Samwise Makers' News
Wednesday, May 6, 2026
LightInk: Open-Source Solar-Powered ESP32 Smartwatch Targets Infinite Battery Life
Daniel Ansorregui has released LightInk, an open-source solar-powered smartwatch built around an ESP32 chip and a 1.54-inch e-paper display. Entered in Hackaday's 2026 Green Powered Challenge, the watch achieves an estimated battery life of 6 to 10 months on a 100mAh cell — theoretically infinite when supplemented by a compact desk-calculator-style solar panel. Key engineering choices include a TPS63900 buck-boost converter with a no-IC solar-first charging design, capacitive-touch input, deep-sleep-driven firmware, and ultra-fast partial e-ink refresh times under one millisecond that dramatically reduce active power draw. The firmware, EasyEDA hardware design files, and 3D-printable case models are all freely available on GitHub.
Sources: Hackaday
Timeframe E-Paper Dashboard Brings Mindful Smart Home Displays to Life
Joel Hawksley's Timeframe project, a wall-mounted e-paper family dashboard, has drawn renewed attention after a Hackaday feature published May 5. Originally conceived to reduce smartphone dependency in the home, the system evolved from multiple small e-paper frames into a centralized 23.5-inch Boox display running a custom Rails backend. Timeframe pulls in calendar events, weather data, and Home Assistant smart home status, displaying only contextually relevant information at any given moment — a deliberate design choice that avoids the firehose of a typical smartphone screen. Hawksley has released Timeframe as open source on GitHub and continues to develop it toward a commercial product.
Sources: Hackaday
NFC as a Qi Alternative: The Case for 13.56 MHz Wireless Power in Low-Power Devices
A Hackaday analysis published May 5 examines the case for using NFC instead of Qi wireless charging for low-power devices. Both standards rely on electromagnetic induction, but NFC operates at 13.56 MHz versus Qi's 110 to 205 kHz, enabling much smaller antennas — a key advantage for wearables and IoT sensors. While NFC tops out at around 250 milliwatts in current modules, that ceiling suffices for microcontrollers, sensors, and e-paper displays. Waveshare already ships NFC-powered E-Ink display tags requiring no battery at all, using NFC simultaneously for power delivery and data updates. Makers experimenting with harvested NFC energy for battery-less devices have found the approach practical for sub-100mW applications.
Sources: Hackaday
Maker Builds Desktop Wire EDM Machine to Cut Precision Steel Gears at Home
[Inofid] has documented the second iteration of a desktop wire EDM (electrical discharge machining) machine capable of cutting precision steel gears. Unlike laser cutting or milling, EDM works on any conductive material regardless of hardness, leaving no mechanical or thermal stress in the workpiece. The machine repurposes the motion system from a cheap desktop CNC router, with the spindle replaced by a wire-management mechanism that feeds tensioned brass wire from one spool through the cutting zone to another. Two motors maintain wire tension using an Arduino-controlled sensor loop. Initial tests cut through a 5 by 3 cm aluminum block in two hours; a sludge-removal pump significantly improved subsequent cutting speeds.
Sources: Hackaday
ESP32-Powered RGB Laser Galvo Projector Plays Asteroids and Renders Vector Art
Makers [Breq] and [Mia] have released a well-documented, low-cost RGB laser galvo projector controlled by an ESP32-S2 microcontroller. The build sources its galvos, RGB laser module with dichroic mirrors, and ESP32 board from AliExpress, keeping costs minimal — the most expensive item was ANSI-certified safety eyewear. The ESP32-S2's built-in DAC outputs drive the galvanometers, which are rated at 20,000 points per second. Beyond projecting a playable Asteroids clone controlled by Wiimotes, the system renders clock faces, arbitrary text in single-stroke fonts, and any SVG-format vector image. Full build documentation, firmware, and Hackaday.io project logs have been made publicly available by the creators.
Sources: Hackaday
Renesas Releases RZ/V2H Robotics Development Kit with 80 TOPS AI Vision and PX4 Support
Renesas has released the WS125-V2HRDKREFZ Robotics Development Kit, a single-board platform built around its RZ/V2H processor featuring quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 application cores, Cortex-R8 real-time cores, and a Cortex-M33 safety core alongside an 80 TOPS (sparse) AI vision accelerator. The board ships with 16GB LPDDR4, a 64GB microSD card, Gigabit Ethernet, dual USB 3.2 ports, two CAN-FD interfaces, two MIPI CSI camera connectors, a 40-pin Raspberry Pi-compatible GPIO header, and a 12 to 24V DC input range. Renesas demonstrated the kit running PX4 for drone flight control, combining AI vision, motor control, and AI inference on a single chip without external MCUs or accelerators.
Sources: CNX Software
Hamster Wheel Generator Accumulates Enough Energy to Start Charging a Smartphone
Maker [Flamethrower] has demonstrated a genuine phone charger powered by hamster wheel rotation, capturing the physics of small-animal energy harvesting. The irregular cadence of a running hamster makes it an energy-harvesting problem rather than a direct power source, so [Flamethrower] used a CJMCU-2557 module featuring the Texas Instruments BQ25770 chip, which accepts input voltages from 0.1 to 5.1 V with a cold-start minimum of 0.6 V and a maximum current of 100mA. The module charges salvaged 18650 lithium-ion cells via an onboard supercapacitor. After a full overnight run, the battery held enough charge to begin a smartphone charging cycle, confirming the concept is technically viable if impractically slow.
Sources: Hackaday
Top Crowdfunding
Kickstarter / Indiegogo
1. Prunt Board 3 — open-source 6-driver 3D printer board, $180 pledge (Crowd Supply)
2. None confirmed this week
3. None confirmed this week
GitHub Trending
Makers & Hardware
1. earlephilhower/arduino-pico — 2.7k★ RP2040/RP2350 Arduino core
2. davidmonterocrespo24/velxio — Browser-based Arduino/ESP32/RPi emulator
3. DarkZeros/LightInk — ESP32 e-paper solar smartwatch firmware
Upcoming Events
Maker Faire Trieste — May 9–10, Trieste, Italy
Hackaday Europe — May 16–17, Lecco, Italy
Open Hardware Summit — May 23–24, Berlin, Germany
Curated by JD · samwise.agency