Samwise Makers' News
Sunday, July 12, 2026
Software-Defined Vehicles Are Closer Than the Auto Industry Admits
The automotive industry is shifting from fixed-function silicon to modular software-defined platforms, separating safety-critical workloads from everything else and enabling over-the-air feature updates at scale. This mirrors what happened in mobile computing: hardware becomes a substrate; software becomes the product. The era of the truly programmable car is approaching — faster than most carmakers expected, and with deep implications for embedded systems engineers.
MicroPython Comes to the SNES — With a Little Help From Claude Fable 5
Fabian Kübler used Claude Fable 5 to port MicroPython to the 3.58 MHz SNES processor — and it actually works. The port passes 430 of 468 core tests, boots in about 20 seconds, and runs at a blistering 0.8 FPS. What it lacks in speed it makes up for in sheer audacity, proving that AI-assisted porting can tackle genuinely tricky embedded targets. Source code on GitHub.
DOOM Runs on the Casio Loopy — and It Prints Screenshots on the Sticker Printer
The Casio Loopy — a 1995 Japanese girls’ console with a Hitachi SH-1 processor and a built-in sticker printer — now runs DOOM, courtesy of Throaty Mumbo. The port uses a FloopyDrive cartridge and fully supports the printer for hard-copy kill screens. Classic evidence that DOOM will eventually run on everything, including hardware that was never meant to play first-person shooters. Source code on GitHub.
Inside a 1997 BBC Ceefax Generator: MS-DOS, a 486, and a Teletext ISA Card
Nathan Dane cracked open a 1997 BBC Ceefax inserter — the box that generated the UK’s pre-internet news service — and found a 486-class industrial PC running MS-DOS 6.22. The key component is an ISA card carrying a TI TMS34010 graphics CPU that encodes teletext signals directly in analog, with no digital conversion required. A rare window into the broadcast infrastructure that shaped a generation of British viewers.
Clay Extruder Enables Printable Pottery — Including a Fired Ceramic Chain-Mail Mesh
Joshua Bird built a working ceramic 3D printer using an air-pressure-fed clay extruder with a stainless steel auger — because clay rapidly destroys plastic nozzles. His polar motion system handles the geometry; the real challenge is clay rheology: soft enough to extrude, stiff enough not to collapse before kiln firing. The results include a double-walled cup, decorative vessels, and an astonishing chain-mail mesh in fired ceramic.
GeoLupe: A Robotic Arm That Shows Satellite Imagery Where You Point on a Paper Map
GeoLupe is a two-link robotic arm that tracks where a pointer rests on a paper map and instantly displays the corresponding satellite or street-map imagery on an M5Stack CoreS3 screen — entirely offline from an SD card. Fourteen-bit MT6701 magnetic encoders and least-squares forward-kinematics calibration deliver 2 mm positioning accuracy. An inspired blend of analog and digital map exploration, built around a fictional Doraemon gadget.
Source: Hackster.io Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
A $5 AliExpress Desk Toy Gets Custom Firmware — and Becomes a Proper Desktop Notifier
The GeekMagic SmallTV is a cheap ESP8266 or ESP32-C2 desktop display that ships as a Bitcoin ticker. A new community firmware by Giovi321 adds stock tickers, an ADS-B aircraft tracker, and a Claude AI token-usage gauge — all delivered over Wi-Fi. The modular code structure makes it straightforward to point at any data source, turning novelty e-waste into a genuinely handy desk gadget.
Top Crowdfunding
Crowd Supply / Kickstarter
1. PicoIDE — open-source IDE/ATAPI emulator for vintage PCs — Crowd Supply (live)
2. HealthyPi 6 — open CERN-licensed health monitoring platform — Crowd Supply
3. Open Printer — open-source repairable inkjet for makers — launching soon
GitHub Pulse
Makers & Hardware
1. FabianKuebler/micropython-snes — MicroPython on the SNES (this edition)
2. ThroatyMumbo/LoopyDOOM — DOOM on the Casio Loopy (this edition)
3. giovi321/smalltv-mod — custom firmware for GeekMagic SmallTV ESP devices
Event Radar
📅 Maker Faire Edmonton — Jul 17–19, Alberta, Canada
📅 Crowd Supply Live — Jul 24–26, Portland, OR (SDR hardware focus)
📅 Maker Faire Bay Area — Sep 25–27, Mare Island (20th anniversary)
Curated by JD · samwise.agency