标签：#hardware

Linkdaze's smart digital calendar stands out for not putting its features behind a paywall, including an AI meal planner tool.

One of the best moments when learning electronics is seeing your first LED blink. It's a simple experiment, but it represents the bridge between software and the physical world. With Java and Pi4J, that first step is already well documented. But what happens after the first LED? How do you experiment with different animations, colours, brightness levels, or GPIO configurations without repeatedly rewriting the same code? That question led to the creation of the Pi4J LED Playground . 👉 https://igfasouza.github.io/pi4j-led-playground/ Why another example? Pi4J already provides excellent examples and documentation for getting started with Raspberry Pi hardware. The project itself encourages community-driven examples and implementations, recognising that the ecosystem grows through shared contributions. The goal of the LED Playground is not to replace those examples. Instead, it provides an interactive environment where developers can quickly experiment with LED behaviours while learning how Pi4J works. Think of it as a sandbox where changing a few lines of code immediately produces visible results. Built by the community, for the community This project started as a personal experiment while exploring Pi4J. Very quickly it became clear that the playground could be useful for others who are starting their journey with Java on Raspberry Pi. Instead of keeping it as a private repository, it was published as an open community resource where anyone can: 1. learn from the source code; 2. suggest improvements; 3. report issues; 4. contribute new LED effects; 5. help improve the documentation; Open source projects become stronger when many people contribute different ideas, and Pi4J itself has grown thanks to this collaborative model. What can you do? The playground demonstrates common LED operations such as: turning LEDs on and off; blinking patterns; brightness control (where supported); experimenting with different GPIO configurations; creating reusable animations; Because th

The 65% mechanical keyboard has become a popular format for people who want a compact keyboard without giving up the dedicated arrow keys. Compared with a 60% keyboard, a typical 65% layout adds an arrow-key cluster and usually includes a small navigation area. Compared with a TKL keyboard, it removes the dedicated function row and reduces the overall footprint. For keyboard designers, however, reducing the physical size of the keyboard does not simply mean removing a few keys. The PCB has to accommodate the switch matrix, diodes, controller, USB or wireless circuitry, RGB lighting, mounting features, and sometimes hot-swap sockets within a relatively constrained outline. That makes the PCB one of the most important parts of a 65% keyboard design. What Is a 65% Mechanical Keyboard PCB? A 65% mechanical keyboard PCB is the circuit board designed specifically for a 65% keyboard layout. The exact key count and physical arrangement can vary between designs, so the term "65%" describes a form factor rather than one universal PCB specification. A typical board may contain: Mechanical switch footprints A switch matrix One diode per switch position A microcontroller USB connectivity or wireless circuitry Reset and boot controls Indicator LEDs Per-key RGB or underglow lighting Hot-swap sockets, when supported Mounting holes and mechanical cutouts The electrical design and physical design have to work together. A PCB can have a perfectly functional schematic and still fail to fit the intended keyboard case if the mounting holes, switch positions, USB opening, stabilizer locations, or board outline are not correct. Why the PCB Layout Matters So Much Keyboard PCBs are unusual compared with many conventional electronics boards because the PCB also defines part of the physical typing experience. The location of switch footprints determines the key positions. The mounting system affects how the PCB interacts with the case. Flex cuts can change the mechanical response of different

Apple’s leaked camera-equipped AirPods might avoid the privacy pitfalls of other AI wearables by preventing users from recording photos and videos.

Jordan Nanos discusses how semiconductor constraints, data center expansion, and networking bottlenecks impact AI software architecture. Drawing from SemiAnalysis research, he shares insights on benchmark performance, GPU scaling, and tokenomics from chip fab to model inference. By Jordan Nanos

The Fairphone 6+ is priced at $649 and will be available on Amazon.

I wanted to see if an ESP32-S3 could be used as a programmer for the WCH CH32V003 instead of using a dedicated WCH-Link. The final setup is: PC → ESP32-S3 → SWIO → CH32V003 The ESP32-S3 handles the timing-sensitive SWIO communication and the CH32 debug/DMI interface. On top of that I implemented target detection, memory access, flash unlock, page erase, programming, read-back verification and reset/run. Hardware ESP32-S3 N8R2 CH32V003A4M6 (SOP-16) 4.7kΩ–10kΩ SWIO pull-up CP6208 motor driver Small DC motor 3.7V Li-ion battery Breadboard Important connections: ESP32-S3 GPIO10 → CH32V003 SWIO ESP32-S3 3.3V → CH32V003 VDD Common GND External pull-up on SWIO CH32V003 PC4 → CP6208 control input The software stack The programmer is split into several layers: text PC │ │ Python host tool ▼ ESP32-S3 │ │ SWIO ▼ WCH DMI │ ▼ CH32V003 debug module │ ▼ Abstract commands / program buffer │ ▼ Flash controller The ESP32-S3 is doing the SWIO timing directly rather than relying on a separate programmer IC. I used existing open-source CH32/SWIO implementations as references, particularly CNLohr's CH32V003 work and BlueSyncLine's SWIO implementation. Getting SWIO working The first versions did not work. One of the early failures was: SWIO sync: FAILED DMCFGR = 0xFFFFFFFF I had to work through the SWIO startup sequence, timing, receive behavior and physical wiring before getting reliable target responses. Once it was working, the programmer reported: SWIO sync: OK DMI communication: OK Target detect: OK CH32 ID = 0x0713BB91 Target memory read: OK That gave me a stable base for the flash implementation. Flash programming I then added the flash controller operations: flash unlock 64-byte page erase fast page programming read-back verification target reset/run One useful milestone was observing the flash lock transition: FLASH_CTLR before unlock: 0x00008080 FLASH_CTLR after unlock: 0x00000200 After that I tested programming and verification using deterministic data. The programmer was able

I spent a while building browser-based hardware diagnostics and came away with a much clearer sense of where the web platform is genuinely capable and where it quietly lies to you. Notes below, with live demos for each API so you can poke at them yourself. Refresh rate: requestAnimationFrame is the only signal you get There's no screen.refreshRate . The only approach is timing requestAnimationFrame callbacks and inferring the rate from the median frame delta: const deltas = []; let last = performance . now (); function tick ( now ) { deltas . push ( now - last ); last = now ; if ( deltas . length < 180 ) requestAnimationFrame ( tick ); else { const sorted = deltas . slice (). sort (( a , b ) => a - b ); console . log ( Math . round ( 1000 / sorted [ sorted . length >> 1 ])); } } requestAnimationFrame ( tick ); Two gotchas that cost me time. Use the median , not the mean — a single dropped frame wrecks an average. And browsers throttle rAF in background tabs, so the measurement is meaningless unless the tab is visible; gate it on document.visibilityState . ( live version ) Screen dimensions: four different answers, all "correct" screen.width , window.innerWidth , window.devicePixelRatio and screen.availWidth measure genuinely different things, and the one people usually want — actual native panel resolution — is screen.width * devicePixelRatio . Except that's still CSS-pixel derived, so on a scaled display it can disagree with what the panel physically is. The browser simply does not expose true hardware resolution. ( demo ) Keyboard: event.code vs event.key , and the keys you never receive event.key is layout-dependent, event.code is physical position — for a hardware tester you want code . The real limitation is that some keys never reach JS at all: PrintScreen often doesn't fire keydown , Meta combinations get swallowed by the OS, and Fn isn't a browser-visible key on most laptops. N-key rollover testing works surprisingly well though, since you just track the siz

Bartesian's cocktail makers would be best described like a Keurig or Nespresso machine, but for alcoholic drinks.

AI notetaking hardware has taken off over the past couple of years, with credit-card-sized devices, pendants, pins, and even transcribing earbuds all promising to capture your meetings and turn them into summaries and action items. Now, a whole wave of wearables — rings especially — are betting people want to capture stray thoughts and ideas the same way. One of […]

From the Pixel 11 series and a brand new competitor to Apple’s AirTag, here are all the announcements from the Made by Google 2026 event.

Google's Quick Share feature is getting a tap-to-share mode for quickly exchanging contacts, photos, videos, and more.

The Pixel 11 Pro Fold will cost $1,899.

Google’s new Pixel Tag taps into its Find Hub network to help users track lost keys, bags, and other items.

The new smartwatch, which starts at $399, can track blood pressure patterns and insulin resistance, as well as deliver personalized help and better sleep tracking.

The Google Pixel 11 series starts $100 costlier than the last year, but offers 256GB base storage.

David Chisnall discusses how the CHERI hardware architecture redefines pointer safety to solve isolation and sharing challenges. He explains how CHERI enables spatial and temporal memory safety for C/C++, scales down to microcontrollers with CHERIoT, and replaces costly OS-level RPC mechanisms with lightweight, auditable compartmentalization - all without requiring massive codebase rewrites. By David Chisnall

At Disrupt 2026, Amazon's Panos Panay will provide an exclusive vision for what's in store for us beyond the smartphone.

A few months ago I got properly bitten by the Linux bug. Ubuntu became my daily driver, I started digging into terminal tools way past the point of “practical necessity,” and I got obsessed with an idea that wouldn’t leave me alone: old hardware doesn’t have to die just because it’s old. I work as an on-site IT coordinator, handling day-to-day IT operations for an industrial company. Between that and years of general sysadmin work, I’ve watched a lot of perfectly usable machines get pulled out of service and shipped off as e-waste — not because they were broken, but because someone decided they were “too old” for whatever OS they were running. A Core 2 Duo with a fresh SSD and a lightweight distro can still be a genuinely useful computer.That gap between “technically obsolete” and “actually still works great” is where a lot of my curiosity lives right now. The gap I kept running into The more I looked into the Norwegian Linux scene, the more I found — Skolelinux/Debian Edu has deep roots here, NUUG (Norwegian Unix User Group) has been active for decades, and there’s a project called PC-Aid that collects, wipes, and reinstalls Debian Edu on used PCs, then sends them to schoolchildren in Ukraine. It’s been running for a few years now, quietly doing real, tangible good. I wanted in. But when I looked for any of this activity near me — Sunnmøre, a district on Norway’s west coast (in Møre og Romsdal county, home to the town of Ålesund) — there was nothing. No local NUUG chapter, no meetup, no group. Just… a gap. (If you’re not from Norway, don’t worry, most Norwegians would need a map for this too.) So instead of waiting for someone else to fill it, I started SLUG — Sunnmøre Linux User Group. Reaching out, awkwardly, like you do Starting a group is the easy part. Getting it to mean anything is harder. So I did the obvious thing: I found people who’d actually been part of PC-Aid and reached out. First was someone who’d been active in the project early on. I sent a message

Clicks’ $99 Power Keyboard brings a customizable, slide-out physical keyboard to MagSafe and Qi2 smartphones, but its added heft can make larger phones awkward to use.