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Open Hardware/Modding: ESP32 and More
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CNX Software ☛ M5Stack Capsule Kit v1.1- A Battery-powered ESP32-S3 IoT controller with IMU sensor, MEMS microphone, and IR transmitter
M5Stack Capsule v1.1 is a Stamp-S3A-based IoT controller with a microSD card slot, several sensors (6-axis IMU, microphone), an IR transmitter, a built-in 250 mAh battery, a few buttons, a buzzer, an RTC, and expansion capabilities through GPIO headers and a Grove connector. It’s an upgrade to the earlier Capsule based on the Stamp-S3 module. The new version still features an ESP32-S3 WiFi and Bluetooth microcontroller, 8MB flash, a USB-C port, and a few GPIOs, but benefits from the Stamp-S3A improvements, including an optimized antenna design and lower power consumption. We never had a look at the Capsule before, so let’s do it now.
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CNX Software ☛ $7.99 Seeed Studio Wio-S3 WiFi, Bluetooth LE, and LoRa IoT module combines ESP32-S3 and SX1262 RF transceiver
Seeed Studio Wio-S3 is a compact (21.6 x 16.5 x 3.3 mm) wireless module that combines an ESP32-S3R8 dual-core WiFi 4 and Bluetooth LE MCU and a Semtech SX1262 LoRa transceiver. The module includes 16MB Flash and 8MB PSRAM, and supports LoRa (EU868/US915) with up to +20.9 dBm transmit power and -137 dBm sensitivity. It also supports Wi-Fi 4 and BLE 5.0, and comes with two IPEX connectors for external antennas. With interfaces such as UART, I2C, SPI, ADC, and USB, and support for -40°C to 85°C operation, it is designed for remote monitoring, industrial automation, smart agriculture, and IoT data logging.
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CNX Software ☛ Espressif ESP32-E22 WiFi 6E module gets Wi-Fi CERTIFIED certificate, open-source WiFi and Bluetooth GNU/Linux drivers
The ESP32-E22 tri-band Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.4 module has received a Wi-Fi CERTIFIED certificate from the Wi-Fi Alliance, and Espressif has also released WiFi and Bluetooth GNU/Linux drivers for the chip. The ESP32-E22 was first unveiled at CES 2026 with a dual-core RISC-V processor clocked at up to 500 MHz, 1MB RAM, tri-band WiFi 6E tested up to 2.1 Gbps with iperf, and dual-mode Bluetooth 5.4/6.0. While it also features 41 GPIO pins, it’s not mainly designed for IoT projects, but instead targets host-based wireless systems needing WiFi 6E / Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity through PCIe 2.0 or SDIO interfaces.
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CNX Software ☛ Fortior FU75xx dual-core motor control MCU family combines 32-bit RISC-V core with 2nd-gen Motor Engine (ME2) core
Motor driver IC specialist Fortior Technology has recently introduced the FU75xx dual-core motor control MCU family, pairing a 32-bit RISC-V core and the company’s proprietary 2nd-generation Motor Engine (ME2) core. The RISC-V core is used for parameter configuration and routine processing, while the ME core integrates FOC and CORDIC modules that enable fast calculation of FOC (as quick as 5µs) or square-wave control for sensored/sensorless BLDC/PMSM motors. The chips have an impressive list of peripherals (see specs below) and target high-speed computing and real-time control for robotics and motion systems, such as industrial servo drives, robotic joints, smart home appliances, and new energy vehicle systems.
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CNX Software ☛ Bare-metal MSX2+ Emulator for ESP32-S3 offers custom LCD_CAM VGA implementation & Z80 optimizations
Ivan Svarkovsky’s S3-MSX-PC open-source project implements a bare-metal MSX2+ emulator running on an ESP32-S3 microcontroller and outputting 64-color VGA via a simple R-2R resistor ladder. It’s a fork of the Retro-Go emulator for ODROID-GO and other ESP32 devices, but with various optimizations. It was tested on an off-the-shelf ESP32-S3 board with one core handling the game logic and the other video and audio output. VGA is implemented through a clever resistor network that converts digital data into an analog signal that any old monitor understands, while audio relies on Sigma-Delta modulation with a multi-stage PDM filter.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Openchip taps Baya Systems data-movement platform for RISC-V systems
Semiconductor fabric intellectual property company Baya Systems Inc. today announced that European chip and artificial intelligence systems firm Openchip & Software Technologies S.L. has licensed its data-movement platform and network-on-chip fabric technology to develop intelligent compute systems for next-generation artificial intelligence workloads.
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Old VCR ☛ Building a serial and VGA "everything console"
Some of our recent (and some upcoming) projects are oriented to systems with serial consoles, but it's been getting pretty old dragging around old CRT terminals or tying up Mac laptops with a serial port. I'd like something that's self-contained, a little more portable and a bit less heavy. I'm sure there's any number of all-in-one setups you can buy to do this, but I'm cheap, so I'm going to DIY it.
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Ken Shirriff ☛ The adder at the heart of Intel's 8087 floating-point chip
In 1980, Intel released the Intel 8087 floating-point coprocessor, a chip that could make math up to 100 times faster. As well as arithmetic and square roots, the 8087 computed transcendental functions including tangent, exponentiation, and logarithms. But it all depended on a 69-bit adder: "The arithmetic heart of the floating-point execution unit is centered about a nanomachine comprised of the adder and its related registers, shifters and control circuitry," as the patent describes it. In this article, I explain the circuitry of this adder.
The photo below shows the 8087 die under a microscope. Around the edges of the die, hair-thin bond wires connect the chip to its 40 external pins. The complex patterns on the die are formed by its metal wiring, as well as the polysilicon and silicon underneath. At the top of the chip, the Bus Interface Unit connects to the rest of the system: coordinating with the main 8086 processor and memory. The chip's instructions are defined by the large microcode ROM in the middle.