Fairphone (Gen. 6) is a sustainable, repairable 6.31-inch Android 15 smartphone with Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 SoC

The Fairphone (Gen. 6) is a 6.31-inch Android 15 smartphone powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 SoC designed to be sustainable and repairable with eight years of software updates, a 5-year warranty, a modular design, and the use of recycled materials. The Fairphone (Gen. 6) – not sure why it was not just called Fairphone 6 – offers mid-range features with an octa-core processor, 8GB RAM, 256GB UFS and microSD card storage, a 6.31-inch touch screen display,  two rear cameras, a front-facing camera, 5G, WiFi 6, and Bluetooth 5.4 LE connectivity, as well as support for NFC for...

Static Electricity Remembers

https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=xhd88vcztzw

As humans we often think we have a pretty good handle on the basics of the way the world works, from an intuition about gravity good enough to let us walk around, play baseball, and land spacecraft on the moon, or an understanding of electricity good enough to build everything from indoor lighting to supercomputers. But zeroing in on any one phenomenon often shows a world full of mystery and surprise in an area we might think we would have fully understood by now. One such area is static electricity, and the way that it forms within certain materials shows...

Libre Computer Updates Alta and Solitude SBCs with New Firmware and Wake-on-LAN Support

Libre Computer has released new firmware updates for its low-cost single-board computers, the AML-A311D-CC Alta and the AML-S905D3-CC Solitude. These SBCs are designed with Raspberry Pi-compatible form factors and target applications such as embedded Linux development and low-power computing. The Alta board, launched in 2023, is based on the Amlogic A311D SoC, which combines four […]

DietPi June 2025 Update Adds Orange Pi 5 Ultra Support and Major Fixes

The June 2025 release of DietPi v9.14 adds support for new Orange Pi boards, introduces the GZDoom game engine, and brings system improvements, bug fixes, and driver refinements for better SBC compatibility.   DietPi: DietPi is a lightweight, Debian-based operating system optimized for single-board computers and embedded systems. It emphasizes minimal resource usage, offering users […]

SoM-SD520 with 9-TOPS MediaTek Genio 520 Targets Edge and Smart IoT Applications

The SoM-SD520 is a compact SoM based on the MediaTek Genio 520 processor. It targets applications in smart homes, edge AI computing, interactive retail systems, and industrial IoT, offering a balance of performance, connectivity, and multimedia support. The processing unit includes an octa-core CPU with two Arm Cortex-A78 cores running at 2.22 GHz and six […]

Simulating Empires with Procedurally Generated History

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Procedural generation is a big part of game design these days. Usually you generate your map, and [Fractal Philosophy] has decided to go one step further: using a procedurally-generated world from an older video, he is procedurally generating history by simulating the rise and fall of empires on that map in a video embedded below.

Now, lacking a proper theory of Psychohistory, [Fractal Philosophy] has chosen to go with what he admits is the simplest model he could find, one centered on the concept of “solidarity” and based on the work of [Peter Turchin], a Russian-American thinker. “Solidarity” in the population...

Ceramic Printing Techniques for Plastic

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[Claywoven] mostly prints with ceramics, although he does produce plastic inserts for functional parts in his designs. The ceramic parts have an interesting texture, and he wondered if the same techniques could work with plastics, too. It turns out it can, as you can see in the video below.

Ceramic printing, of course, doesn’t get solid right away, so the plastic can actually take more dramatic patterns than the ceramic. The workflow starts with Blender and winds up with a standard printer.

The example prints are lamps, although you could probably do a lot with this technique. You can select where the...

Homebrew Pockels Cell Is Worth the Wait

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We haven’t seen any projects from serial experimenter [Les Wright] for quite a while, and honestly, we were getting a little worried about that. Turns out we needn’t have fretted, as [Les] was deep into this exploration of the Pockels Effect, with pretty cool results.

If you’ll recall, [Les]’s last appearance on these pages concerned the automated creation of huge, perfect crystals of KDP, or potassium dihydrogen phosphate. KDP crystals have many interesting properties, but the focus here is on their ability to modulate light when an electrical charge is applied to the crystal. That’s the Pockels Effect, and while there...

FLOSS Weekly Episode 838: AtomVM and The Full Stack Elixir Developer

https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=3H5OU28TrTI

This week Jonathan chats with Davide Bettio and Paul Guyot about AtomVM! Why Elixir on embedded? And how!? And what is a full stack Elixir developer, anyways? Watch to find out!

Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show right on our YouTube Channel? Have someone you’d like us to interview? Let us know, or contact the guest and have them contact us! Take a look at the schedule here.

Direct Download in DRM-free MP3.

If you’d rather read along, here’s the transcript for this week’s episode.

Theme music: “Newer Wave” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed...

82 x 50mm SoM combines NXP i.MX 8M Mini SoC with 25 TOPS DEEPX DX-M1 AI accelerator

Virtium Embedded Artists has just announced the launch of the iMX8M Mini DX-M1 system-on-module (SoM) combining an NXP i.MX 8M Mini quad-core Arm application processor with a 25 TOPS DEEPX DX-M1 AI accelerator in a compact 82 x 50mm footprint. The NXP SoC is paired with 2GB 32-bit RAM and 16GB eMMC flash, while the DEEPX NPU gets 4GB 64-bit RAM and a QSPI flash. The module also features a PMIC, a gigabit Ethernet PHY, an optional WiFI 6E and Bluetooth 5.4 module, and exposes all I/Os through a 314-pin MXM edge connector. They’ve somehow managed to pack a lot...