Easyduino: a repository of open source PCB devboards for KiCad

The Easyduino project by Marco Vazquez Madero is an effort to easily dive into different PCB designs of the most popular microcontroller devboards like Arduino, ESP32, Raspberry Pico and STM32 Bluepill (more to come!). Using the free and Open Source Software KiCad and adhering the best practices across the PCB and KiCad ecosystem. Also adding the much needed USB-C support!

The project was born out of the necessity to unify the wide variety of software, languages and conventions used in the most popular devboards. For example Arduino Uno was developed in Italy in 2010 using Eagle. The ESP32 devboard was developed in 2016, China, using Altium. The Raspberry Pi Pico 2040 was developed around 2021 in the U.K. using KiCad and Altium.

This project is distributed under the CERN Open Hardware Licence Version 2 – Permissive which means you are free to use any or all parts of this project with or without disclosing the source, even for commercial projects. As long as you include a copy of the CERN OHLv2 Permissive Licence.

See this project on GitHub.

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Custom Split Flap Display #raspberrypi

Adam G Makes’ finished electro-mechanical display, via YouTube

 

These days it’s fairly easy to procure a split flap display, at a price. Originally used for boarding times and digital clocks, the quirky display’s are full of retro charm, clacking through their alphanumeric digits until they arrive at the message. A quick search and you can find a electro-mechanical display for (gulp) $3,500.

In true maker fashion Adam G Makes opted to go his own way. Why spend hard earned cash on something when you can poor your heart, sweat, time (annnnnd a good chunk of money) into it? Adam found a comparable display for sale for $1000 and spent $850 on all his components. Really nice build using a Raspberry Pi, custom circuits, stepper motors and Hall effect sensors.

Based on:

Printable Split Flap by Morgan Manley: https://www.instructables.com/Split-Flap-Display-3D-Printed-Modular-Compact-Encl/

Split Flap Project by Scott Bezek: https://github.com/scottbez1/splitflap

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

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Making the “Next-Level” camera

Niccolò Venerandi writes about maximum camera aperture and field of view. And how to make a camera that gives both.

What if we want a giant aperture but with a wider field of view too? Well, we can’t.

The bigger the lens is, the bigger the cone of light is too. But also: the wider the field of view of a lens, the bigger the cone of light too.

And, the combination of wide-angle-view and super-high-aperture would literally require light to pass through the metal of the camera in order to reach the sensor.

In order to work around this, you’d have to quite literally tear your camera apart in order to expose the sensor. Somebody has done it, namely some “Stanley Kubrik” guy…

Check out the build video and use video and read all about it in the post here.

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Zach Wally Recreates Tokyo DisneySea’s Tower of Terror Vanishing Illusion

Don’t miss this video from Zach Wally if you want to learn about the history of disappearing acts and how combining 19th century stage tricks with modern technology can lead to some very cool results.

In the mood for a Disney inspired build of your own? Make NeoPixel LED Mickey Ears with NeoPixels or EL Wire!

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Amaze! Amaze! Speak with Rocky #piday #raspberrypi #ProjectHailMary

 

**Spoilers for Project Hail Mary***

I was surprised when the promotional material for Project Hail Mary heavily featured Rocky. I haven’t seen the film yet, but in the novel, the revelation of the alien companion is suspenseful and unexpected.

Regardless, if you’re a fan of either works, you’ll get a kick out of this LLM Pi-based Rocky friend. It uses a Raspberry Pi Zero, and a Whisplay hat. The LLM [Gemma 4] is run locally on MacBook Air. The project started off by getting the ‘voice’ right; a series of friendly tones written with Python

 

From Lahiru Maramba:

Bring the friendly Eridian Engineer to life! In this video, I build a physical version of Rocky from Andy Weir’s “Project Hail Mary,” complete with a “brain” powered by a local LLM (Gemma 4) and a custom face.

If you would like to build your own, you can find the code on Github, and the full build video on YouTube.

Edited: the Gemma 4 model runs on a MacBook Air locally, not on the Raspberry pi zero W.

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Looking to introduce your young engineer to Sci-Fi? We have a limited quantity of The Martian: A Novel – Classroom Edition – by Andy Weir

The Classroom Edition of The Martian includes:

• Classroom-appropriate language
• Discussion questions and activities
• Q&A with Andy Weir

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

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Adafruit Weekly Editorial Round-Up: CircuitPython 10.2.0, wili8jam PICO-8 port for Fruit Jam, & more!

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ADAFRUIT WEEKLY EDITORIAL ROUND-UP

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We’ve got so much happening here at Adafruit that it’s not always easy to keep up! Don’t fret, we’ve got you covered. Each week we’ll be posting a handy round-up of what we’ve been up to, ranging from learn guides to blog articles, videos, and more.

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BLOG

CircuitPython 10.2.0 Released!

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LEARN

Using a Raspberry Pi as a Router

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YOUTUBE

wili8jam PICO-8 port for Fruit Jam

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Catch up with us on the blog, in the Adafruit Learning System, and on YouTube.

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New nEw NEWs From Adafruit is an email newsletter sent out once a week to subscribers only. It features new products, special offers, exciting original content, and more. Sign-up NOW for the Adafruit weekly Newsletter here: https://www.adafruit.com/newsletter

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Raspberry Pi Powered C-3PO Head

Sam Potozkin’s interactive C-3PO Head, image via reddit

 

StarWars Day is almost here! What better way to celebrate than a chat with C-3PO. Samuel Potozkin put a lot of work into this build. Beyond the hardware, Potozkin pulled off a ton of prop building techniques to get a believable bot. The head alone required meticulous finishing of 3d printing parts to create the metallic finish.

Via Reddit:

I built a C-3PO head and integrated a Raspberry Pi system inside so you can actually talk to it and it responds in real time.

Here’s how it works:

Audio comes in through a MEMS mic
The Pi processes the input and generates a response
Output is played through an internal speaker
I also used an exciter instead of a traditional speaker so the sound comes through the shell instead of a visible driver.

This was my first time using a raspberry pi for anything and it took some tweaking. But I’m happy with how it turned out.

Very thorough walkthrough video via YouTube:

Project Repository:

https://github.com/spotozkin/threepio

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