Modos Flow – An FPGA-based 13.3-inch USB-C touchscreen e-paper monitor (Crowdfunding)

Modos Flow is a paper-like, 13.3-inch USB Type-C touchscreen monochrome or color monitor that builds upon the Modos Paper devkit introduced last year with an AMD/Xilinx Spartan-6 LX16 FPGA and STMicro STM32H750 Arm Cortex-M7 microcontroller. The main difference is that the Modos Flow is more like a consumer product with a full enclosure, a touchscreen, and optional stylus support, 4096-color e-paper display, and frontlight. Modos Flow specifications: FPGA – AMD Xilinx Spartan-6 LX16 FPGA running Caster gateware like the earlier devkit MCU – STMicro STM32H750 Arm Cortex-M7 microcontroller for USB communication, firmware upgrades, and standalone applications. Display 13.3-inch e-paper display...

ESP32-P4-PC now have plastic box

We are pleased to announce that our popular ESP32-P4-PC board now has its own dedicated 3D printed enclosure! The new BOX-ESP32-P4-PC is specially designed for the board and provides precise openings for:• Ethernet connector• 4x USB Host ports• USB-C power supply• SD-card slot• HDMI• UEXT connector• Audio• Status LEDs A practical and elegant solution to […]

MuseLab nanoCH32H417 – A $17 WCH CH32H417 RISC-V MCU development board with USB 3.0, Fast Ethernet

Designed by MuseLab, the nanoCH32H417 is a development board for the WCH CH32H417 dual-core RISC-V MCU, which we covered earlier this year for its USB 3.0 (5 Gbps), UHS, and Fast Ethernet support. At that time, only the official CH32H417 development board was available, but this board adds a third-party option. The board exposes various features of the MCU, including one USB 3.0 port, two USB Type-C ports, a 100Mbps Ethernet interface, and a MicroSD card slot. It also simplifies the prototyping workflow by integrating a WCHLink-E debugger directly onto the board, meaning you won’t need to wire up an external...

LichtBit’s open-source ESP32 Art-Net/sACN NeoPixels controller can drive up to 2,720 RGB LEDs

Dutch hardware designer LichtBit has launched a fully open-source ESP32-based Art-Net/sACN NeoPixels LED strip controller designed for large-scale lighting installations and custom stage design. Built around an ESP32, the hardware routes lighting data over wired Ethernet or Wi-Fi to manage up to 16 universes of addressable LEDs across 4 dedicated outputs. We have previously written about various NeoPixel LED controllers, such as the xcrhom WLED Type-C, the Adafruit Sparkle Motion Stick, the full-featured Adafruit Sparkle Motion, and others, which are designed for portable lighting setups and standalone animations. But LichtBit’s board targets the professional event industry by bridging the gap between commercial live-performance software...

ODROID-H5 SBC Review – Part 1: Unboxing, Type1 case assembly, and first boot

Hardkernel has sent me a kit with the ODROID-H5 10GbE SBC for review. In addition to the Intel Core i3-300 board itself, the kit also comes with an ODROID-H5 Type-1 case, an M.2 card for a second 10 Gbps Ethernet port, and other accessories. I’ll start the review with an unboxing, my experience assembling the kit, and first boot using an M.2 NVMe SSD with Ubuntu 24.04 and Windows 11 in a dual-boot configuration. In a few weeks, I’ll continue the review after upgrading to Ubuntu 26.04 and perform thorough testing of all features and performance. ODROID-H5 kit unboxing An...

Modos Flow is a paper-like 13.3-inch monitor with 60 Hz refresh and touch support

Modos has launched the Crowd Supply campaign for the Flow, a 13.3-inch e-paper monitor designed for reading, writing, browsing, and other document-focused workflows. The display uses E Ink technology and is offered in monochrome and color variants, with touch support, USB Type-C connectivity, and an open-hardware design. The display features a 13.3-inch panel with a […]

I patched iozone for better disk benchmarks on modern macOS

A decade ago, I settled on iozone for disk benchmarking on all my systems. Tools like fio ('Flexible IO' tester) are a little more capable for raw disk performance testing, and other tools test network-scale filesystems better, but iozone gives me an easy overview of real-world disk performance across hard drives and SSDs, and runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux (and a smattering of other OSes).

It's been around since 1991, and is still updated today—in fact, the two latest updates (version 509 and 510) contain patches I sent in to get iozone to compile on Apple Silicon Macs running newer...

PolyCast5 – An ESP32-C5 multi-tool remote with dual-band WiFi 6, BLE, ESP-NOW, LoRa, and Infrared Tx/Rx (Crowdfunding)

PolyCast5 is a portable, hackable ESP32-C5-based multi-tool remote to control devices through five different core wireless technologies: WiFi 6, Bluetooth LE, ESP-NOW, LoRa, and infrared Tx/Rx. The all-in-one controller can be used for cybersecurity work, a standard IR learning remote control, a voice-enabled password manager, a robotic arm controller, an AI keyboard using the built-in microphone and Bluetooth connectivity, a long-range LoRa remote control, DIY electronics projects through a 4-pin GPIO header, and more. PolyCast5 specifications: Wireless module – ESP32-C5-WROOM-1 SoC – ESP32-C5 CPU Single-core 32-bit RISC-V processor @ up to 240 MHz Low-power RISC-V core @ 40 MHz acting...

WCH BLE Analyzer Pro USB Bluetooth LE sniffer gains Linux software with Wireshark (pcap) support

Last November, we wrote about the WCH BLE Analyzer Pro, an inexpensive (~$20) USB Bluetooth LE sniffer and analyzer, which looked useful and good value for reverse engineering and debugging. One downside is that the WCH BLE Analyzer software was only made for Windows 7 to 11, but Xecaz decided to look into it and reverse-engineered the USB protocol to write Linux software using libusb that outputs a standard pcap compatible with popular tools such as Wireshark, or as he puts it: “WinChipHead forgot to ship a Linux driver. We forgot to ask permission.” As a reminder, the BLE Analyzer...

ESPHome 2026.5.0 released with new ESPHome Device Builder (beta), performance/memory optimizations

ESPHome 2026.5.0 has just been released with the beta version of the new ESPHome Device Builder web app that replaces the legacy in-tree dashboard with a real configuration editor, a firmware job queue, multi-select bulk actions, labels and areas, out-of-sync detection, cross-config search, distributed builds, and a proper settings UI. The firmware itself gains optimizations of the main loop, scheduler, and task watchdog to lower CPU and power usage on supported platforms, and a range of other memory/performance optimizations across the API, audio, and helper hot paths. The audio decoder pipeline has been improved and features new microMP3, microWAV, and...