Samwise Makers' News
Sunday, August 9, 2026
Tim Hunkin’s History of Arcade Machines
Tim Hunkin, creator of London's Novelty Automation amusement arcade, delivered a talk at the UK's Electromagnetic Field festival tracing the full history of arcade machines. His presentation covers the evolution from Victorian-era automata and saucy film viewers through one-armed bandits and pinball machines, concluding with rare electromechanical Pepper's Ghost cabinets. Hunkin — well-known to UK hackers for his television series and handcrafted coin-op machines — brings firsthand insight to the mechanical and electrical engineering behind each era's entertainment technology. The talk is available on YouTube for anyone interested in the intersection of maker craft, engineering history, and interactive amusement design.
Robotic Screw and Bolt Sorter Seeks a New Challenge
Builder [Aad] has constructed a fully automated fastener sorting machine that uses machine vision to identify and sort screws, bolts, and other hardware by size, shape, and orientation. The system runs a conveyor belt through an illuminated platform where an ESP32-CAM with custom M12 lenses captures images for classification. A gantry robotic arm — repurposed from an Ultimaker 3D printer — picks each fastener and deposits it into the correct cart. An ESP32-WROOM manages the servo and stepper motors, with an optional piezo sensor for weight measurement and a USB microscope available for enhanced identification capability.
Junkbin: A Community Dictionary for Reusing Old Electronics
Junkbin.io is an early-stage community project created by [Steve Cap] aiming to build a searchable dictionary of electronic components found in consumer electronics. Rather than leaving salvageable parts languishing in scrap bins, Junkbin documents which devices contain which components — down to specific resistors and SMD parts — so makers can efficiently source hardware from e-waste. The platform is currently open for contributions, with Hackaday noting that the project's potential mirrors the network effects that built other maker-community resources. Users can submit device teardowns and component identifications to help grow the database at junkbin.io.
Grading Tomatoes With an ESP32 and Machine Learning
Builder [pmalfa31] has published an open-source ESP32 machine-learning project that grades tomatoes on a conveyor belt by color and variety. The system uses an optical sensor to capture raw readings, strips out empty belt images, and groups sensor data by individual fruit before classification. Two separate trained models handle standard and cherry tomatoes independently, with the program automatically switching based on selection. A size-validation heuristic cross-checks results — flagging fruit that falls outside expected dimensions for its variety. The code requires an expanded stack allocation due to memory demands. A browser-based simulator is available on Wokwi, requiring no hardware to get started.
AtomNyarm: A Robot Arm Possessed by an Unmodified StackChan
Builder yo_michi has created AtomNyarm, a robot cat that uses a factory-stock M5Stack Stack-chan (K151) as the brain of a Seeed SO-ARM101 six-axis robot arm via a single passive wire. The Stack-chan runs unmodified firmware and the StackChan World smartphone app controls the arm by sniffing its servo bus — translating commands between the SCS0009 servo dialect and the arm's STS3215 dialect with 1.6–8.5 ms average latency. Safety features include two-stage joint clamping, a watchdog auto-park, E-stop latch, and an EEPROM firewall blocking the Stack-chan's own destructive servo writes. Gripper torque is capped at 10% to prevent pinching.
Sources: Hackster.io
Track Bird Visitors With a Raspberry Pi and a USB Mic
[Teddy Warner]'s Avian Visitors project turns a Raspberry Pi and USB microphone into an automated bird-identification station using BirdNET, Cornell University's deep-learning classifier capable of identifying more than 11,000 bird species by sound. The system pulls reference images for each detected species and assembles a collage where image size reflects visit frequency. An optional color E-Ink display panel shows a rolling 24-hour summary of avian visitors. The project supports Home Assistant and MQTT integration, enabling automation triggers based on specific species detection. The full GitHub repository includes setup instructions, with a basic installation requiring only a Raspberry Pi and USB microphone.
LILYGO T-Echo Card: Solar-Powered nRF52840 LoRa Dev Kit with IP66 Rating
LILYGO's T-Echo Card is a compact, IP66-rated development board combining a Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 microcontroller with a Semtech SX1262 LoRa transceiver, GNSS via an L76K module, and an 800 mAh battery charged by an onboard 0.25W solar panel. The 90 × 60 × 9.5 mm board adds Bluetooth 5, NFC, 802.15.4 (Zigbee/Thread), a 0.42-inch OLED display, 9-axis IMU, digital microphone, and speaker. Arduino sample code is provided on GitHub; the board is already supported by MeshCore community firmware and Meshtastic support is merged and awaiting release. It's available on AliExpress for $74.98 with magnetic USB cable included.
Sources: CNX Software
MaTouch ESP32-S3 MaUWB Board Combines Touchscreen and UWB for Indoor Positioning
Makerfabs has released the MaTouch ESP32-S3 MaUWB, a development board that combines an ESP32-S3 module (dual-core LX7 at 240 MHz, 8MB PSRAM, 16MB flash) with a 3.95-inch 480×320 touchscreen and a UWB module based on the DW3000 chipset operating on Channel 5 at 6489.6 MHz. Using a trilateration algorithm with up to three fixed UWB anchors, the board can display real-time indoor positioning on its touchscreen. The system supports up to 8 anchors and 64 tags, and also includes a LiPo battery connector, MicroSD slot, and Arduino IDE support with a 2D positioning example. Available at the Makerfabs store for $59.80.
Sources: CNX Software
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