Samwise Makers' News
Sunday, May 3, 2026
Spark ESP32 Synthesizer: Open-Source Pocket Synth, Sampler, and MIDI Keyboard
A maker known as Povle has built the Spark, a compact 3D-printed portable synthesizer powered by an ESP32 microcontroller. Inspired by classic 1980s Casio instruments, the palm-sized device functions as a fully featured synth, sampler, and Bluetooth MIDI keyboard. Hardware includes custom keyswitches, a bank of potentiometers for real-time sound adjustment, dedicated function buttons, and a small OLED display. The open ESP32 platform enables extensive customisation, and the project has drawn attention from the maker community for combining professional-grade audio functionality with DIY accessibility. Source files are shared publicly, inviting others to build and modify their own Spark.
Sources: Hackaday
Vintage IBM P275 CRT Pushed to 2880×2160 with Interlaced Signal via Intel iGPU
A maker called Found Tech has pushed an IBM P275 CRT monitor, rated at a maximum 1920 by 1440 pixels, to display a 2880 by 2160 interlaced signal using vintage hardware. The trick relies on interlacing — doubling vertical lines by alternating two fields per frame. NVIDIA and AMD discrete GPUs cannot generate interlaced signals, so the project requires Intel integrated graphics and a specific older driver. Games render on the discrete card, then route through the Intel iGPU to the CRT. Found Tech reports the result matches modern 2160p OLED display quality while retaining the distinctive warmth of phosphor glow.
Sources: Hackaday
Museum Foucault Pendulum Goes Silent: Step-by-Step Electronics Fault Diagnosis
The Foucault pendulum at the Houston Museum of Natural Science — an 81.6-kilogram brass bob swinging continuously since the 1970s and completing a full 360-degree precession every 48 hours — stopped for the first time after routine building maintenance. Museum staff launched a systematic electronics investigation into the electromagnetic drive system. The diagnostic process, now documented for the maker community, covers isolating and testing the electromagnetic kick mechanism, interpreting oscilloscope traces on drive circuitry, and restoring a decades-old precision instrument without original schematics. The repair successfully returned the pendulum to continuous operation.
Sources: Hackaday
Prunt Board 3: Open-Source 3D Printer Control Board with Six TMC2240 Drivers Hits Crowd Supply
Prunt 3D has launched the Prunt Board 3 on Crowd Supply with a $9,500 funding target. The open-source 3D printer control board features six TMC2240 stepper motor drivers, two 15-ampere heater outputs, four fan outputs, four thermistor inputs, and four endstop inputs. Superior ESD protection compared to the Duet 3 Mini 5+ and BTT SKR 3 EZ, plus hardware-accelerated step generation, set it apart. The Prunt firmware implements a 31-phase velocity profile and degree-15 Bézier curve corner blending for smoother, quieter printing. A jumper switch enables Klipper mode for direct comparison. All firmware, written in Ada, is available on GitHub.
Sources: CNX Software
ESPHome 2026.4.0 Boosts ESP32 to 240 MHz Default, Adds Signed OTA and 46x Faster Sensor Publishing
ESPHome 2026.4.0 brings major performance improvements to ESP32, ESP32-S2, ESP32-S3, and ESP32-C5 devices. All variants now default to 240 MHz CPU frequency instead of 160 MHz — a 33-percent speed increase for sensor-dense automation nodes. Original ESP32 silicon gains an extra 40 kilobytes of IRAM reclaimed from reserved SRAM1 blocks. Signed over-the-air update verification blocks unauthorised firmware. A new client-side state logging architecture achieves up to 46-times faster sensor publishing, and Bluetooth Proxy advertisement forwarding now consumes just 1.8 percent of main-loop time on ESP32-C3. ESP8266 gains a crash handler matching the ESP32 standard, and several ADC and mDNS crash bugs are resolved.
Sources: Hackster.io
RFID Jukebox Build Uses ESP32, DFPlayer Mini, and MFRC522 for Card-Tap Music Playback
Tech Talkies has published an RFID-based jukebox built around an Espressif ESP32, an MFRC522 RFID reader, a DFPlayer Mini MP3 module, a PAM8403 audio amplifier, and an SH1106 OLED display. Each physical card maps to a single track or a folder of songs stored on a microSD card. Tapping a card prompts the ESP32 to look up the card ID in a compiled table and send a playback command to the DFPlayer Mini over UART. No smartphone, Bluetooth pairing, or cloud service is required. The project suits children, elderly users, and anyone who prefers tactile media browsing over touchscreen interfaces.
Sources: Adafruit Blog
Banana Pi BPI-OM7 Pairs RK3588 SBC with ORBBEC Gemini 2 Depth Camera for Edge AI Vision
Banana Pi has released the BPI-OM7, pairing a BPI-M7 single-board computer — built on the Rockchip RK3588, with 8GB LPDDR5 RAM and 64GB eMMC flash — with an ORBBEC Gemini 2 RGB-D depth camera. Connectivity includes dual 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, HDMI 2.1, and a 40-pin GPIO header. The platform runs Ubuntu 24.04 with Docker and the Orbbec SDK, granting access to the RK3588 NPU via the RKNN toolkit for YOLO v5 inference, point-cloud capture, and spatial reconstruction. Priced from $739 on AliExpress, the system targets robotics vision, edge AI research, and spatial perception applications.
Sources: CNX Software
Top Crowdfunding
Kickstarter / Indiegogo / Crowd Supply
1. Prunt Board 3 — $9,500 target (Crowd Supply, live now)
2. eufyMake E1 UV Texture Printer — $46.7M raised (Kickstarter, record)
3. None this week
GitHub Trending
Makers & Hardware
1. esphome/esphome — 10,000+ ★ (ESP32/ESP8266 home automation)
2. prusa3d/PrusaSlicer — 8,200+ ★ (open-source FDM slicer)
3. arduino/arduino-ide — 4,100+ ★ (official Arduino IDE 2.x)
Upcoming Events
Hackaday Europe 2026 — May 16–17, Lecco, Italy
Open Hardware Summit 2026 — May 23–24, Berlin, Germany
Crowd Supply Teardown 2026 — Jun 19–21, Portland, Oregon
Curated by JD · samwise.agency
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