'Smart' Devices, Open Hardware, Linux/Android Mobile

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 02, 2026

• Devices/Embedded

  • BoingBoing ☛ Military fridges may have been hacked into defrosting

    On the otherwise quiet Substack Signal and Silence, "M. Elizabeth" posted an investigation into a string of refrigeration failures at military installations. However, power failures were not the cause. The units, in over a dozen locations, had gone into defrost mode overnight, so the unfortunate food was not just not cold; it was quite warm. The temperature of the deli case on one base was measured at 180º.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ Bluetooth/UWB board based on nRF52840 offers 10cm accuracy

    Makerfabs has showcased an nRF52840 development board combining Bluetooth connectivity with a DW3000-series ultra-wideband radio for ranging and positioning applications. The board includes a 1.3-inch OLED display, dual USB Type-C connections, LiPo battery support, a fuel gauge, and expansion headers, while accompanying Arduino examples cover single- and multi-node UWB ranging.

  • CNX Software ☛ ArmSoM Sige6 Allwinner A733 SBC features up to 128GB soldered-on eMMC flash, 16GB LPDDR5

    ArmSoM Sige6 is yet another SBC powered by the Allwinner A733 octa-core SoC, offered in a credit card form factor with up to 128GB soldered-on eMMC flash and up to 16GB LPDDR5. The single board computer features a microSD card slot and an M.2 M-key PCIe 3.0 x2 slot for storage, Gigabit Ethernet (with optional PoE), WiFi 6, and Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity, HDMI 2.0 and MIPI DSI display interfaces, a MIPI CSI camera interface, USB 3.0/2.0 ports, a 3.5mm audio jack, a 40-pin GPIO header, and more.

  • Raspberry Pi ☛ Pi-Sky flight-tracking dashboard

    ADS-B stands for Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast. Most modern aircraft broadcast ADS-B on 1090MHz in short bursts, several times per second, carrying an ICAO hex address (an identification number assigned to a specific aircraft), a callsign (air traffic control identifier for aircraft – for example, RYR3EM), GPS position, altitude, speed, track, vertical rate, and squawk code. However, what is not sent in the broadcast is what type of aircraft it is, where the flight came from, where it’s going, when it departed, or will arrive.

  • RTL-SDR ☛ An HTML Browser Page that Uses Display Pixel Clock EMI Leakage to Transmit VHF Morse Code

    Thank you to Efe (TA1EEI) for writing in and sharing an HTML web tool he created that uses a PC monitor to transmit Morse code. The tool works by modulating the monitor's pixel clocks to intentionally generate EMI leakage in the form of a Morse code signal. It transmits at 148.5 MHz.

  • Hackaday ☛ PETG: The PLA Filament Alternative That Just Works

    A typical response to the previous article on why PLA filament is so darn brittle. This has led some people to not use PLA filament at all, while others promote using PLA only for prototyping and throw-away parts, especially in light of PLA being compostable under the right conditions. For many mechanical parts, people turn to PETG.

    Much like the PET polymer used for everything from food containers to drink bottles, PETG is durable, more resistant to degradation through mechanisms like hydrolysis and its filament form doesn’t need to be coddled like PLA does. PETG, on the other hand, tends to come from crude oil and shrugs at industrial composting conditions.

    In terms of durability, degradation mechanisms and recyclability, is PETG the basic FDM filament which we should all just be using?

  • Wouter Groeneveld ☛ Bring Back The Noise With HDD Synth

    The true retro enthusiast—the real appreciator of smelly electronic components that go beep—will want to hear that beep. Not just a beep, but a bzzzzzkkrrrttttt tzk tzk tzk BEEP: your classic spin-up sound when these mechanical drives start spinning. Thankfully, some retro enthusiasts are prepared to do more than just accept the fact that the noise is gone. Some go as far as building their own expansion card that fully emulates the sound of yore. This is the story of my friend Peter Bridger’s HDD Synth.

  • Jack Baty ☛ Fixing the Framework's Wifi on CachyOS and Orbi

    I spent several hours yesterday trying to get Wifi to remain up on the Framework after installing CachyOS. It was not easy. I had to drag Claude Code in to help. I'd have never been able to find and fix it, otherwise.

    Flaky Wifi is a commonly-reported problem with the Framework 13. In my case it was related to the Orbi mesh, so I don't know if this helps anyone else, but I'll leave it here, just in case. It's working for me.

    TL;DR is pin wifi to a 5 GHz BSSID so the 6 GHz band doesn't get in the way.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Kev Quirk ☛ Android Auto Has Been Hammering My Phone’s Battery

    The only thing that has really changed from an Android Auto perspective was that I'd got a new car which now used wireless Android Auto instead of having to plug a cable in.

    After some research, it turns out that wireless Android Auto is an absolute resource hog.

  • Terence Eden ☛ “iT woRKs BeTter in THe aPp!!”

    I was there in the early days of phone apps. I built stuff for Symbian, BlackBerry, even the bloody Palm Pilot! The central problem with apps has always been that they are hard to update. Every new bit of functionality - or even a new page - needs to be tested on a thousand devices. Once done, it takes an age to distribute to users. The only way to solve that is to have the app dynamically pull in new functionality from a remote resource.

    At which point, you've reinvented the Web browser!