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Open Hardware/Modding: Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and More
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CNX Software ☛ Ubo Pod – A Raspberry Pi 4/5-based personal Hey Hi (AI) assistant (Crowdfunding)
The Ubo Pod Developer Edition (DE) is an open-source Hey Hi (AI) vision and conversational voice assistant platform built around the Raspberry Pi 4 or 5, and designed for developers who want more control over their Hey Hi (AI) experiences. The device aims to replace black boxes like Amazon Echo or Surveillance Giant Google Next Hey Hi (AI) assistants, with an open hardware smart speaker running open-source software, and offering features such as speech-to-text, LLMs/VLMs, text-to-speech, tool calling, and various multiple trigger mechanisms, among others. The Ubo Pod supports both cloud-based and fully local private AI, and features an embedded GUI on the integrated display and a WebUI for no-code setup.
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Low Tech Mag ☛ How to Assemble an Electric Heating Element from Scratch
A custom-made electric resistance consists of an electric circuit made of nichrome wire, enclosed in a mortar layer. The length and thickness of the nichrome wire determine its current draw at a certain voltage, meaning that you dimension the circuit to your solar panel voltage and power rating to optimize heat generation. The nichrome circuit is connected to the electric cables of the solar panel, with a short section of heat-resistant electric cable in between. 1
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Old VCR ☛ Back to the Southern Hemisphere Commodore 128DCR
Pretty sure this will end up as one of my longest-term restoration projects, but I'm back in the Southern Hemisphere for a little while to visit my wife's side of the family and giving me another opportunity to see if we can make progress on our defective PAL 128DCR, my favourite Commodore 8-bit.
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Raspberry Pi ☛ Edgeberry interface board for Raspberry Pi
“It’s a modular expansion system that turns Raspberry Pi into a robust, adaptable IoT edge device,” Sanne tells us. “It combines a custom HAT-style board, a robust 3D-printable enclosure, built-in user interface elements (like a status LED and buzzer), and a flexible hardware cartridge slot for application-specific electronics (leaving most of Raspberry Pi’s beloved I/O pins intact). Edgeberry simplifies the messy part of getting from prototype to real-world deployment for trying out (and iterating on) an idea, providing you with a stable, repeatable base you can trust… It’s meant for anyone who wants to build connected devices that work reliably outside the lab environment.”
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Raspberry Pi ☛ Hello World #28 out now: Teaching programming
Explore Hello World 28: discover free tips, tools and resources from educators to best teach programming to your learners.
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Arduino ☛ This wild haptic system can be used to build vehicles
Mod2Hap is like an oversized LEGO set that VR and MR users can assemble into a variety of different configurations that suit the virtual scenario they’re in. If, for example, the user is playing a VR motorcycle racing sim, they can assemble the Mod2Hap modules into a vaguely motorcycle-like shape, sit on that, and start riding. Later, when rowing a canoe down a virtual river, they can reassemble the modules into a seat with two oars.
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Hackaday ☛ Give Your Microscope Polarized $5 Shades To Fight Glare
Who doesn’t know the problem of glare when trying to ogle a PCB underneath a microscope of some description? Even with a ring light, you find yourself struggling to make out fine detail such as laser-etched markings in ICs, since the scattered light turns everything into a hazy mess. That’s where a simple sheet of linear polarizer film can do wonders, as demonstrated by [northwestrepair] in a recent video.