Michelson Interferometer Comes Home Cheap

We suspect there are three kinds of people in the world. People who have access to a Michelson Interferometer and are glad, those who don’t have one and don’t know what one is, and a very small number of people who want one but don’t have one. But since [Longest Path Search] built one using 3D printing, maybe the third group will dwindle down to nothing.

If you are in the second camp, a Michelson interferometer is a device for measuring very small changes in the length of optical paths (oversimplifying, a distance). It does this by splitting a laser into two...

Raspberry Pi Pico Mini Rack GPS Clock

I wanted to have the most accurate timepiece possible mounted in my mini rack. Therefore I built this:

This is a GPS-based clock running on a Raspberry Pi Pico in a custom 1U 10" rack faceplate. The clock displays time based on a GPS input, and will not display time until a GPS timing lock has been acquired.

For full...

Upgraded Sipeed NanoKVM-USB USB KVM solution gains 4K 60 FPS video capture and HDMI loop output

Sipeed has released a new variant of its NanoKVM-USB low-cost USB KVM adapter, which upgrades 2K 30 FPS capture and 4Kp30 loop out to 4K 60 FPS capture and 4Kp60 HDMI loop output. The new NanoKVM-USB 4K keeps the same ports as the earlier model, with HDMI and USB-C inputs connected to the target, and another USB-C port that connects to the host, in order to remotely control the target with keyboard, mouse, and monitor emulation. A USB Type-A port that can switch between host and target modes is also implemented, for instance, to share a USB drive between the...

Milk-V Titan – A $329 octa-core 64-bit RISC-V mini-ITX motherboard with a PCIe Gen4 x16 slot

We first noted the UltraRISC UR-DP1000-powered Milk-V Titan mini-ITX motherboard when we wrote an article about three high-performance RISC-V processors to watch in H2 2025. There have been some delays, as there often are, but the Titan board finally appears to be in stock, so it’s probably a good time to have a closer look. Powered by a 2 GHz UR-DP1000 octa-core RISC-V CPU, the Titan mini-ITX motherboard supports up to 64GB DIMM memory and M.2 NVMe storage (PCIe Gen4 x4), and features a PCIe Gen4 x16 slot for a graphics card or other expansion, Gigabit Ethernet, four USB 3.0...

Xibo open-source digital signage solution now works with Raspberry Pi 5 thanks to the Arexibo project

Xibo digital signage solution is now compatible with the Raspberry Pi 5 thanks to Axeribo, an unofficial alternative to the digital signage player for Xibo, that is implemented in Rust, and designed for Linux platforms. Long-time readers of CNX Software may remember that I played around with the Xibo open-source digital signage player many years ago (2011-2012). I notably managed to run Xibo for Arm in QEMU,  test Xibo digital signage in the Raspberry Pi emulator, and even try it on real hardware: a MeLE A1000 Android TV box to which I installed Linux. It kind of works, but without...

RAKwireless rolls out WisMesh RAK3312 Meshtastic LoRa starter kit

RAKwireless has released the WisMesh RAK3312 Starter Kit, a modular LoRa mesh communication kit based on the company’s WisBlock ecosystem. The kit is intended for building private, off-grid communication networks using the open-source Meshtastic firmware, without requiring manual firmware flashing or custom hardware assembly. The kit uses the RAK3312 WisBlock Core, which combines an Espressif […]

LILYGO T-Beam 1W – An ESP32-S3 + SX1262 high-power LoRa dev board with 32 dBm output, GNSS support

The LILYGO T-Beam-1W is an ESP32-S3-based high-power LoRa development board featuring an SX1262 RF transceiver, an onboard 1W power amplifier (32 dBm), a L76K GNSS module, a 1.3-inch SH1106 OLED, a microSD slot, USB-C, Qwiic connectors, and an AXP2101 PMU. The board runs on a 7.4V battery and includes a cooling fan for high-power RF operation. We first wrote about the original LILYGO T-Beam (then branded as TTGO) in 2018, and since then, the company introduced various revisions of the T-Beam as it became popular. The T-Beam 1W is the most powerful version so far, with a built-in 1 Watt...

Orbbec Gemini 305 pairs close-range stereo vision with low latency

Orbbec announced two new stereo 3D cameras at CES 2026: the wrist-mounted Gemini 305 and the rugged Gemini 345Lg for outdoor and harsh-environment robotics. The company also confirmed platform-level compatibility across its Gemini lineup with NVIDIA Jetson Thor. The Gemini 305 is a compact stereo 3D camera developed specifically for robotic wrist mounting. Measuring 42 […]

Radxa NX4 system-on-module runs RK3576 with LPDDR5 and 6 TOPS AI

Radxa has announced the NX4, a compact SoM designed for embedded, edge computing, and multimedia applications. The module is built around the Rockchip RK3576 or RK3576J processor and targets space-constrained designs that require a balance of CPU, GPU, and neural processing performance. The Radxa NX4 integrates an octa-core CPU configuration with four Arm Cortex-A72 cores […]

AMD Embedded+ mini-ITX Board features Ryzen AI Embedded P132 CPU, Versal AI Edge Gen2 VE3558 SoC FPGA

At CES 2026, Sapphire Technology introduced the EDGE+VPR-7P132, an “AMD Embedded+” Mini-ITX motherboard built around AMD’s newly announced Ryzen AI Embedded P100 series of SoCs, namely the hexa-core Ryzen P132 (V4526iX) CPU, and an AMD Versal AI Edge Gen 2 VE3558 SoC FPGA, which features octa-core Arm Cortex-A78AE + ten Cortex-R52 real-time cores beyond FPGA fabric. It’s the first AMD Ryzen AI Embedded motherboard we’ve seen. It represents a massive update from last year’s Edge+ VPR-5050 motherboard, which relied on Zen 2-based Ryzen Embedded V2000 series and first-generation Versal silicon. The new VPR-7P132 skips multiple generations, jumping straight to Zen...