Linux Devices, Open Hardware, and Phones

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 03, 2026

• Devices/Embedded

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ Bluetooth/UWB board based on nRF52840 offers 10cm accuracy

    The board is based on Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF52840 microcontroller, which integrates a 64MHz Arm Cortex-M4 processor with floating-point support, 1MB of flash memory, and 256KB of RAM. Wireless connectivity from the MCU consists of 2.4GHz Bluetooth 5.0, with supported Bluetooth data rates of 2Mbps, 1Mbps, 500kbps, and 125kbps.

  • Gabriel ☛ Let’s talk retro doodads!

    There are days that I enjoy the RG just because of the Game Boy Advance SP nostalgia feels. Opening and closing this thing is so satisfying. One thing I am not a fan of is the analog sticks; I don’t play any games that use them. I mostly play GBA games on it, which the device is most suited for, and some GB and GBC games. The SP has a native 3:2 aspect ratio, so GBC and GB games will have black bars on the sides unless you use some overlay, which I never ever do. As for portability, well, it is very portable, and if it is something you plan to just throw it in your bag, even more so, plus because it is a clamshell, the screen is protected. But if you plan to have it in your pocket, well, compared to something like the TrimUI, it is slightly thicker and bulkier.

  • Eliseo Martelli ☛ Introducing VyBSD

    Consequently, also considering that I’m really enjoying an OpenBSD-based infrastructure for other reasons, I decided to start writing the foundation to create an OpenBSD-based network appliance, equipped with a command-line interface similar to that of VyOS.

    Obviously, it won’t be completely one-to-one compatible with VyOS, as that is not the goal. My main objective is to have a router appliance with extremely solid networking foundations, guaranteed by the entire OpenBSD network stack, combined with the convenience of being fully configurable via CLI.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • CNX Software ☛ LightMake L4 3D printer features four independent heads for simultaneous or multi-color printing (Crowdfunding)

    The LightMake L4 is a desktop 3D printer with four independent printing heads for high-throughput multi-color, multi-material, and batch production. It uses four independently controlled printheads and linear-motor motion instead of conventional belts, allowing users to print four identical models simultaneously, produce complex multi-color parts with minimal purge waste, or combine up to four materials in a single print.

  • CNX Software ☛ DIY ESP32-P4 weather station & air quality monitor connects to LoRa and ESP-NOW sensors, various weather APIs

    Harald Kreuzer has built an ESP32-P4 weather station and air quality monitor that features a 10.1-inch dashboard display and a built-in Sensirion SEN66 sensor for particulate matter, CO2, VOC, and NOX, and connects to wireless LoRa and ESP-NOW sensors. The project is entirely made of off-the-shelf boards, so no custom hardware is used, and it should be relatively easy to reproduce. It doesn’t require any cloud or user account, although it can connect to a choice of weather Hey Hi (AI) (Open-Meteo, OpenWeatherMap or Visual Crossing) to display weather forecasts. The build is fully documented in a long blog post, so we’ll highlight the key features of the project in this article.

  • OMG Ubuntu ☛ Arduino’s Ubuntu-powered $299 edge Hey Hi (AI) board just sold out

    Arduino's VENTUNO Q went up for pre-order priced from $299. The development board runs Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is built around Qualcomm's Dragonwing IQ8 platform.

  • Hackaday ☛ Has FDM 3D Printing Hit Its Peak?

    It’s a fair point to make that the resolution of a consumer FDM printer may be close to its mechanical limit. Techniques such as input shaping and the adoption of better CoreXY mechanisms mean that prints which once might have relied on SLA can be done in FDM. Healthy competition in the marketplace has delivered high quality colour printing, with tool-changing printers being no longer solely the preserve of the professional. He uses the example of a mobile phone to make the point that new machines have less of a wow factor to deliver, as increments have become less grand.

  • Hackaday ☛ Doubling Thermal Printer Resolution By Wiggling

    With this mechanism this much cheaper Sears 12 definitely gives the TI-5015 a run for its money, even if as noted by [Danalog] the timing would go off a bit after a longer session, resulting slightly wavy printing. Presumably with the massive cost savings of buying a Sears calculator over a TI one, this was deemed an acceptable trade-off.

  • [Old] PulkoMandy ☛ Unlocking a Chromebook

    So, the only way is to disassemble the machine, unsolder the flash chip containing the BIOS, and rewrite it with a new firmware. The disassembly is fairly easy, with a few screws to remove and a few clips to unclip. The keyboard has a flat cable long enough that you can easily lift it away and access the connectors to remove it. Then, you have to extract the motherboard from the machine (with a few more things to unplug), because the flash chip we're looking for is on the underside of the motherboard.

  • Arduino ☛ P.A.R. is a flip-squisk display that draws your pixel art

    A “squisk” is a square disc, with one light-colored side and one dark-colored side. Zimm made his squisks by 3D printing the two sides with interlocking channels, so they come together and form one unit. The display is a 37 × 18 grid of those. By flipping them between light and dark sides, it can create a low-resolution raster monochrome image.

  • SQFMI ☛ Getting Started: Watchy Kit w/ Case Assembly

    Watchy comes pre-loaded with firmware that demonstrates all the basic features. You can also try different watch faces and examples in Arduino.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Lee Peterson ☛ The camera on my phone didn’t matter as much as I thought

    These thoughts have me no longer looking at a phone thinking if only I had that better camera, I’m now thinking ergonomics first before anything then the rest is secondary. It makes deciding on a phone so much easier and with my current hand pain I can even consider something like an iPhone 17e if I want smaller and lighter and it takes the stress of the camera completely out of the equation.