Samwise Makers' News
Sunday, July 19, 2026
OSHWA's Open Hardware Summit 2026 Convenes at TU Berlin
The Open Source Hardware Association’s annual Open Hardware Summit returned to Europe this year, convening at Technische Universität Berlin in July 2026. Talks spanned proposals for standardized Maker Resilience Kits (MaRK) for makerspace emergency preparedness, open-source flow battery research, the knitting machine community’s long tradition of open hardware sharing, DIY DNA sequencing, and a keynote from Mitch Altman examining the future of open hardware now that Qualcomm owns Arduino. A workshop guided attendees through building a butterfly-shaped CircuitPython wearable PCB with infrared swarm communication. Seeed Studio exhibited its reBot robot arm and XIAO ecosystem. All talks are available on the Open Hardware Summit YouTube channel.
Sources: Hackster.io Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
Open-Source Mid-Drive E-Bike Motor Puts Repairability First
Portuguese maker Pedro Neves has designed and open-sourced a mid-drive e-bike motor for builders who want genuine ownership—and repairability—of their electric bikes. Rather than crack a proprietary sealed unit, Neves salvaged the motor from a discarded battery-powered angle grinder and paired it with 3D-printed components for non-bearing surfaces and a CNC-machined axle for durability. The design targets a top speed of 25 km/h and is part of a larger open-source cargo bike project. Build files—currently .step files and a bill of materials—are published on his website, with a complete design and assembly video available on YouTube.
KAIST's APT-RL Gives Quadruped Robots a Unified Gait Brain
Researchers at South Korea’s KAIST have developed APT-RL, a unified locomotion controller that lets quadruped robots autonomously walk, run, jump, and navigate obstacles using a single reinforcement-learned policy. Using trajectory optimization, the team generated approximately 15.5 hours of diverse motion data in just eight minutes of simulation time. The completed system uses only onboard sensors—a depth camera and LiDAR—to estimate obstacles and select the appropriate gait in real time. Tested on the KAIST HOUND robot across outdoor terrain including forest trails, staircases, and grassy slopes, the robot reached a peak speed of 6 metres per second while descending a three-step staircase. The framework is designed to generalize beyond quadrupeds.
Sources: Hackster.io Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
Embedded Arena Loops Real Hardware Into AI Model Optimization
Researchers have developed Embedded Arena, a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) platform that optimizes AI model deployment on microcontrollers using feedback from real hardware rather than simulations alone. An AI agent iteratively generates firmware, flashes it onto a physical microcontroller, then measures power consumption, temperature, and resource utilization to guide the next iteration. Frontier models including Claude Opus 4.7 and Gemini 3.1 Pro showed a 0% deployment success rate without hardware feedback; with it, success reached 80% on the hardest tasks within seven iterations. The system compressed computer vision models 250× with under 3.3% accuracy loss and reduced power consumption by more than 58%.
Sources: Hackster.io Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
Phantom Twist Drone Becomes Near-Invisible at High Spin Rates
Researchers have demonstrated that the Phantom Twist—a single-motor drone with a spindly airframe—becomes nearly invisible to the eye when spinning at high speed, a visually striking effect documented in a short video. Unlike conventional single-motor spinning drones that rely on a wing structure or the Magnus effect for lift, the Phantom Twist uses a downward-angled motor and generates lift without any wing, keeping the airframe extremely light. Stability depends entirely on maintaining a high rotation rate, making precise balance critical. A hand launcher spins the vehicle up before release. The researchers note the optical transparency does not extend to the drone’s sound signature.
DIY Pop-Up Truck Camper Uses Aluminum-Plywood Sandwich Construction
YouTube maker Further Fabrication built a pop-up truck camper from scratch after commercial options proved too expensive and unavailable in his country. The shell’s main structure uses an aluminum-and-plywood sandwich: two plywood layers bonded around plywood beams and large rectangular aluminum tubing with construction adhesive and screws, yielding a lightweight yet rigid enclosure. The tent section uses 600-denier PVC-coated waterproof polyester fabric with YKK zippers and screened windows for ventilation. Roof panels are aluminum composite sandwich sections. In place of the standard cam-lock used on most camper shells, Further Fabrication chose a solenoid-actuated locking system with conventional grab handles.
Open-Source Firmware Turns $47 M5Stack Core2 into $230 AI Agent Pad
Developer IAMLIUBO has published open-source PlatformIO/Arduino firmware that turns the M5Stack Core2 IoT controller—available for around $46.90 on AliExpress—into a functional replica of OpenAI and Work Louder’s $230 Codex Micro AI agent macro pad. Instead of physical keys, the firmware maps the Core2’s 2-inch touchscreen into six agent keys, six command keys, four analog-stick directions, and dial inputs. The device presents itself to the host computer as a BLE vendor HID device matching the Codex Micro’s data signature, making it plug-and-play with the ChatGPT desktop app on macOS and Windows. Source code and documentation are on GitHub.
Sources: CNX Software Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
HamGPT Brings AI-Powered Band and Propagation Data to Ham Radio
HamGPT (hamgpt.co) is a new AI chatbot purpose-built for amateur radio operators, running on a GPT engine with integrations that general-purpose AI assistants lack. Unlike broad-scope chatbots, HamGPT retrieves live data from the FCC database and real-time propagation reports, answering questions such as which band offers the best propagation path to Japan from your current location right now. Signup requires a valid callsign and location; a free tier limits daily queries. The interface also displays the busiest band in your area and lists nearby repeaters. Hackaday notes the service does not appear to include access to static reference materials such as books or magazine articles.
ESP32-C3 Roulette Wheel Tracks Scores via SQL Over WiFi
A maker known as Hulk built a 3D-printed roulette wheel that started as a 555-timer circuit before feature creep prompted an upgrade to an ESP32-C3. The original wheel circuit was retained—the ESP32 generates clock pulses for a pair of decade counters that drive the LED chase effect around the ring. The microcontroller now also tracks where the virtual ball lands and reports results via WiFi to a server running an SQL database and PHP frontend, letting two players place bets and track wins and losses over time. Rather than squeezing the game logic onto the ESP32, Hulk chose to run it server-side using tools already familiar from daily work.
Why a Simple Calculator UI Needs a Surprisingly Complex State Machine
Maker and researcher lcamtuf has published an analysis revealing that even a basic four-function calculator requires a surprisingly sophisticated underlying state machine. The apparent simplicity of pressing 1 + 2 = conceals dozens of edge cases—handling a digit press immediately after equals, interpreting an operator key as a negative-sign prefix, managing decimal entry—that multiply rapidly with each additional feature. The insight comes from practical experience: lcamtuf built a working calculator that uses voltmeter needles as digit displays, and implementing the full UI logic from scratch reveals why seemingly trivial consumer devices are often genuine engineering exercises. The post at lcamtuf.coredump.cx is linked from Hackaday.
Top Crowdfunding
Kickstarter / Crowd Supply
1. RootBoard — Open-hardware cyberdeck terminal (Kickstarter, launched July 1)
2. Open Book Touch — Open e-reader, ~60% funded, $149 (Crowd Supply)
3. — (No additional campaigns confirmed this issue)
GitHub Trending
Makers & Hardware
None this week — trending dominated by AI/software repos
Upcoming Events
Maker Faire Bay Area — Sept 25–27, 2026, Mare Island, CA
Maker Faire Rome — Oct 23–25, 2026, Gazometro Ostiense
Curated by JD · samwise.agency