Hardware Projects and Mobile Leftovers (Linux-centric)

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Apr 16, 2026,
updated Apr 16, 2026

• Devices

  • Fundor 333 ☛ Hacking My Kobo with KOReader

    I love it and the fact I can read in color comics, manga, web comics and graphic novel everywhere is a plus.

    But more and more I use Ebook Readers more and more I want to customize it. Like I have in the pic.

  • Russell Coker ☛ Russell Coker: Furilabs FLX1s Finally Working

    I’ve been using the Furilabs FLX1s phone [1] as my daily driver for 6 weeks, it’s a decent phone, not as good as I hoped but good enough to use every day and rely on for phone calls about job interviews etc. I intend to keep using it as my main phone and as a platform to improve phone software in Debian as you really can’t effectively find bugs unless you use the platform for important tasks.

  • SANS ☛ [Guest Diary] Compromised DVRs and Finding Them in the Wild

    Security cameras are great at monitoring physical doors, but terrible at locking their own digital ones. Across the internet, thousands of unpatched DVRs sit publicly exposed, many guarded only by the default vendor passwords they shipped with. For threat actors, these are low-hanging fruit. This write-up details a recent two-second Telnet capture, providing a mechanical breakdown of how quickly an exposed camera system goes from online to fully compromised by bad actors.

  • Hackaday ☛ Python Comes To The Arduino Uno Q

    In the past, microcontrollers were primarily programmed in C, but since MicroPython’s popularity increased over the years, it has become more and more common for introductory microcontroller programming to be in Python. Python, of course, is generally considered more beginner-friendly than C. [Natasha] presumably wanted to teach this way using an Uno Q, but the usual MicroPython APIs weren’t available. And so, in true hacker fashion, they simply made their own library to implement the most important bits of the familiar API. It currently implements a subset of the machine module: Pin, PWM, ADC, I2C, SPI and UART. While not complete, this certainly has potential to make the Uno Q easier to use for those familir with MicroPython.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Jeff Geerling ☛ An Arm Mainboard for the Framework Laptop

    Using the repair-friendly Framework 13 laptop chassis, I've tested the low-end x86 option (a Ryzen AI 5 340 Mainboard), the fastest RISC-V option (DC-ROMA II), and today I'm publishing results from the only Arm Mainboard, the MetaComputing AI PC, which has a 12-core Arm SoC and up to 32 GB of soldered-on RAM.

  • Boiling Steam ☛ OrangePi 4 Pro Review

    It’s time for us to review yet another ARM64 board, after the previous OrangePi 5 Ultra and the very powerful OrangePi 6 Plus. This time we go for their mid-range option, the OrangePi 4 Pro.

  • Arduino ☛ A 3D-printed “drive-by-wire” micro mill for your desktop

    Machine tools, including vertical mills, are usually either CNC, manual, or power-assisted. In that last scenario, there is usually a simple motor that rotates a lead screw, so the user doesn’t have to crank the handle a bunch of times to traverse long distances. The motor can feed more consistently than a person can as well.

    But this 3D-printed micro mill is different, because it entirely replaces the traditional manual cranks with motors and can only be controlled electronically — just like a drive-by-wire car.

  • CNX Software ☛ Orange Pi Zero 3W – An Allwinner A733 SBC in Raspberry Pi Zero form factor

    Orange Pi Zero 3W is Raspberry Pi Zero-sized SC powered by an Allwinner A733 octa-core Arm Cortex-A76/A55 SoC paired with up to 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, a microSD card slot, and footprints for eMMC flash or UFS storage. Other features include a 4K-capable mini HDMI port, two USB-C ports, one with DP 1.4 Alt mode, a MIPI DSI display connector, two MIPI CSI camera connectors, a WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4 module, and a 40-pin GPIO header.

  • CNX Software ☛ LimeSDR Micro M.2 2280 SDR card pairs NXP LA9310 baseband processor with LMS7002M RF transceiver (Crowdfunding)

    The LimeSDR Micro M.2 2280 software-defined radio (SDR) card combines an NXP LA9310 baseband processor and a Lime Microsystems LMS7002M transceiver, and targets integration into portable or embedded solutions with a spare M.2 PCIe Gen3 x1 socket. The module is offered in a 1T2R configuration by default, but can be expanded to 1T4R via an FPC connector, supports a 30 MHz to 3.8 GHz frequency range, and up to 100 MHz bandwidth.

  • Boiling Steam ☛ OrangePi 4 Pro Review

    It’s time for us to review yet another ARM64 board, after the previous OrangePi 5 Ultra and the very powerful OrangePi 6 Plus. This time we go for their mid-range option, the OrangePi 4 Pro.

  • Hackaday ☛ New Display For Old Multimeter

    Initially, [ogdento] had plans to retrofit this classic multimeter with a modern OLED, but could not find enough space for the display or a way to drive it easily. The next attempt to get something working was to build a custom one-off LCD using a drill press as an end mill, which didn’t work either. But after seeing a Charlieplexed display from [bobricius] as well as this video from EEVblog about designing custom LCDs, [ogdento] was able to not only design a custom PCB and LCD display to match the original meter, but was able to get a manufacturer in China to build them.

  • Hackaday ☛ Flattening The Exhaust Of A Laser Cutter To Save Space

    Installing the contraption worked out fine, and subsequent testing showed that although it seems to slightly reduce the effective airflow compared to the flex tubing, it is absolutely rad to look at with the transparent cover and some laser light to illuminate all that’s happening inside.

  • Mike Rockwell ☛ Framework Event on April 21

    Framework always has something neat in the works. I’ll be looking forward to seeing what they have to share on April 21.

  • Buttondown LLC ☛ Franklin's bad ads for Apple ][ clones and the beloved impersonator they relied on

    It’s not that bad of an ad at first glance. The concept and execution pass the cavemen test: you immediately know what’s for sale and why it’s worth the money. It’s eye-catching and memorable. But Franklin Computer Corporation’s hardware, software, and ad concepts were stolen intellectual property, which, I think, qualifies as “bad.”

  • Raspberry Pi ☛ Maker Monday: 10 non-traditional clock projects

    We love it when folks get creative with a Raspberry Pi, and Maker Monday is a great time to showcase this. While there are definitely many Raspberry Pi devices out there doing important jobs in factories and industrial settings, it’s nice to see when people do something artistic — or just plain funny — with a Raspberry Pi at home. A great example of this is the many ways people have taken the ancient concept of telling the time and given it a twist. Here are just some of our favourites from the latest issue of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine.

  • Hackaday ☛ Audio Reactive LED Strips Are Hard

    Sound-to-light systems have been a staple of electronics for many decades, and have progressed from simple volume-based flashers and sequencers to complex DSP-driven affairs like his project. It’s particularly interesting to be reminded that the problem faced by the designer of such a system involves interfacing with human perception rather than making a pretty light show, and in that context it becomes more important to understand how humans perceive sound and light rather than to simply dump a visualization to the LEDs. We receive an introduction to some of the techniques used in speech recognition, because our brains are optimized to recognize activity in the speech frequency range, and in how humans register light intensity.

  • Hackaday ☛ Your Own Tool Changer

    All the cool new 3D printers have tool-changing heads. Instead of multiplexing filament through one hot end, you simply park one hot end and pick up another. Or pick up a different tool, depending on what you need. There are many advantages to a system like that, but one disadvantage: cost. [Ultimate Tool Changer] has been working on a design for what he calls a simple, cheap changer, and it appears to be working well, as you can see in the video below.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Kevin Wammer ☛ Google Pixel 10 hardware: good, practical, unexciting

    Getting used to the Pixel 10 hardware after about 18 years of iPhone usage was surprisingly easy, probably due to the fact all smartphones are basically just slabs of glass and some kind of metal (or plastic, depending on the budget).

  • Dedoimedo ☛ Samsung A54 report 11, okayish, angsty, average plus

    It's been a while since I felt excited about technology. For a good reason, right. Many good reasons. By and large, there's little innovation in the consumer space, both the desktop and the smartphone are mature, finished products, so anything "new" in this domain is likely to be detrimental to the end user, if anything. My Samsung A54 is a great example, a device that gives me grief and occasional glimmer of fleeting hope, and yet, I use it, because suffering is part of the modern IT experience.