ever sold.