Samwise Makers' News
Sunday, October 18, 2026
MediaTek Wi-Fi Adapter Chip Gets Two Independent SDR Drivers
About two weeks after an undocumented I/Q sampling feature was discovered in ESP32 chips, hackers have found similar capabilities in other wireless chips, including LoRa and Wi-Fi chipsets. The latest is the MediaTek MT7921AU, often used in Wi-Fi adapters, which gained two independent SDR drivers in the last few days. BirriaSDR streams the chip’s raw I/Q samples to the host at 40 Msps in 14-bit resolution, tuning from 2156 to 2610 MHz, and makes no permanent firmware changes. Mtk79ICAP instead exposes the sampling over a standard SoapySDR interface and needs firmware changes and a modified driver, but reaches 80 MHz of bandwidth and tunes to the 5 GHz bands.
M5Stack PaperDIY Kits Pair ESP32-S3 with 4.7-Inch E-Paper Display
M5Stack has released the PaperDIY series, an update to its 2020 M5Paper kit, built around an ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N16R8 module with 16MB of flash and 8MB of Octal PSRAM driving a 4.7-inch, 960 × 540 ED047TC1 e-paper display with 16 levels of gray. The Complete Kit ships factory-assembled in a 3D-printed PLA enclosure, while the Assembly Kit is designed for custom projects. Both include a microSD slot, a 140mAh battery and a custom M5PM1 power management chip, but drop the original’s touchscreen and sensors. The Assembly Kit costs $25; the Complete Kit is $29.90 but out of stock. M5Stack warns that mounting screws longer than 3mm will damage the display.
Sources: CNX Software
SolidCraft Brings Open Source Parametric CAD to Desktop, Browser and AI Agents
SolidCraft is a new open source 3D modeling CAD suite that supports sketches, solid modeling, constraints and a full parametric feature timeline. A parametric timeline means a model is the sum of a sequence of operations, so changing a value such as wall thickness automatically rebuilds every dependent feature. Written entirely in Rust, SolidCraft runs as a desktop app or as a web app in a browser. Every action a user can take is a command with JSON parameters, and the suite offers a built-in headless command line interface plus an MCP server for AI agents. SolidCraft remains in early development, with a live online demo.
Maker Builds Tiny Drone That Flies on a Single Propeller
Joshua Bird has built a very small drone that flies with a single propeller, avoiding the very large propellers such designs usually need. The key is a very high RPM combined with a hinged propeller hub that changes the angle of the blades so both pitch and roll can be controlled, provided the system reacts quickly enough. Standard motor ESCs, which rely on back EMF rather than measuring speed and position directly, could not do the job, so the final prototype measures them with custom controller code. To stop the drone losing track of its position, Bird added an infrared beacon in the room as a fixed reference point.
Nature Study Finds Plastics Generate Reactive Hydroxyl Radicals in Water
A study by Naixin Qian and colleagues, published in Nature, describes a previously unknown mechanism by which common plastics generate highly reactive hydroxyl radicals when exposed to water, challenging the belief that plastics are chemically inert. According to Hackaday, the energy for this reactivity comes from the electrostatic effect, and six types of microplastics tested showed varying levels of free radicals, particularly the more hydrophobic types. When researchers exposed mouse red blood cells to polystyrene microplastics, they observed fatal damage to the cells. The findings indicate at least three possible ways micro- and nanoplastics can harm organisms, though debate continues over how harmful and prevalent they are.
Dollhouse Arcade Cabinet Streams DOS Games Over Wi-Fi
Juha Lilja has built a Micro DOS arcade cabinet for his daughter’s dollhouse as an entry in Hackaday’s 2026 Retrocomputing Challenge. The tiny cabinet “runs nothing”: the games run on a nearby PC and stream over Wi-Fi to an M5Stack AtomS3R acting as an embedded remote terminal. Players tilt the whole cabinet like a virtual joystick to send up, down, left and right through the board’s motion sensor, and press the screen itself for single, double and long clicks. The firmware does not know or care what game is being played; it only displays what it receives and sends back input events. Code and technical notes are on GitHub.
Oldputer Pairs Old E-Ink Display with Retro Computer Styling
Andrzej Górski has entered his Oldputer in Hackaday’s 2026 Retrocomputing Challenge, a desk ornament styled after the bulky computers of the past. The inspiration, and the main component of the project, was an old e-ink display; Hackaday notes that one of the slowest versions of a display pairs naturally with the look of slow old computers. Beyond the display, the build adds an ESP32 and some LEDs for indicator lights, all housed in a fun case, and it can show whatever information its owner wants to display. The project is documented on Hackaday.io, and its files are available in a GitHub repository for anyone who wants to replicate it.
Chronova Engineering Builds Reciprocating Sharpener for Concave Pencil Tips
Chronova Engineering has reinvented the pencil sharpener to produce its ideal tip, a concave cone that is easy with a knife but impossible with a traditional twisting motion. The build automates a knife-whittling motion, an idea dating to at least 1910, guiding the blade along two curved tracks driven by a cam shaft and a small crank. For pencil rotation, Chronova developed a new intermittent mechanism inspired by the Geneva wheel: an indexing pinion that moves a lantern pinion two teeth per rotation, with input and output offset 90 degrees. A chuck on a screw advances the pencil each turn. It works well but is slow and laborious.
Top Crowdfunding
Kickstarter / Indiegogo
Xerxes Home Lab (Rapid Analysis) — past $6,996 goal, Kickstarter
Romu RP2354A USB board (Bitmerse) — $5,000 goal, Crowd Supply
ToolDance X1 desktop CNC mill — live on Kickstarter, from $2,999
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Curated by JD · samwise.agency