Samwise Makers' News
Monday, August 10, 2026
iFixit Teardown Finds Rokid Smart Glasses Are Unusually Repairable
iFixit purchased and tore down two Chinese smart-glasses models — Quark and Rokid — finding a striking difference in serviceability. Both share a Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 SoC, 32 GB eMMC storage, micro-LED projectors, and a combination of internal and external clip-on batteries. Disassembling the Quark required heat and prying tools, similar to Ray-Ban Meta glasses. Rokid, by contrast, uses minimal adhesive and a service-friendly internal layout that iFixit describes as unusually accessible for a wearable. The teardown comes shortly after the EU announced it would exempt many wearables, including smartwatches and earbuds, from forthcoming right-to-repair battery replacement requirements.
CO2 Laser Carves Hydrophilic Channels in Parchment Paper for Biodegradable Electronics
Researchers led by Zahra Rafiee have demonstrated high-density paper electronics using a 50 W CO2 laser to selectively etch the silicone coating from hydrophobic parchment paper, exposing hydrophilic channels at 250 micrometres line width and 300 micrometres spacing — finer resolution than wax-based alternatives. PEDOT:PSS polymer ink mixed with DMSO forms conductive resistive traces; interlocking PEDOT:PSS finger electrodes separated by a PVA gel electrolyte function as capacitors. The team demonstrated working RC low-pass and high-pass filters on the substrate. The paper biodegrades fully in soil. Findings are published in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces 2026; PDMS encapsulation can extend operational lifetime.
iBrick: A Giant iPod Nano-Inspired Music Player Built on Raspberry Pi CM5
Maker Arnov Sharma has built iBrick, an oversized iPod Nano-inspired music player powered by a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 paired with a Waveshare 10.1-inch DSI touchscreen. The CM5 runs Raspberry Pi OS on Debian Trixie, booting from an NVMe SSD for fast startup. Audio output uses a MAX98357A I2S amplifier driving a 4-ohm speaker. Power comes from a salvaged 10,000 mAh power-bank cell, yielding four to five hours of runtime. A custom PyQt6 interface — developed with collaborator Aahan Sharma — replicates the original iPod’s sliding stack navigation, emulated click wheel controls, and background library scanning via Mutagen, with python-vlc handling playback.
Sources: Hackster.io
Avian Visitors: Raspberry Pi and USB Mic Identify Garden Birds by Sound
Teddy Warner’s Avian Visitors project uses a Raspberry Pi and a standard USB microphone to identify and log bird species visiting a garden. Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s BirdNET deep learning model, trained on more than 11,000 species, classifies bird calls in real time. The system generates a composite illustration where each bird’s displayed size scales with its visit frequency. A colour e-ink display summarises the preceding 24 hours at a glance. A web interface and Home Assistant integration via MQTT allow remote monitoring and data logging. All source code is published on GitHub at github.com/Twarner491/AvianVisitors under an open licence.
ESP32 and Machine Learning Grade Tomatoes on the Conveyor Belt
A maker has built an ESP32-based colour grading system that classifies tomatoes on a conveyor belt using on-device machine learning. A colour and light sensor captures readings above the belt; the firmware removes empty-belt background frames, computes statistical features per fruit, and selects between two ML models — one trained on standard tomatoes and one on cherry varieties. A heuristic size check flags anomalies outside expected dimensions. A live demonstration runs in Wokwi’s browser simulator. Because the ML inference stack is memory-hungry, the build requires explicitly increasing the microcontroller’s stack allocation beyond its default. Full source code is publicly available.
Haniwa Splash: Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W Automates Morning Plant Watering
Japanese maker ShinjiQune has extended their Haniwa plant-monitoring system with automatic watering. A Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W checks an online weather forecast API and offline soil moisture sensors each morning, triggering a submersible pump at 6:30 if watering is required. An earlier attempt using mechanical relays failed — the microcontroller GPIO could not supply enough current to actuate the relay coil. Replacing the relay with an S8050 NPN bipolar transistor resolved the problem: a 220-ohm base resistor limits the GPIO output to approximately 12 mA, which provides sufficient base current to switch several hundred milliamps through the collector-emitter path and drive the 9V pump.
Sources: Hackster.io
Continuously Extruding 3D-Printed Hollow Tubes Using Compressed Air
Jan of Roetz 4.0 is experimenting with continuous extrusion of 3D-printed hollow tubes by pumping compressed air through the filament core as it leaves a dual-material hot end. Initial PLA tests produced airtight tubes but with inconsistent wall diameter; the stainless-steel nozzle’s low thermal conductivity, combined with cooling air in the bore, caused premature solidification inside the hot end. Jan switched from pressure-based to volume-based flow control using a peristaltic pump, improving consistency. TPU filament, with better melt adhesion at the extrusion interface, is now the preferred material. Related blow-extrusion research has also been published by TU Darmstadt.
Top Crowdfunding
Kickstarter / Indiegogo
1. HeyGears G1 — $10.8M raised, 2,537 backers (Kickstarter)
2. Token Monitor (Fractal Manifold) — €25K goal, €99 early bird (Kickstarter)
3. None confirmed this week
GitHub Trending
Makers & Hardware
None this week
Upcoming Events
Maker Faire Bay Area — Sept 25–27, 2026, Mare Island Shipyard, Vallejo CA
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Curated by JD · samwise.agency