Samwise Makers' News
Thursday, August 27, 2026
PCBs With A Plot: Designing Circuit Boards as TTRPG Narrative Tools
At Hackaday Europe 2026 in Amsterdam, PCB artist Katrin Dietzsch revealed how she designs printed circuit boards as tabletop roleplaying game narrative tools. Her creations embed interactivity directly into storytelling props — a D20-shaped board uses capacitive touch to sense dice rolls, while RF proximity and IR beams detect player positions on the playing field. Rather than treating electronics as hidden infrastructure, Dietzsch exposes traces, vias, and copper pours as aesthetic elements that reinforce the game's visual language. The talk challenged makers to think of PCBs not just as functional substrates but as expressive artistic media where the circuit itself carries the story.
EU Packaging Rules Threaten Small Electronics Kit Sellers
Small electronics kit sellers across Europe face an unexpected threat from the EU's updated Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation. As Jenny List reports on Hackaday, the law requires producers to register with compliance schemes in every member state where they sell — an administrative and financial burden many micro-businesses cannot bear. Alain Pannetrat of the Lectronz marketplace documented the situation in detail, warning that compliance costs could price independent kit makers out of their home markets. The regulation, designed for large consumer goods producers, fails to distinguish hobby kit sellers from industrial manufacturers, risking homogenisation of the European electronics maker scene.
MIT Replaces Excavator Joysticks With Scale-Model Arm Controller
MIT researchers have replaced a full-size excavator's twin-joystick control system with a scale-model arm controller, allowing operators to direct the machine through natural, intuitive movements. Rather than mapping abstract joystick angles to boom, bucket, stick, and swing axes separately, the model arm lets the operator physically gesture — the excavator mirrors the motion in real time. Early trials show faster task completion and fewer operator errors. The team is developing haptic feedback so users can feel contact forces through the miniature controller. The approach could significantly reduce training time for heavy machinery operators and improve safety on congested construction sites.
Making LCD Displays Glow Like Classic Incandescent Indicator Lamps
James Bowman's TermDriver 2 is a USB-to-serial adapter covering 100 bit/s to 2 Mbit/s with a software-rendered character cell display. His latest firmware update introduces a 16-step brightness simulation technique that makes individual LCD pixels mimic the warm glow and rise-fall lag of classic incandescent indicator lamps. Superellipse-shaped display segments further soften the harsh rectangular edges of standard LCD elements. The combined effect is strikingly convincing on desktop instruments and control panels. Bowman published the technique as part of the open TermDriver 2 firmware, freely available to any developer who wants their modern display hardware to feel unmistakably like 1970s equipment.
Anatomy of an SLA Resin Printing Disaster: A Post-Mortem
Maya Posch walks through a post-mortem of a catastrophic SLA print failure using a GK3 Ultra printer and ChituBox slicer. The print object — a 3D-printed CD rack — collapsed during the peel phase when ChituBox miscalculated peeling forces against the printer's PFA film FEP layer. The resulting resin spill required cleanup with isopropyl alcohol and UV lamp curing of contaminated surfaces. Posch traces each decision and misstep, from support placement strategy to exposure time settings, delivering a candid account of failure modes even experienced SLA users encounter — and the messy consequences when peeling forces and slicer settings go wrong.
Quest 1 VR Headset Receives Fully Unlocked Bootloader
The original Oculus Quest 1 VR headset has received a fully unlocked bootloader via QuestStack, a GitHub tool by starseed12345 that automates a privilege escalation sequence granting stable, persistent root access to the hardware. A simpler web-based version by darknight1050 reduces the process to plugging in the headset and visiting a page. Released in 2019 and long abandoned by Meta, the Quest 1 remains capable hardware that can now run community-built operating systems and experimental applications. The unlock echoes the earlier Oculus Go liberation and reinforces arguments that manufacturers dropping support for sold hardware should be required to open it.
HomeMaster MiniPLC: ESP32 DIN-Rail Controller With ESPHome and Home Assistant
The HomeMaster MiniPLC packs a full-featured ESP32-based programmable logic controller into a compact DIN-rail enclosure with ESPHome pre-installed for plug-and-play Home Assistant integration. The board carries four isolated 24V digital inputs, relay outputs, 0–10V analog input and output, PT100/PT1000 RTD temperature channels, RS-485 Modbus RTU, 1-Wire buses, and optional 10/100 Mbps Ethernet. A 128×64 OLED display, real-time clock, microSD slot, buzzer, and 12 status LEDs complete the feature set. It accepts both 24V DC and wide-range 85–265V AC input. For makers building home or light industrial automation, it combines ESPHome's openness with proper industrial-grade electrical robustness.
Sources: CNX Software
Arduino Ventuno Q: $299 SBC Pairs Qualcomm AI Processor With STM32 Real-Time MCU
Arduino has opened pre-orders for the Ventuno Q, a $299 single-board computer pairing a Qualcomm Dragonwing IQ8 octa-core processor (40 dense TOPS) with an STM32H5F5 real-time microcontroller on one board. The dual-brain architecture allows simultaneous local LLM inference and millisecond-level hardware control over motors or CAN-FD devices. The board ships with 16 GB LPDDR5, 64 GB eMMC, M.2 for NVMe, Wi-Fi 6, 2.5 GbE, three MIPI CSI camera ports, and ROS 2 support. Ubuntu with an Ubuntu Pro license comes pre-loaded. Arduino UNO shields, Modulino nodes, and Raspberry Pi HATs connect without modification, preserving existing maker hardware ecosystems.
Sources: CNX Software
Firehat Brings Open-Source FireWire DV Capture to Raspberry Pi 5
Computer Equipment Group has launched a crowdfunding campaign for Firehat, an open-source FireWire HAT that adds IEEE 1394 DV capture to single-board computers with a Raspberry Pi PCIe FFC connector, including the Raspberry Pi 5 and Radxa ROCK 2F. Built around a VIA VT6315N controller, Firehat lets users capture MiniDV, Digital8, DVCAM, DVCPRO, and HDV camcorder footage directly to local storage without requiring a legacy PC or discontinued capture card. A 1.3-inch OLED display sits onboard and full KiCad design files are available. For makers with shelves of old camcorder tapes, it is one of the most practical open-source preservation tools yet built around Raspberry Pi hardware.
Sources: CNX Software
Top Crowdfunding
Kickstarter / Crowd Supply
1. Sovol M1D — $2.8M+ raised (Kickstarter) — open-source IDEX 3D printer
2. Firehat — live campaign (Crowd Supply) — FireWire DV capture HAT for Pi 5
3. MNT Station — live campaign (Crowd Supply) — modular open-hardware desktop
GitHub Trending
Makers & Hardware
1. lvgl/lvgl — 18.6k★ — embedded graphics library
2. meshtastic/firmware — 8.2k★ — off-grid mesh comms firmware
3. starseed12345/QuestStack — trending — Quest 1 bootloader unlock tool
Upcoming Events
Maker Faire Bay Area — Sep 25–27, 2026 — Mare Island, CA
Louisville Maker Faire — Oct 17, 2026 — Louisville, KY
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Curated by JD · samwise.agency