Building An IR Thermometer That Fits On Your Keychain

Non-contact infrared (IR) thermometers used to be something of an exotic tool, but thanks at least in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they’re now the sort of thing you see hanging up near …

Toyota Heater Switches Learn New Tricks

The look, the feel, the sound — there are few things more satisfying in this world than a nice switch. If you’re putting together a device that you plan on using frequently, outfitting …

USB PD On CH32V003 Teaches You Everything

How do you talk USB Power Delivery (PD)? Grab a PHY? Use a MCU with one built-in? Well, if you’re hardcore enough, you can do it with just a few resistors and GPIOs. [eeucalyptus] shows you t…

SIMD-Accelerated Computer Vision On The ESP32-S3

One of the fun parts of the ESP32-S3 microcontroller is that it got upgraded to the newer Cadence Xtensa LX7 processor core, which turns out to have a range of SIMD instructions that can help to si…

Try Out MCUs With This Jumperable TSSOP20 Adapter

There are so many new cool MCUs coming out, and you want to play with all of them, but, initially, they tend to be accessible as bare chips. Devboards might be hard to get, not expose everything, o…

$3 Smartwatch Can Run Python

[Poking Technology] doesn’t think much of his new smartwatch. It is, by his admission, the cheapest possible smartwatch, coming in at about $3. It has very few useful features but he has figu…

Coupling STM32 And Linux? Consider HID Over I2C

If you’re pairing a tiny Linux computer to a few peripherals — perhaps you’re building a reasonably custom Pi-powered device — it’s rightfully tempting to use somethin…

ESP32 Brings New Features To Classic Geiger Circuit

There’s no shortage of Geiger counter projects based on the old Soviet SBM-20 tube, it’s a classic circuit that’s easy enough even for a beginner to implement — so long as t…

Fixed Point Math Exposed

If you are used to writing software for modern machines, you probably don’t think much about computing something like one divided by three. Modern computers handle floating point quite well. …

2024 Business Card Challenge: NoiseCard Judges The Sound Around You

Let’s face it: even with the rise of the electric car, the world is a noisy place. And it seems like it has only gotten worse in recent years. But how can we easily quantify the noise around …

ESP32 Powers Single-PCB ZX Spectrum Emulator

When word first got out that the Chinese board houses were experimenting with full color silkscreens, many in our community thought it would be a boon for PCB art. Others believed it would be akin …

ESP32 Powered Crunch-E Makes Beats On The Go

There’s no shortage of devices out there for creating electronic music, but if you’re just looking to get started, the prices on things like synthesizers and drum machines could be enou…

Hands On: Inkplate 6 MOTION

Over the last several years, DIY projects utilizing e-paper displays have become more common. While saying the technology is now cheap might be overstating the situation a bit, the prices on at lea…

USB Dongle Brings Python-Controlled GPIO To The Desktop

Microcontroller dev boards are wonderfully useful items, in testament to which most of us maintain an ample collection of the things. But dragging one out to do a simple job can be a pain, what wit…

ATtiny85 Mouse Jiggler Lets You Take A Break

The good news is that more and more people are working from home these days. The bad news is that some of the more draconian employers out there aren’t too happy about it, to the point of usi…

Glitching An ATMega328P Has Never Been Simpler

Did you know just how easily you can glitch microcontrollers? It’s so easy, you really have no excuse for not having tried it out yet. Look, [lord feistel] is doing glitching attacks on an AT…

MicroPython 1.23 Brings Custom USB Devices, OpenAMP, Much More

MicroPython is a wonderful Python interpreter that runs on many higher-end microcontrollers, from ESP8266 to STM32 to the RP2040. MicroPython lets you build devices quickly, and its latest release,…

GlobeTune Will Widen Your Musical Horizons

Are you tired of the same old music, but can’t afford any new tunes, even if they’re on dead formats? Boy, do we know that feeling. Here’s what you do: build yourself a GlobeTune …

CH32V003 Makes For Dirt Cheap RISC-V Computer

These days, when most folks think of a computer they imagine a machine with multiple CPUs, several gigabytes of RAM,  and a few terabytes of non-volatile storage for good measure. With such modern …

CH32V003 Provides Ultra Cheap Speech Recognition

Speech recognition was once the stuff of science fiction, but it’s now possible with relatively modest hardware. Just how modest, you ask? How about a 10 cent microcontroller? [Brian Smith] h…