community news
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Open-Source 7-DOF Tentacle Arm Uses ROS 2 MoveIt for Inverse Kinematics and Features a Holonomic Base James Bruton has built an open-source 7-DOF tentacle robotic arm that treats each joint as a 90° rotating stage, creating a highly flexible manipulator that can wrap around obstacles and reach into tight spaces. The design uses multiple Dynamixel servos chained into a serial kinematic chain, with custom 3D-printed links and structural parts to form a lightweight, compliant “tentacle” rather… |
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Maker Builds a 12-DOF ROS 2 Quadruped Using Jetson Orin Nano for Vision and STM32 for Real-Time Control Ashish Agrahari, a Mechatronics Engineering student at the University of Waterloo, has recently built Orion, a 12-DOF quadruped robot dog designed and programmed from scratch over eight months, combining ROS 2 autonomy with custom embedded electronics. The system is split into two layers: a Jetson Orin Nano for high-level perception and planning, and custom STM32-based PCBs for deterministic,… |
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He Trained a 2.9M-Parameter AI Image Generation Model, Ran It on a $1 RP2350 Chip and Open-Sourced the Project Generative AI image models usually require powerful processors and large amounts of memory, but a new project demonstrates that image generation can be pushed onto a small microcontroller. Tim, from Tim’s Blog, has implemented a generative AI image model on the RP2350, the microcontroller used in the Raspberry Pi Pico 2. Running on a Waveshare RP2350-Plus board, the system can generate 128×128… |
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Built Around LEGO Parts and an Arduino Nano ESP32, This RC Submarine Uses a Moving Weight for Pitch Control The Brick Experiment Youtube Channel has built RC Submarine 5.0, a LEGO-based remotely controlled submarine designed to improve on the previous version while making underwater operation easier and more convenient. The submarine uses a 39 cm-long acrylic hull with two propellers for propulsion and differential steering, while a water pump and ballast tank control its buoyancy and depth. One of… |
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ESP32-Based AI Pet Gets Sick If You Doomscroll, While Android Handles Local LLMs, STT, and TTS Offline Maker and Youtuber, Brenpoly recently built an offline AI virtual pet that lives on an ESP32 and “gets sick” when you doomscroll too much, turning screen-time guilt into a tangible, hardware-based consequence. The project makes use of the 1.8 inch touch screen display and sensors that come integrated with the Waveshare ESP32-S3 based module to create a companion that reacts to your phone usage… |
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Maker Turns an ESP32 S3 Into a Pocket PC by Porting Open Source Tactility OS to a 2.4 Inch Touch Display This project transforms a compact MaTouch Lite development board into a fully functional, portable touchscreen computer. The project uses an ESP32-S3 microcontroller, featuring 16MB of flash and 8MB of PSRAM, which provides the necessary performance to run a graphical environment. By integrating a 2.4-inch resistive touchscreen and a microSD card for storage, the creator successfully… |
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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… |
