Samwise Makers' News
Wednesday, September 9, 2026
Fixing A 1990s LEGO Electric Train Speed Regulator
Before LEGO’s trains moved to battery-powered systems, the company’s 9V electric era used metal rails and a central controller to both power and regulate locomotives. Maker [Nonsense Wars] recently repaired one such unit — the LEGO 2868b speed regulator — tracing an intermittent fault to the only active component on the board: a TO-220-packaged Fairchild KA317, functionally identical to an LM317T. The single PCB accepts 9 to 12 VAC from an external supply and uses a variable voltage regulator whose output is set by a resistor bank switched by the yellow slider, which also reverses output polarity past its midpoint. Replacing the KA317 restored the regulator to working order.
Hackaday Europe 2026: Outdoors With Robots
Erin Kennedy’s Hackaday Europe 2026 talk drew from over a decade of outdoor robot fieldwork. Kennedy’s beach-cleaning Bowie bot 3D-prints open-source, dealing with sand’s destructive effects through low travel speed, high-mounted motors, and a body designed to shed debris. Otter Force One, her underwater robot for capturing invasive sea urchins, is sealed using double-o-ring cable glands potted in marine epoxy to survive both saltwater and barnacles. Atmosphinder is Kennedy’s most ambitious design: a rolling-wheel robot with sails intended to traverse long distances on Mars using only wind propulsion. She also addressed the unexpected human encounters that come with running robots in public spaces.
Sick Of Wayland Vs. Xorg? How About GEM?
Digital Research’s GEM desktop found little success on DOS — Apple sued, Microsoft Windows won — but became a standout interface on Atari home computers. Developer Tomaz Stih has now ported GEM to Linux, using the OpenGEM and FreeGEM codebases that trace directly back to Digital Research’s original code through a chain of acquisitions and open-source releases. The result, hosted at github.com/triglav-os/gem, is not a window manager or desktop environment for Xorg or Wayland — it runs entirely inside the Linux framebuffer on a minimal installation. Sample applications include a clock and calendar, and the codebase maintains API compatibility with Atari ST applications.
Creality Debuts Five New Printers and K3 Toolchanger at IFA Berlin 2026
Creality used IFA Berlin 2026 to debut five new machines, led by the K3, its flagship toolchanger built around the KliTek system. The K3’s tools dock into the printer wall via umbilical USB-C connections, with filament supplied by a bundled CFS Nano unit; target pricing is around $850 at October launch. Also shown: the SparkX i8, a four-channel low-waste color printer under $400; the Ender 3 V3 Mega, a 420 × 420 × 420 mm bed-slinger optimized for TPU at under $600; and the Halot X1-Max Combo resin printer with a 302 × 162 × 350 mm build volume and a 5-liter auto resin station.
A Vacuum Tube Computer For The Home
A maker identified as Mike has built an 8-bit home computer using 460 recycled eastern European 6N3P double-triode vacuum tubes — 920 individual triodes in total. Following a von Neumann architecture with 16 instructions, the machine uses a NOR-based logic design in the same manner as the computers built for the NASA Apollo programme. Despite using tubes originally found in 1950s Soviet-era VHF radios and televisions, the finished unit is wall-mounted and surprisingly compact. It is paired with an ex-British Rail flip-digit display and a control panel running an airship simulator. Full build documentation is at thetubecomputer.com.
Sources: Adafruit Blog
New Guide: Adafruit Monster Eyes
Adafruit has released a CircuitPython guide bringing animated eyeball displays to a broader range of hardware. Called Adafruit Monster Eyes, the code reworks animated eye firmware originally written for the MONSTER M4SK and Hallowing boards by Phil B. The new version has its own GitHub repository and supports RP2040 and RP2350 boards with ST7789 and GC9A01A TFT displays, the ESP32 family with the same displays, Qualia ESP32-S3 with TTL RGB-666 displays, and PicoDVI. An RP2040 driving a single TFT display runs at 24 FPS; a PicoDVI build reaches 180 FPS per eye. Pre-built UF2 firmware files for common board and display combinations are available on GitHub.
Sources: Adafruit Blog
One Bit Sound With The ZX Spectrum
A maker’s ongoing series on 1-bit audio production has reached the ZX Spectrum, following previous installments covering the Apple ][ and IBM PC. Unlike those platforms, the Spectrum has no dedicated hardware timer, so all timing for audio generation must be done in software. The series examines two core techniques: pulse-code modulation (PCM) and pulse-width modulation (PWM). PWM should theoretically deliver better audio fidelity but has not yet been made to work correctly on the Spectrum. A separate algorithm handles multichannel music playback. Hackaday’s Al Williams covers the work, noting that each target machine reveals fundamentally different constraints on 1-bit sound.
Top Crowdfunding
Kickstarter / Indiegogo
LightMake L4 (4-head color printer) — $2.5M+ on Kickstarter
NestWorks C500 (CNC router) — post-campaign, preorders Oct 2026
InfiMaker K1 (5-axis desktop CNC) — live on Kickstarter
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