Linux and Android Devices, Open Hardware Projects

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jun 27, 2026

• Devices/Embedded

  • Hackaday ☛ Reflective LCD Slabtop Terminal Runs Homebrewed Solar OS

    He’s not starting entirely from scratch: it’s based on FreeRTOS and the ESP-IDE toolset. Right now all applications are built with the OS into a single binary, while the SD card on the Waveshare board handles persistent storage. The interface is pure text, with all applications launched via shell commands. That doesn’t mean you have to go back to your PC to add anything, however.

  • Hackaday ☛ A GUI Solution For ESP32 Web Development

    The aim was to make UI development as easy as possible for this platform. ESP-GenUI allows the creation of a website by dragging various nodes on to a canvas and linking them up to create the desired web interface. There are nodes for GPIO control, camera feeds, gauges, and all sorts of other common elements for quickly putting together dashboards and control panels. All this is done from within the browser, and the code generated by the tool can even be flashed without having to open any external tools. Alternatively, it can spit out Arduino code that you can open and flash from within the IDE. You can try the tool out yourself right here.

  • Jonas Hietala ☛ Jonas Hietala: Designing a personal Pebble watchface

    I recently got a Pebble Time 2 as it seemed like a fun smartwatch away from Google/Apple/Samsung with a good 4 weeks of battery life. One thing I wanted to do is to create a custom watchface for my specific problems.

    It took more effort to design the watch than I had anticipated and there’s a deceptively large amount of thought that has gone into some of the features here, so I thought it’d be interesting to write a little about it.

  • Hackaday ☛ Make That Smart TV Into A Computer

    The smart TV is a fixture in most houses, variously an entertainment portal, corporate data gathering tool, or sometimes an outright spy. It’s a nice monitor with a computer built in, so can that computer be released to do something else? It’s a question [Xen’on] is answering, on an Android-based TV.

    The guide is not too different from many others relating to Android phones, with a few quirks. An Android Debug Bridge (ADB) connection is established, root access is gained using Shizuku, and then it’s a case of installing a more conventional Linux front end with the Openbox window manager through Termux. There are some TV-specific things to do with handling power cycles, but the TV is now a usable Linux box.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Arduino ☛ Three new Arduino® Modulino™ modules are here! Bigger ideas now come with zero added stress

    The Modulino family keeps growing, to allow you to easily expand your projects with new tiny modules that bring additional functionalities – in a snap! 

  • CNX Software ☛ Discounted 1.25 GHz Raspberry Pi 4 Model B shows up online

    Cytron is currently selling a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B “Special Value Board” with 4GB or 8GB of RAM, whose unique feature is to be clocked at 1.25 GHz instead of 1.8 GHz. The Raspberry Pi 4 initially launched with a 1.5 GHz BCM2711 SoC in 2019, but all recent boards are upgraded to the BCM2711C0 clocked at 1.8 GHz, first found in the Raspberry Pi 400 keyboard PC. 

  • CNX Software ☛ Makerfabs MaTouch ESP32-P4 10.1-inch HMI display features 4G LTE and Ethernet connectivity, a 2MP camera

    Makerfabs MaTouch ESP32-P4 TFTTouch 10.1 MIPI with 4G LTE is an ESP32-P4 + ESP32-C6-based display development platform for HMI edge AI, and connected embedded applications. The development board features a 10.1-inch IPS LCD, very similar to those of Seeed Studio’s reTerminal D1001, Waveshare ESP32-P4-WIFI6-Touch-LCD, and CrowPanel Advanced 7-inch displays.

  • Arduino ☛ A heads-up on the Arduino® UNO™ Q board pricing – straight from Marcello Majonchi

    A message from Arduino CPO – Marcello Majonchi Dear Builders, Engineers, and Innovators, Arduino is built on one belief: powerful technology should be accessible to everyone who wants to make, learn, or innovate with it.

  • Hackaday ☛ A Custom Zigbee Touch Keypad

    The heart of the build is an ESP32-C6 microcontroller devboard. This device has the benefit of including Zigbee communication functionality baked right into the chip. It’s hooked up to an MPR121 capacitive touch controller, which allows different segments of the touchpad PCB to act as capacitive buttons for numerical entry. The number labels are directly printed on the PCB solder mask, so there’s no overlay or other label required on top. Power is courtesy of a 1300 mAh lithium-polymer cell which gives a useful lifespan of six months between recharges. A simple 3D-printed case holds everything together and completes the clean and simple look. [Dominic] notes that it’s possible to also use the device via Matter or Thread without a lot of changes, as the ESP32-C6 can easily handle those protocols, too.

  • Hackaday ☛ Fixing An Elgato Cam Link’s USB Current Draw Issue

    Some prodding and poking around with a thermal camera on the disassembled device while powered showed that an onboard IC had sprung a power leak. Sadly, even asking nicely, Elgato support wasn’t going to provide board-level repair help, so this was left as an exercise to the owner.

  • Arduino ☛ Keep forgetting the fan and getting mold in the shower? This is the solution

    You might be wondering why the device wouldn’t simply turn on the fan itself, because that would solve the problem in a more convenient way. But that would also require modifying the fan’s mains power wiring, which isn’t an option for most renters. Manivannan’s solution doesn’t require anything but Wi-Fi, a USB-C power supply, and a microphone.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Bhaskar English ☛ Venezuela Earthquake Alert: Android Phones Warn Citizens

    Every modern Android smartphone comes with a sensor called an accelerometer. While it's mainly known for rotating your screen when you turn your phone, it can also detect tiny ground movements.

    When an Android phone senses vibrations that look like an earthquake, it anonymously sends the information and its approximate location to Google's servers. One phone alone isn't enough to confirm an earthquake. However, when many nearby Android devices report the same kind of movement at almost the same time, Google's system recognizes that an earthquake is likely happening.

  • It's FOSS ☛ Banking Apps, No Google, and a Locked Bootloader: How iodé Makes Privacy Android Work for Everyone

    In discussion with Brian from Iodé project and how Iodé is addressing issues de-Googled smartphone users face.