Samwise Makers' News
Saturday, October 3, 2026
Milen Builds a Tiny Internet Radio Around an ESP32-C3
Builder Milen has put together what Hackaday’s Jenny List asks may be the smallest internet radio. The design takes an ESP32-C3 microcontroller on a small development board and connects it to a PCM5102A I2S digital-to-analog converter, with an amplifier and a custom PCB completing the build. List notes that the connectors are significant in size compared with the radio itself. The approach is simple: connect a microcontroller to the internet and have the radio software send its output to a DAC. List also mentions that the ESP32 has a built-in DAC that was not intended for audio but can be used. Instructions are available on Instructables.
Homebrew 68008 Computer Runs CP/M68K with Three ICs
Hackaday’s Tyler August covers the 68k-MBC, a homebrew computer built by Just4Fun for the 2026 Retrocomputing Challenge on Hackaday.io. The lite version uses a Motorola 68008 processor, an SRAM chip and a PIC microcontroller that serves as ROM and I/O emulator, with a maximum of 512 KB of RAM. It runs CP/M68K or standalone executables. Features include a serial port for terminals or thermal printers, I2C support, an optional SD card, an optional real-time clock module and a parallel printer adapter. The full version has two serial ports. Challenge entries close October 27. Some commenters dispute the three-IC claim, counting more chips in the featured image.
PIC18F67K40 Busy Board Runs on Three AAA Batteries
Hackaday’s Tom Nardi highlights an electronic busy board built by Andy, referred to as Uncle Andrew, as a Christmas gift for the builder’s nephew. The board, with buttons, switches and LEDs, is described as equal parts hardware and software. It is controlled by a PIC18F67K40 microcontroller and powered by three AAA batteries. The design uses a two-layer PCB and LED multiplexing, with timer and interrupt-based software written to stretch battery runtime. The builder published a detailed write-up at burningimage.net covering design decisions, PCB constraints, multiplexing logic and the software implementation. The article does not state a specific battery life figure for the finished board.
Vibrating Flexible Materials Stick to Ceilings Without Contact
Hackaday’s Maya Posch describes vibration adhesion, in which a flexible material vibrates against a rigid surface and sticks without adhesive. A motor or transducer creates standing waves in the material. Pressed against a surface, these become travelling waves that push air out of the gap and lower the pressure below ambient. Demonstrations include a playing card with a small vibration motor stuck to a ceiling. A 2025 paper by Siquan Li and colleagues documented a Micro-Vibration Adhesion system for wall-climbing robots, achieving an adhesion-to-weight ratio exceeding 51 times. Suggested uses include handling silicon wafers with no contamination risk and small-scale robotic climbing for repairs and inspection.
Lunar Lander Ported to 1959 PDP-1 for Retrocomputing Challenge
Michael Gardi has ported the graphical version of Lunar Lander to the PDP-1, a minicomputer from 1959, as an entry in Hackaday’s 2026 Retrocomputing Challenge. The article by Tyler August describes it as possibly the most retro project submitted so far. An emulated version is playable online at lunarlander.loclx.io, and a downloadable version is available through Hackaday.io project 204632. The goal is to run it on the one surviving working PDP-1. The article notes the machine’s hardware is more restricted than the PDP-8, where the original text-based Lunar Landing Game originated around 1969. It was published with three weeks remaining in the contest.
Avaota F2 RISC-V Board Targets AI Cameras with PTZ Support
CNX Software’s Jean-Luc Aufranc reports on the Avaota F2, a single-board computer built around Allwinner’s V861M2 dual-core 64-bit RISC-V SoC with a single-core E907. It has 128MB of on-chip DDR3, 16MB of NOR flash and a microSD slot. Camera inputs include 4-lane and 2-lane MIPI CSI connectors, and the SoC handles H.264/H.265 encoding up to 4K@25fps with a 1 TOPS INT8 NPU. Eight castellated holes provide motor control, alongside speaker and two microphone connectors. Schematics, PCB files, Gerbers, BOM and a STEP file are on GitHub under a CC0 license. It runs an OpenWrt 21.04 fork with Linux 6.6.
Sources: CNX Software
UP Xtreme Panther Lake Mini PC Adds AirJet Solid-State Cooling
CNX Software’s Jean-Luc Aufranc reports the UP Xtreme PTL Edge Air, an Intel Panther Lake mini PC, now has Frore Systems’ AirJet solid-state active cooling. Removing the heatsink makes the design 35% thinner and 43% lighter than the standard model, and able to operate silently at under 21 dBA. It measures 236 x 129 x 35.8mm, weighs 710 grams and supports up to 128GB DDR5-7200. Processor options include the Core Ultra X7 358H, Core Ultra 7 356H and Core Ultra 5 325. It has two 2.5GbE ports and a 40-pin GPIO header. The Core Ultra 5 325 model lists at $1,366 but is out of stock at AAEON’s e-shop.
Sources: CNX Software
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