Improving Soda by Turning It Into Mead

https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=eLYPGYn7WYA

Test tasting soda mead. (Credit: Golden Hive Mead, YouTube)

You can certainly just chug down that bottle of soda you purchased, but if you accept the premise that the preparation of food and drink is just a subset of chemistry, and that chemistry is fun, then it naturally follows that using soda as the basis for brewing up some mead makes perfect sense. Thus the [Golden Hive Mead] blokes over on YouTube decided to create some Coca Cola flavored mead.

Mead is essentially just water mixed with honey that is left to ferment after adding yeast, resulting in what is also called...

Microchip SAM9X75 Hybrid automotive MCU – Surprisingly ARM9 is still a thing in 2026

When Microchip launched the SAM9X60 in 2020, we were surprised to see a new SoC based on a legacy ARM926EJ-S core. But we were even more surprised to see Microchip doubling down with the SAM9X75, a hybrid automotive-qualified (AEC-Q100 Grade 2) System-in-Package (SiP) with the same classic ARM9 core and integrated DDR2 or DDR3L memory. The first part will be the SAM9X75D5M SiP with 512MB on-chip DDR2 RAM, but the company also designed the SAM9X75D1G with 1 Gbit DDR3L and the SAM9X75D2G featuring 2 Gbit DDR3L. The SAM9X75 hybrid ARM9 MCU targets developers who need an MCU-like development environment, while...

Momentus Clock Aims To Find Meaning

A lot of the time, we must assign our own meaning to the numbers on the clock. 8:30 AM is work kicking off, 12 PM is lunch, and 5PM is when the corporate chains release us to what’s left of the day. If you’d rather the clock tell you what’s special about the current time, though, you might like this project from [Andy Isaacson].

It’s called Momentous—”a clock to make every minute meaningful” in [Andy’s] own words. The concept is simple—for each minute, the clock digs up some random mathematical fact relevant to the current time. For example, you might think...

Comparing the Power Usage of 12 VDC and 240 VAC Kettles

https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=D3xOxzk9oS0

If you have a 12 VDC power system, like the battery of a PV solar system or car, would it be more efficient to boil water for that cup of tea with that 12V straight from the battery, or use a 240 VAC mains kettle via a ~90% efficient inverter instead? That’s the question that [Cahn] decided to answer experimentally, using a bulky 3 kW inverter and a collection of electric kettles.

Although the used amount of 500 mL of water is boiled much faster in the 2,200 Watt mains kettle than in the 150 and 350 Watt low-voltage kettles, this...

CHERI-Mocha memory-safe compute subsystem is now open

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picoZ80 – A Z80 microprocessor drop-in replacement based on Raspberry Pi RP2350B and ESP32

The picoZ80 board is a drop-in replacement for the Z80 microprocessor based on the Raspberry Pi RP2350B dual-core Cortex-M33 microcontroller and an ESP32 wireless SoC for WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. My first computer was a ZX81 powered by a Zilog Z80 microprocessor, which was eventually phased out in 2024 after almost 50 years of production. But retro computing enthusiasts keep the platform alive, usually with softcore FPGA implementations such as MiSTer. The picoZ80 is different as it relies on the programmable I/O (PIO) state machines from the RP2350B MCU to reproduce cycle-accurate address, data, and control buses of the Z80...

RuView project leverages ESP32 nodes for WiFi-based presence detection, pose estimation, and breathing/heart rate monitoring

RuView is an open-source “WiFi DensePose” implementation leveraging multiple ESP32 nodes to turn WiFi signals into real-time human pose estimation, vital sign monitoring, and presence detection without relying on video cameras. WiFi DensePose is a sensing technique, first explored in academic research, that leverages WiFi signals to reconstruct human pose. RuView implements this technique in Rust or Python, and relies on your WiFi router and several ESP32 nodes to track body pose, detect breathing rate, and measure heart rate even through walls. As we’ll discuss below, this project has its own controversy, as some claim it’s fake. The solution relies...

AngstromIO – A tiny 9.0 x 8.9 mm ATtiny1616 board that fits on top of a USB-C connector

Dieu-de-l-elec’s AngstromIO is an incredibly tiny open-source development board based on Microchip’s ATtiny1616 MCU. Measuring just 9.0 x 8.9 mm, the board is barely larger than the edge-mounted USB Type-C connector that powers it, making it ideal for highly space-constrained embedded projects. Despite its tiny footprint, AngstromIO packs a QFN20-packaged ATtiny1616 MCU, two addressable SK6805-EC15 RGB LEDs, and includes access to various usable GPIOs, including I2C, UART, and UPDI for programming. AngstromIO specifications: MCU – Microchip ATtiny1616 8-bit AVR microcontroller @ up to 20 MHz with 16KB flash, 2KB SRAM, 256 bytes EEPROM USB – 1x USB Type-C port (power...

Pine64 FOSDEM 2026 Update Details PineNote and PineTab2 Progress

Pine64 has published a community update following FOSDEM 2026, outlining recent development activity, hardware demonstrations, and production challenges affecting its device lineup. The update highlights progress on PineNote and PineTab2 software, early work on PineTime Pro, and the impact of the ongoing DRAM shortage on several products. The FOSDEM 2026 event provided an opportunity for […]

Alibaba XuanTie C950 – A powerful, RVA23-complaint 64-bit RISC-V core for Edge AI computing

Alibaba has introduced the XuanTie C950 high-performance, 64-bit multi-core CPU IP with an out-of-order superscalar microarchitecture, RVA23 profile compliant, and support for “all optional extensions” such as Vector Crypto, Zacas, and Zama16. The company also says the XuanTie C950 supports the proprietary XuanTie AME (Attached Matrix Extension) ISA and supports integration with the company’s XuanTie TPE (Tensor Processing Engine) IP. The new 64-bit RISC-V core will be found in SoCs with up to eight cores per cluster, targeting high-performance applications, such as cloud computing, edge computing, and AI computing. XuanTie C950 specifications: Architecture – RVA23 Profile Up to 8x cores...