Samwise Makers' News
Friday, September 18, 2026
FCC ISM Rules May Shatter LoRa Mesh Communities
The FCC's Part 15 rules for the 902–928 MHz ISM band require a minimum occupied bandwidth of 500 kHz, but the two leading LoRa mesh platforms both fall short. Meshtastic defaults to a 250 kHz channel while MeshCore operates at 62.5 kHz — neither is legally compliant. The practical stakes for thousands of community mesh networks are real, though enforcement has historically been rare. In response, Meshtastic has released an alpha update that widens its default channel to meet the 500 kHz minimum, but the change breaks backward compatibility with existing Meshtastic and MeshCore nodes already in the field.
Eye-D Badge Catches Your Attention
Maker Aahan Sharma has designed the Eye-D, a conference badge built around an ESP32-C6 microcontroller running at up to 160 MHz and an 8×16 grid of WS2812B addressable RGB LEDs — 128 pixels in total. The badge connects to a phone or tablet via Bluetooth Low Energy, letting the wearer scroll a name, trigger built-in animations including a roving eye scan, Nyan Cat, digital fire, and a Matrix rain, or switch to Draw Mode for freehand pixel art. A custom 3D-printed housing designed by Zoe Skyforest holds everything together, and full plans are published on Instructables.
3D Printing A Clock Fit For A Pope
In 1656, the Italian clock-making brothers Fratelli Campani built a nearly silent bedside timepiece for Pope Alexander VII, replacing the noisy anchor escapement of conventional clocks with an eccentric crank design that suppresses the familiar tick while still keeping accurate time. Watchmaker and maker Many Vices has now 3D-printed a working replica of the mechanism, following detailed documentation assembled by horologist Carlo G. Croce. The result demonstrates that an ordinary desktop FDM printer can reproduce a 370-year-old solution to mechanical clock noise — one originally commissioned by a pope who simply wanted a good night's sleep.
Your CYD Is Now A Telly
The Cheap Yellow Display — an all-in-one ESP32 development board combining a 2.8-inch resistive touchscreen, a speaker, and a microSD slot on one inexpensive PCB — has been repurposed as a working miniature television by maker Nickm324. The firmware plays .mjpeg video files with synchronised audio loaded from a microSD card, and channels are cycled by tapping the board's built-in BOOT button, keeping the control scheme down to a single physical button. Nickm324 housed the finished electronics inside a 3D-printed retro TV shell complete with a rounded screen bezel, a decorative channel knob, and short rabbit-ear antennas.
An Enhanced Game Boy Advance
Bucket Mouse has produced a ground-up replacement motherboard for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance to mark the handheld's 25th anniversary. The Enhanced GBA board swaps directly into an original GBA shell and harvests only the CPU and RAM from the donor device; every other component — capacitors, inductors, the voltage regulator, and the link-port connector — can be ordered new. The design also corrects two long-standing weaknesses: the audio interference that appears in most IPS screen upgrades, and the original mono audio output, which is replaced with true stereo. Schematics and build documentation are publicly available.
Why Wave Energy Is The Final Frontier Of Renewable Energy
Wave energy accounts for less than 0.1 percent of global electricity generation, and the engineering barriers are well documented: devices must survive violent storm conditions while remaining efficient in calm seas, and must convert the slow, irregular heave of ocean swells into usable power. CorPower Ocean's WEC buoy is designed to address those constraints, standing 19 metres tall and 9 metres wide for deployment in water deeper than 40 metres. A single prototype survived testing off the Portuguese coast and is projected to deliver around 300 kW at a 40–60 percent capacity factor — figures that, if replicated at scale, could make the technology commercially viable.
Keep Your Back Cool While Others Melt
Summer heat and a heavy backpack add up to a sweaty back, which is the problem maker [Crafterboi] set out to solve with a 3D-printed open-frame spacer. The device sits between the wearer's back and the pack, creating an air gap, while two 5-volt fans mounted at the top actively push cooler air through the channel. The frame is printed in PETG rather than PLA, because surface temperatures on a sun-exposed backpack can exceed the point at which PLA begins to soften. The first prototype was assembled from a pizza box before [Crafterboi] moved the design to CAD and printed it.
Top Crowdfunding
Kickstarter / Indiegogo
OpenMote — Arduino-compatible controller for makers, $70,727 raised / 536 backers (Crowd Supply)
GB-Link USB V2 — USB-to-Game-Boy Link adapter, $37,711 raised / 1,885% funded (Crowd Supply, 7 days left)
Openterface KeyMod — Pocket USB multi-tool bridge, $35,328 raised / 235% funded (Crowd Supply)
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Maker Faire Porto — September 19–20, Porto, Portugal
Maker Faire Seoul — September 19–20, Seoul Science Center
Hackaday Supercon Ten — November 6–8, Pasadena, CA
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Curated by JD · samwise.agency