Samwise Makers' News
Monday, October 5, 2026
DEBIX M8391-01 Industrial SBC Packs MediaTek Genio 720 with 9 TOPS NPU
The DEBIX M8391-01 is an industrial single-board computer built around the MediaTek MT8391, also known as Genio 720, which includes a 9 TOPS NPU. The processor pairs two Arm Cortex-A78 cores at 2.6 GHz with six Cortex-A55 cores at 2.0 GHz in the commercial version, with reduced speeds for industrial-grade parts. The board offers 4GB of LPDDR4 as standard, 32GB of eMMC, an M.2 NVMe slot, eDP 1.4 and MIPI DSI outputs for two displays, Gigabit Ethernet with PoE, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4 and a 40-pin GPIO header. Pricing has not been announced, and the board is currently inquiry-only.
Sources: CNX Software
Geekworm UPS Scap 5V5A Is a Supercapacitor UPS HAT for Raspberry Pi 5
Geekworm’s UPS Scap 5V5A is a supercapacitor-based UPS HAT for the Raspberry Pi 5, offered with 100F, 60F or 22F capacitors rated for over 500,000 charge cycles. It accepts 9V to 24V DC through a barrel jack or 12V over USB Type-C PD, and delivers 5V at up to 5A across its USB-C and USB-A ports. The 100F version runs about nine seconds at 5V/5A, or up to 3.5 minutes at 0.5A in Long Endurance Mode. GPIO26 signals power loss, and an INA219 chip allows I2C monitoring. The board is meant for graceful shutdowns rather than extended backup, and costs $44.90 to $48.90 on Geekworm’s store.
Sources: CNX Software
AVR Laptop Pushes the Limits of 8-Bit Computing with ATmega2560
Builder Vladimir Tsibrov has made a laptop around an 8-bit ATmega2560 AVR microcontroller that multitasks under a FreeRTOS-based operating system. It has a built-in keyboard and a 128×64 monochrome ST7920 LCD, and it can play video with sound at 24 fps, run games and handle note-taking. To squeeze out performance, Tsibrov wrote a custom LCD driver instead of using standard libraries. He has not yet measured power draw or runtime, but says he has left it on overnight a few times and it was still running in the morning. The project is documented on Hackaday.io as project 206744, and a demo video is available.
Interactive Video Games Run From VHS Tapes Using an FPGA and RP2350
Content creator Throaty Mumbo has built a system for playing interactive video games from VHS tapes, with binary game data stored alongside the video stream. A DE1-SoC FPGA board decodes the composite video coming from the tape, while an RP2350 microcontroller processes the game bytecode and handles controller input. Hackaday describes it as an improvement on vintage systems such as ActionMax, enabling actual interactive gameplay rather than scripted sequences. Demos include Super Mario Bros. with video backgrounds, Night Trap and Doom variants that use prerecorded segments. The developer maintains an in-progress GitHub repository for people who want to follow along.
Arduino Details Six Linux Applications Running on the UNO Q Board
Arduino’s blog describes six software platforms that run on the Arduino UNO Q, a board that pairs a processor running Linux with an STM32H5 microcontroller running Zephyr RTOS. The Linux side can host AI coding agents such as OpenCode, Home Assistant for smart-home automation, n8n for visual workflow automation, Pi-hole for DNS-level network filtering, Frigate for local video processing and object detection, and Samba for network file sharing. The microcontroller handles deterministic, time-critical control. The post argues that running these applications on a single device with direct hardware access reduces cloud dependency and latency. The Arduino Team published the article on October 5.
Sources: Arduino Blog
Q-Switch Upgrade Takes a Benchtop Laser to Megawatt Peak Power
Les’ Lab has added a Q-switch to a benchtop laser, building on an earlier upgrade to its gain medium. The Q-switch uses chromium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet crystals that block light until the cavity reaches a critical energy threshold, then release it in one short pulse. Without it, the laser produced pulses of about 150 microseconds carrying 137 millijoules, with peak power under one kilowatt. With the Q-switch, pulses shrank to 14 nanoseconds at 77 millijoules, for a peak power of 1.3 megawatts. The laser could ionize air and shatter glass, but the pulses proved too brief for effective metal cutting. Measurements used a pyroelectric energy sensor and a fast photodiode.
Thoreau BASIC Updates GW-BASIC for Modern 64-Bit PCs
Thoreau BASIC is a modernized take on GW-BASIC that stays backward compatible with legacy GW-BASIC code while adding 64-bit memory and multithreading. Programs can boot from a modern x86 PC’s UEFI or run under Windows, and can be compiled for Windows or bare-metal UEFI x86 machines. Built-in commands cover file management, sprite graphics, mouse and keyboard input and 32-channel audio, with 24-bit graphics at any monitor resolution. It keeps traditional line numbers and GOTO statements. The project is available on Itch.io under a pay-what-you-want model. Hackaday’s Tyler August also points to other BASIC revival projects, including MoonBASIC and BASIC-256.
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