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Open Hardware/Modding: ESP32, SBCs, and More
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Hackaday ☛ Restoring An Altimeter Watch To Former Heights
Finding inexpensive broken hardware for sale, buying it, and restoring it to working condition is a long-standing tradition for hackers on a limited budge. But there are some devices that are so difficult to repair that it’s usually not worth the trouble. [Vintage560] is braver than most, though, and restored an internally-damaged Casio AW-330-AT altimeter watch.
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CNX Software ☛ M5Stack ToughC5 weatherproof ESP32-C5 IoT controller offers dual-band Wi-Fi 6, BLE 5, and Zigbee/Thread
M5Stack has just introduced the ToughC5, a rugged, weatherproof outdoor IoT controller built around the ESP32-C5. The device features a bright 2.0-inch capacitive touch IPS display and RS485 connectivity. The ToughC5 is an upgrade to the ESP32-base3d M5Stack TOUGH introduced in 2021, with the upgraded model featuring a more modern ESP32-C5 MCU with dual-band (2.4/5 GHz) Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5 LE, and an IEEE 802.15.4 radio for Zigbee and Thread.
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Ken Shirriff ☛ Inside a 1980s filter chip that uses switched capacitors
Sometimes it's easier to identify an IC with a microscope. While sorting a box of old ICs, CuriousMarc came across some Harris ICs labeled "F1-10-5", a mysterious part number that didn't show up in any databooks. Since unidentifiable ICs are useless, he gave me one to analyze. Conveniently, it was in a ceramic package, so I could open it up with a quick tap from a chisel. Under the microscope, the chip's most striking feature was a grid of square capacitors. With all those capacitors, I guessed that it was a switched-capacitor filter. The die provided another clue: the part number HF-10. With this information, we quickly found that the chip was Harris's version of the standard MF10 switched-capacitor filter chip.1
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ZDNet ☛ I gave this $699 Mini PC the same task as my System76 Thelio – here’s how it fared
My System76 Thelio built the initial version of the app in roughly 20 minutes, while the A7 Mini was still churning away on the first build at 30 minutes. By the time I’d iterated on the email client on Thelio twice, the A7 Mini was still building the app’s initial directory structure.