Samwise Makers' News
Monday, August 24, 2026
Home Fabricator Makes Functional Inorganic LEDs in Lab
Dr. Semiconductor has fabricated inorganic LED chips in a home lab and bonded them to a PCB. The starting material was a commercial gallium nitride (GaN) epiwafer — a sapphire substrate with layered n-doped GaN, an indium gallium nitride quantum well, and p-doped GaN. To reach the buried n-type layer, a 355-nm UV laser etched through the p-type layer, replacing the chlorine-based reactive ion etching used in industry. Nickel, silver, and titanium contacts were deposited via sputtering with photoresist lift-off. Chips were diced with the UV laser and bonded to PCB pads via electroplated indium bumps. A cerium-doped YAG phosphor layer mixed with silicone converts blue emission to white light.
Ambient-Pressure Superconductivity Record Set With Cuprate Material
Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Houston have set a new record for superconductivity at ambient pressure. The team applied a pressure-quench protocol (PQP) to cuprate HgBa2Ca2Cu3O8 (Hg1223), raising its critical temperature from 133 K to 151 K without requiring extreme external pressure to maintain it. The PQP technique forces the crystal into a higher-transition-temperature phase that remains stable once pressure is released. The findings were published in PNAS, authored by Liangzi Deng and colleagues. The result is the highest confirmed superconducting transition temperature achieved at ambient pressure, a step toward more practical applications of cuprate superconductors.
Open-Source ExpressLRS Receivers Achieve Five-Kilometre Range
A maker known as Stan has designed and documented four open-source ExpressLRS (ELRS) RC receivers under the project name OpenRX, published on GitHub at OpenDrone-hw/OpenRX. Each receiver pairs an ESP32 microcontroller with an SX1281 radio chip and uses Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS) modulation, which provides approximately 24 dB of processing gain over conventional receivers. During field testing, the receivers maintained a stable link at over five kilometres through forested terrain. Two of the four designs include an additional 900 MHz antenna for extended frequency coverage. All hardware design files and firmware are available on the project GitHub repository.
AROS Amiga-Inspired OS Boots Bare-Metal on Raspberry Pi
The AROS Research Operating System — an open-source Amiga-derived OS — has been ported to boot bare-metal on the Raspberry Pi in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Previously, running AROS on a Pi required virtualizing it under Linux; this port boots directly from hardware, with boot times described as comparable to RiscOS. The primary target is the Raspberry Pi 3, with forum discussions covering Pi 4 and Pi Zero 2W support. Software availability on the ARM build is more limited than on x86 but is expected to grow as development continues. The port was announced at arosworld.org and demonstrated by Dan Wood in a YouTube video.
Thermoacoustic Stirling Engine Becomes Fully 3D-Printable
An open-source thermoacoustic Stirling engine by the maker known as “my engines” can now be built entirely from printed parts. The remaining gap in printability was the hotend burner, which previously required conventional metal fabrication. The new burner, capable of running on biogas or methane, is produced using SLA metal printing and integrates into the 3D-printable hotend assembly. The engine operates on the Stirling thermodynamic cycle and has only one moving part. With this update, all files and construction documentation are available at OwnEnergy.org, enabling makers to reproduce the complete engine without specialty machining.
Full-Scale Railway Pump Car Built From 3D-Printed Parts
Sam Barker and a collaborator named Tom built a full-scale 3D-printed railway pump car for the Open Sauce maker event. A pump car — also called a handcar — is a small rail vehicle propelled by pumping a seesaw-style handle up and down; the beam mechanism converts that rocking motion into wheel rotation. The team designed the build to disassemble and fit inside standard airline check-in luggage for transport to the event. Complete print-ready CAD files are published on Printables as model 1818223 for anyone who wants to build their own.
555 Timer IC Powers Beat Frequency Oscillator for Radio Receivers
A beat frequency oscillator (BFO) circuit built around the 555 timer IC provides an inexpensive upgrade for shortwave and amateur radio receivers that lack CW and single-sideband (SSB) receive capability. The design generates a 455 kHz carrier signal, tunable via potentiometer to roughly plus or minus twenty percent of that frequency, which is injected into the receiver’s intermediate frequency (IF) chain to supply the steady carrier needed to demodulate SSB and CW transmissions. The 555-based oscillator accepts supply voltages from 4.5 V to 16 V, making it compatible with most existing receiver power supplies without a dedicated regulator. Full circuit details are covered at EDN.
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1. OpenDrone-hw/OpenRX — open-source ELRS receivers
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Curated by JD · samwise.agency
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