FibreSeeker 3: Continuous Carbon Fiber vs Chopped CF

https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=k9qs7uOwA64

Although you can purchase many types of FDM filaments containing ‘carbon fiber’ these days, they are in no way related to the carbon fiber (CF) composite materials used for rocket hulls and light-weight bicycles. This is because the latter use continuous fibers, often in weaved CF mats, whereas the FDM filaments just use small, chopped, fragments of CF. Obviously this will not result in the same outcome, which makes it interesting that a company called Fibre Seek is now running a KickStarter for a very affordable co-extrusion FDM printer that can add continuous CF to any part. They also sent...

MQTT Pager Build is Bringing Beepers Back

https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=lnWRui3_0X0

Pagers were once a great way to get a message to someone out in public; they just had to be cool enough to have one. These days, they’re mostly the preserve of doctors and a few other niche operators. [Kyle Tryon] is bringing the beeper back, though, with a custom ESP32-based build.

The ESP32 is a great microcontroller for this kind of project, because it’s got WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity built right in. This let [Kyle] write some straightforward code so that it could receive alerts via MQTT. In particular, it’s set up to go off whenever there’s an app or...

Born to Burn: the Battle Born LFP Battery

https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=XP2yPY57Wjc

Would you feel confident in buying US-made LiFePO4 (LFP) batteries? While the answer here is generally expected to be ‘yes’, especially compared to getting an unbranded LFP battery off eBay from a random seller, the outcome may not be that different. Case in point the 100 Ah, 12 VDC LFP Battle Born battery that [Will Prowse] took a look at to see why its positive terminal gets positively crispy.

Once the lid was cut off, it’s easy to see what the problem is: the positive terminal is only loosely attached to the bus...

Name that Ware, December 2025

The Ware for December 2025 is shown below.

This is just one part of a much more complex ware, but I thought I’d throw just this photo out there for starters because it’s one of the more thought-provoking portions of the ware.

Super curious to see what people come up with! If nobody guesses it off the bat, I’ll add some more hints in a couple of weeks.

Happy holidays!

Winner, Name That Ware November 2025

The Ware for November 2025 is a controller from the card-activated power switch in a hotel room. It was on the fritz, and when the repair person came and replaced it, Sam asked for the old module and brought it to me as a name that ware entry. Here’s the other circuit board that was mated to the controller: basically a big relay that can cut power to the room when the card is pulled out.

I’ll give Greg the prize, since he was the first to basically guess the ware. However, I never considered the possibility that the snap-action switch...

Firefly CAM-3576 series – Tiny Rockchip RK3576 SBCs for commercial, industrial, and automotive applications

Firefly Technology has introduced the CAM-3576 series of tiny (38 × 38 mm) SBCs based on the Rockchip RK3576 processor with a 6 TOPS NPU for AIoT, edge AI, smart vision, industrial, and automotive applications. It comes in three variants, which include the CAM-3576Q38 (commercial), the CAM-3576JQ38 (industrial), and the CAM-3576MQ38 (automotive) modules designed for smart cameras, intelligent security systems, dash cams, and private on-device AI model deployment. The CAM-3576 series supports up to 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, up to 256GB eMMC flash, and also includes a microSD card for expansion. Additionally, the boards feature a MIPI CSI input for...

CrowPi 3 AI Learning Kit is powered by a Raspberry Pi 5 SBC, works with Arduino Nano, BBC Micro:bit, and Raspberry Pi Pico boards

Elecrow CrowPi 3 is the latest CrowPi learning and development kit featuring 41 built-in modules and over 150 lessons, and offering compatibility with Raspberry Pi 5, Arduino Nano, BBC Micro:bit, and Raspberry Pi Pico single board computers and development boards. It follows the CrowPi portable learning kit (Raspberry Pi 3B+/Zero), CrowPi 2 Raspberry Pi 4 electronics learning laptop, and CrowPi L laptop (Raspberry Pi 4 models), but the CrowPi 3 is the first to focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI) learning with a Raspberry Pi 5 and support for LLMs like DeepSeek, Google Gemini, and OpenAI chat besides courses about electronics...

Lattice Semi MachXO4 FPGA family offers up to 9400 LUTs, 448 kb user flash, improved “hot socketing”

Lattice Semiconductor has recently launched the MachXO4 low-power FPGA family featuring 896 to 9400 LUTs, fabric performance of up to 150 MHz, and improved “hot socketing” with a low leakage current of 350 μA. Other features include up to 432 kb embedded RAM, 73 kb distributed RAM, 448 kb User Flash Memory (UFM), up to 382 I/Os, hardened SPI and I2C interfaces, a wide range of packages from 2.5×2.5mm to 20 x 20 mm, and three temperature grades (consumer, industrial, and automotive). Lattice Semi MachXO4 key features and specifications: FPGA Fabric 896 to 9400 LUTs 1,100 to 11,300 logic cells...

4-inch round HDMI display offers USB touchscreen for Raspberry Pi, AIDA64, Smart Home, Art projects

VIEWE has launched a 4-inch round HDMI display with 720×720 resolution, and a USB touchscreen function suitable for SBCs like the Raspberry Pi, PCs running AIDA64, Smart Home applications, and Art projects. It looks to build upon the company’s 4-inch square HDMI display using the same control board with a MIPI DSI display interface, HDMI 1.4 input, and a USB Type-C port for power and touch input. VIEWE 4-inch HDMI round display specifications: Display 4-inch round HDMI IPS display with 720×720 resolution ST7703 display driver Brightness – 300 cd/㎡ Active area – 101.52mm ∅ Touchscreen – 5-point capacitive touch screen...

Auvidea X242 – An NVIDIA Jetson Thor T5000 industrial carrier board with dual 10GbE, PCIe x16, CSI-2 camera support

Auvidea X242 is an industrial carrier board for NVIDIA’s Jetson Thor T5000 module, targeting edge AI, robotics, vision, and high-bandwidth embedded systems, mainly in industrial and high-performance commercial applications. The board supports dual 10GbE, PCIe x16 expansion, NVMe storage, 4G LTE/5G M.2, up to four displays through HDMI and DisplayPort Alt Mode over USB-C (rev 3), and multiple cameras through a 16-lane CSI-2 camera connector. The carrier board supports a wide 24–48 V power input with power modes up to 120 W. Industrial features include hot-swap control, reverse and over-voltage protection, and backward compatibility with earlier Auvidea Jetson platforms. Auvidea...