community news
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DEFCON 34's Badge Had a Hackable Open-Source Chip You Could Shine Infrared Through to Inspect Its Design Every year, DEFCON’s electronic badge becomes one of the most talked-about pieces of hardware in the security community, and the DEFCON 34 badge pushes that tradition further. The badge acts as an electronic identity and interactive device for conference attendees, helping them participate in DEFCON activities, access badge-related challenges and interact with other attendees. Designed by… |
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Fenix: An Open-Source SI4732 + ESP32S3 Radio That Decodes SSTV Images and Morse Code From Shortwave Signals A small open-source handheld radio called Fennec is turning the ESP32-S3 into much more than a conventional AM/FM receiver. Built around the Silicon Labs SI4732-A10 radio receiver, Fennec can tune FM, AM and shortwave frequencies, decode Slow Scan Television (SSTV) images, translate Morse code into text, monitor radio activity and even help users locate a stronger signal by following its… |
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Maker Builds a Fully 3D-Printed 6-DOF Bipedal Robot “Stompy” Using NVIDIA Jetson in Just 3 Days In an impressive display of rapid prototyping and engineering grit, creator Kayden Knapik successfully designed, built, and programmed a fully 3D-printed bipedal robot named Stompy in just 3 days. Utilizing the Bambu Lab P2S 3D printer, Knapik fabricated the robot's structure from scratch. The mechanical design features six degrees of freedom three per leg powered by six Robstride 02 motors,… |
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Barely 21 Grams, This Satellite Prototype Tracks the Environment & Motion With ESP32-C3 & Tiny Sensors A tiny satellite prototype weighing just 21 grams is showing how far small-scale electronics can be pushed when size and weight become the main design targets. The compact device, developed as a suborbital satellite prototype, measures only 28 × 28 × 33 mm and packs an ESP32-C3 Mini microcontroller, environmental sensors, an inertial measurement unit (IMU), onboard… |
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A Playable IRL Mario Level Built Around a Raspberry Pi Where Enemies Have Sensors That Trigger Shocks A maker from Electo Youtube channel has transformed Super Mario Bros. into a playable real-world electronics project that combines microcontrollers, pressure sensors, wireless transmitters, Raspberry Pi, motor control, FPV video, distance sensing and 3D-printed mechanisms. Instead of controlling Mario with a conventional game controller, the player walks and runs on a motorized treadmill while… |
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This STM32 GPS Device Shows Which Planets Are Above You Offline, Fitting 5 Years of Orbits in 64KB What if a tiny electronic device could look at the sky without a camera or telescope and tell you which planets are currently above the horizon? That is the idea behind Whats Up V2, a compact GPS-based circuit built around an STM32G031K8 microcontroller. The device uses a u-blox SAM-M10Q GPS module to obtain its location and precise UTC time, while nine SK6812-EC20 addressable RGB LEDs provide… |
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Maker Built His Quadruped Robots a Soccer Field Where Ball Tracking Improved With Less Accurate Camera Data A maker built a miniature soccer environment for Sesame, a small quadruped robot, and demonstrated the system at the 2026 Open Sauce maker event. The build includes a scaled down soccer pitch sized for the robot, along with 3D printed goals and structural components. Multiple Sesame units are controlled wirelessly using the ESP-NOW protocol, with ESP32 chips on each robot communicating with a… |
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This MicroDuck Robot Based on an RK3566 Has No Arms but Picks Things Up Using AI and Reinforcement Learning Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics just launched a tiny robot that could change how people learn robotics at home. Called Microduck, this 25cm tall, 780 gram biped robot is built specifically for reinforcement learning and physical AI and it costs just $399. Unlike Reachy Mini, which was designed primarily around interaction and conversational AI, Microduck focuses on physical movement and… |
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He Built a Computer That Runs on Fire Using a Stirling Engine and ESP32 C3 to Run Games and Custom Programs A maker from the Youtube channel PickentCode has built a working steampunk computer powered entirely by a Stirling engine, combining a 19th-century mechanical invention with modern electronics and retro computing. The Stirling engine was developed by Robert Stirling in 1816 as an alternative to the high-pressure steam engines of the time. Unlike a conventional internal-combustion engine, it… |
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A Candle's Wasted Heat Can Actually Charge Your Phone, This Thermoelectric Generator Shows How A simple candle flame can be used as a small thermal power source when combined with a thermoelectric generator (TEG), a solid-state device that converts a temperature difference directly into electrical energy. A maker from the YouTube channel The Action Lab recently demonstrated this concept by using a candle to heat one side of a thermoelectric module while continuously circulating water… |
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This Ordinary Looking Suitcase Unfolds Into a Fully Functional DIY Car That Hits 33 km/h on the Road In 1991, Mazda built one of the strangest vehicles ever made, a car that could fold into a suitcase. Only three promotional prototypes were created, and just one is believed to have survived. Instead of trying to find the original, a maker from the YouTube channel Bucket decided to build a working replica from scratch. The original Mazda Suitcase Car used a square tube chassis, solid rear axle… |
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This Maker Turned a Simple Stick Into a POV Display Using a Teensy 4.1, ESP32 and Fast APA102 LEDs YouTuber Zachary McCune from Corridor Crew has turned a simple fire spinning hobby into an ambitious engineering project that can create images in the air while spinning. The project uses the principle of persistence of vision (POV), where rapidly changing lights appear to form a continuous image when moved quickly through space. Instead of using a conventional screen, the device displays an… |
