Open Hardware/Modding: ESP32, Arduino, and More

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Feb 13, 2026

• CNX Software ☛ Mimiclaw is an OpenClaw-like Hey Hi (AI) assistant for ESP32-S3 boards

  MimiClaw is an OpenClaw-inspired Hey Hi (AI) assistant designed for ESP32-S3 boards, which acts as a gateway between the Telegram messaging application and Claude online LLM to control the hardware by just chatting to it. We’ve just written about PicoClaw, an ultra-lightweight personal Hey Hi (AI) Assistant for cheap GNU/Linux boards that just needs 10MB of spare RAM. It was itself inspired by Nanobot, a lightweight assistant written in Python, that’s 99% smaller, in terms of lines of code, than the original OpenClaw project that started it all.

• Hackaday ☛ Storing Image Data As Analog Audio

  The self-contained device first uses an ESP32 and its associated camera module to take a picture, with a screen that shows the current view of the camera as the picture is being taken. In this way it’s fairly similar to any semi-modern digital camera. From there, though, it starts to diverge from a typical digital camera. The digital image is converted first to analog and then stored as audio on a standard cassette tape, which is included in the module in lieu of something like an SD card.

• Ruben Schade ☛ I have no need for a 3D printer (cough)

  I have no need for a 3D printer. Funny, I just read that somewhere else, almost as though it was in the heading. 3D printers take up a lot of space, come with more consumables I’d need to purchase on a regular basis, would require me to learn 3D modelling, and the whole thing looks like a massive rabbithole that would feed into my obsessive side.

• Ruben Schade ☛ A busted Athlon-ara motherboard BIOS

  It had been at least five minutes since Clara’s father handed down an old computer. I kid, but it’s been amazing reminiscing with him over these old machines, and tinkering to get them all working again.

• Andrew Hutchings ☛ Ditching the Debug Probe: Using a Segger J-Link with a Raspberry Pi Pico

  I was working on benchmarking some new code on a Raspberry Pi Pico today and needed to debug it. This proved to be more difficult than it should be, so I figured I would document how I did it.

• Robotic Systems LLC ☛ PWM input support

  The new features and capababilities for moteus just keep coming! Here is another relatively straightforward one available in firmware release 2026-01-21, support for PWM (pulse-width-modulated) inputs. If an appropriate pin is configured, moteus can report the period and duty cycle of a PWM input to applications. This can be used to monitor the fan RPM for the moteus cooling fans on moteus-c1, moteus-n1, or moteus-x1, or could be used to read the value of a RC receiver output. Read on to learn how to use it and what the limitations are: [...]

• Jeremy Cherfas ☛ No birds, yet

  Once I worked that out, I stopped recording while I deleted thousands of recordings. Still, the Analyzer continued to fall behind a couple of times. Right now it is keeping up, although there are no birds around, so I hope it is having an easier time of it.

  The obvious solution is to bite the bullet and buy a heftier Pi, which I will almost certainly do tomorrow. And while I am about it, I have one major desire.

• Olimex ☛ New Power Supply Modules for PCB Mounting in stock

  We now have several new power supply modules available. All of them operate with an input voltage of 85VAC to 255VAC at 50Hz or 60Hz, thus covering worldwide mains power networks.

  The power ratings and output voltages are as follows: [...]

• Arduino ☛ Building the ultimate turntable for 3D scanning

  When you buy a 3D scanner, it will probably come with a turntable to spin the subject part and help you get a consistent scan from all sides. But almost all of those turntables are flimsy, shaky, and lack any fixturing provisions for parts, diminishing their utility. That’s why Chris Borge used an Arduino to build the ultimate turntable for 3D scanning.