Open Hardware/Modding: ESP32, RISC-V, and More

posted by Roy Schestowitz on May 11, 2026

• Tom's Hardware ☛ $200 'socketed' Nvidia Hey Hi (AI) GPU for servers hacked into a PCIe card with custom PCB and 3D-printed cooling — modded Tesla V100 SMX data center GPU runs Hey Hi (AI) LLMs and is more efficient than many modern midrange offerings in Hey Hi (AI) inference

  Turns out, Nvidia's older Turing-era V100 Hey Hi (AI) GPU is still pretty capable today, even with just 16GB of VRAM. A YouTuber got his hands on the SMX variant for just $100, converted it to a PCIe x16 interface for another $100 with an adapter, and got some pretty impressive results across Hey Hi (AI) inference and NVR benchmarks.

• Tom's Hardware ☛ Tiny credit card computer includes eInk screen and is just 1mm thick — Muxcard is powered by the ESP32-C3 microcontroller

  A Microsoft's proprietary prison GitHub project shares details of the prototype for 'a fully working computer that is literally the size of a credit card,' dubbed the Muxcard

• Linux Gizmos ☛ Sipeed launches K3 Pico-ITX and CoM260 boards with SpacemiT RISC-V SoC

  Sipeed has opened pre-orders for the SpacemiT K3 CoM260 Developer Kit and K3 Pico-ITX, two RISC-V AI computing platforms based on the SpacemiT Key Stone K3 processor. The systems combine eight X100 RISC-V CPU cores with eight A100 AI-oriented compute cores delivering up to 60 TOPS of AI performance for edge AI and embedded workloads.

• Tom's Hardware ☛ Louis Rossmann tells 3D printer maker Bambu Lab to ‘Go (Bleep) yourself’ over its threatened lawsuit against enthusiast — Right to Repair advocate offers to pay the legal fees for a threatened OrcaSlicer developer

  The developer in question, Pawel Jarczak, voluntarily shuttered his “OrcaSlicer-BambuLab” project, which would have restored direct control between Bambu Lab 3D printers and OrcaSlicer. Last year, Bambu Lab deemed these types of third-party integrations a risk to its infrastructure, saying its cloud servers were inundated with roughly 30 million “unauthorized” requests per day. OrcaSlicer was singled out as the main source of the rogue traffic.

  “If Bambu Labs goes after you for keeping up your code, I am so confident in your case that I will pay the first $10,000,” Rossmann said in his video. “Before Pawel makes a decision, I want him to see the overwhelming support that he has from the members of the community if he goes through with this decision.” You can see the video directly below.

• The Verge ☛ The Bastl Kalimba is a wild synth that thinks it’s a thumb piano

  Make no mistake, the Bastl Kalimba is a synthesizer, you just play it like a kalimba. Its tines don’t really make much sound. There is an internal mic that you can blend in for a little acoustic spice, but it’s mostly driven by the synth engine that combines physical modeling and FM. The tines are actually touch and velocity-sensitive triggers. And, while it can sound somewhat like a real kalimba, it’s a lot more sonically versatile and offers features you can only find on a synth.

• Hackaday ☛ Binaural Microphone On A Budget

  This build doesn’t just use models of human ears for recording sounds through. The silicone ears are mounted on a styrofoam mannequin head as well, which provides some sound isolation between the two microphones, much like a real human head. The ears are mounted in appropriate locations with the microphones installed inside, and the entire microphone apparatus is positioned on a PVC rig with a camera so that binaural audio will be recorded for anything [David] points it at.

• Hackaday ☛ Why Using Cardboard For A PC Case Is A Chore

  After having the PC case drawn up in CAD and cut on a professional CNC cutter by a buddy who makes commercial cardboard displays, the installation procedure for the PC components showed where a bit of foresight could have saved a lot of time and effort.

• Chris Aldrich ☛ Acquired 1938 Woodstock No. 5 Standard typewriter (Woodstock)

  My first ever Woodstock. Acquired via thrift for $50 on 2026-05-08. Possibly a bit more expensive than it might have otherwise been, but the key rings are in stunning shape, and the work to polish them is easily worth several hundred in labor! The decals are also in exceptional condition. Aside from some cosmetic damage to the typebar hood, this machine is in exceptionally great cosmetic condition and will be even more so following a full polish of the body and the brights.