23 of the Most Popular Hackster News Articles From 2023
This past year saw the launch of a new Raspberry Pi as well as projects like a Doom-playing LEGO and an AI-powered homework machine.
Before we turn the page on another year, let's take one final look back at the 23 most popular Hackster News articles from 2023.
Raspberry Pi 5 Review — Hands-On with the Most Powerful Raspberry Pi Yet
The Raspberry Pi 5 is at once more of the same and something entirely new. It mimics the footprint of its predecessors near-perfectly, and runs the same software — but it delivers a headline-grabbing claim of three times the performance and, for the first time in a mainstream Raspberry Pi model, high-speed PCI Express connectivity to external hardware. But does the Raspberry Pi 5, four long years in the making, deliver?
Researchers Spot Silicon-Level Hardware Trojans in Chips, Release Their Algorithm for All to Try
Researchers at the Ruhr University Bochum and the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy (MPI-SP) have come up with an approach to analyzing die photos of real-world microchips to reveal hardware Trojan attacks — and are releasing their imagery and algorithm for all to try.
Google Opens Pre-Orders for the Coral Dev Board Micro, Its First Microcontroller Development Board
Google officially opened pre-orders for its Coral Dev Board Micro, a compact development board designed to get users started with low-power on-device machine learning projects courtesy of an embedded Coral Edge Tensor Processing Unit (TPU).
Andreas Eriksen's PotatoP Is a Lisp-Powered Laptop with a Battery Life Measured in Years
Norwegian software developer Andreas Eriksen has put together a laptop, of sorts, which boasts "a battery life measured in years" — and is programmed in Lisp for good measure: the PotatoP.
The URVE Board Pi offers an additional option to the Raspberry Pi. Like many of the other alternatives it is built to have the same form factor as the Pi 4. This includes placement of connectors, the 40 GPIO pins, and mounting holes. Nonetheless, it does sport some key differences — such as a Rockchip RK3566 quad-core processor, 8GB eMMC flash, M.2 SSD socket, and a real-time clock (RTC) with battery backup.
PSP Receives Raspberry Pi Upgrade
The Sony PSP (PlayStation Portable) was a fantastic handheld console that never quite received the attention it deserved. It was capable of displaying high-quality 3D graphics and had a pretty decent catalog of video games. But the PSP is pretty outdated, as it is now about 18 years old. Unless you want to replay the same old games, there isn't much reason to pull your PSP out of that box in the attic. But what if it could play any game released before the new millennium? That's what othermod enabled with his PSPi 6 Raspberry Pi upgrade.
The Snout-Like "PiggyMeter" Is a Home Assistant-Compatible Sensor for Energy Meters and More
Pseudonymous maker "Aquaticus" has designed a kit to get your energy, water, or other IEC 62056-21-compatible meter talking to Home Assistant or other smart home platforms, dubbed the PiggyMeter — thanks to its snout-like appearance.
Improving Terrible Products with $0.50 Components
While maker tech like development boards help us build devices with more ease than ever before, true electrical engineering is still a complex task that requires real expertise. If, for example, you design a custom PCB and fail to used filled ground planes, you may end up with EM noise in your signals. Those things are tricky and the engineers designing low-cost devices often fail to account for them, resulting in products that fail to perform at an acceptable level. YouTuber GreatScott! found many such devices among the offerings at AliExpress, but determined that many could be improved with a simple $0.50 component.
While smart speakers proved useful in managing certain tasks, like controlling lighting and playing music, they struggled to justify their cost for some consumers who saw them as a novelty rather than a necessity. As a result, the market failed to tap into more diverse consumer segments, limiting its growth potential. Even still, we have seen Star Trek and pine for the types of voice interactions that are portrayed with those computers of the future, so we know that compelling use cases do exist. Not wanting to wait for the perfect product to be commercially produced, engineer Justin Alvey took matters into his own hands and built a custom smart speaker. And it is not just customized to suit Alvey’s tastes, rather it is an open platform that can be programmed with the Arduino IDE.
Homework Machine Hand Writes AI-Generated Assignments
Hardworking people will spend hours laboring on a project, but lazy people will find clever ways to achieve the same result with minimal effort. Laziness gave us tools, machines, computers, and ChatGPT. If you're a lazy student, then ChatGPT is a tempting solution for essay assignments. But most teachers require that students write out their essays by hand in order to thwart ChatGPT submissions. To give those students a viable workaround, Devadath P R designed a homework machine that hand writes ChatGPT essays convincingly.
Tristam R.'s Raspberry Pi-Powered Travel Router Includes Ad Blocking, an Always-On VPN, and More
Semi-anonymous product manager and maker Tristam R. has penned a guide to building a travel router out of a Raspberry Pi single-board computer running OpenWrt — complete with a custom 3D-printed case.
Your Windshield Wipers Could Protect Your Car From Theft
Engineers from the University of Michigan developed an anti-theft system called Battery Sleuth that takes advantage of a car's auxiliary features, like the windshield wipers.
A Reddit user going by the handle chain-77 came up with a trick that gives hope to the hobbyist that wants to play with some of the latest AI on a budget. No, you will not get H100 GPU-like performance, but for under 100 bucks, the performance is very impressive and will supply you with both an education and hours of fun. Rather than doing a shady back alley deal to get the latest in GPU tech, chain-77 demonstrated how you can use a few-year-old CPU to get GPU-like performance on some pretty heavy AI workloads
On mid-tier SoCs, including the ESP32 lineup, PSoC6, and other similar devices, developers have the choice of using FreeRTOS which is a lightweight, real-time operating system for handling multiple tasks, peripherals, file access, and more, yet it lacks many of the amenities of a typical Linux distribution. To element14 Presents host Clem Mayer, there had to be a better way, so he set out to create his own Linux-powered compute module integrating the ESP32-S3.
James Brown's Tiny LEGO Brick Computer Is Now Truly Self-Contained, with a Playable Doom Port
James Brown is continuing to iterate on the idea of turning LEGO's iconic computer bricks into actually-functional devices, taking what was once a simple animated display and making it a fully self-contained computer capable of playing Doom — using an accelerometer as its input.
PIC18-Q20 Is Microchip's First Microcontroller Supporting the New I3C Interface
Microchip introduced the PIC18-Q20 microcontroller product line. These full-featured chips come in 14- and 20-pin packages, support multi-voltage I/O, and are the first low-pin count microcontroller with an I3C target mode.
Luckfox Launches an Ultra-Compact Linux-Capable Single-Board Computer with On-Device AI Smarts
Luckfox has launched an ultra-compact Linux-capable single-board computer family, almost as small as a coin, which delivers an application-class processor, dedicated neural-network coprocessor for on-device machine learning, and a low-power RISC-V microcontroller: the Luckfox Pico Mini range.
Seeed Studio Promises a "No-Code" Three-Minute Setup to Add mmWave Human Detection to Home Assistant
Seeed Studio has announced a code-free way to get human presence detection working in a Home Assistant project, with its new XIAO ESP32-C3-powered mmWave Human Detection Sensor Kit. Using a customized ESPHome firmware, Seeed promises a three-minute setup process — from power-on to configured.
Andy Toone's VideoBeast FPGA-Based Coprocessor Offers "Monster Graphics" for Eight-Bit Retro Systems
Vintage computing enthusiast Andy Toone has designed a "monster graphics" coprocessor for eight-bit microcomputers, offering 512 colors, sprite handling, widescreen resolutions, and 1MB of video RAM: the VideoBeast.
RTL-SDR Releases New V4 USB Dongle
Since its inception, there have been a few different versions of the RTL-SDR dongle. Each has made small improvements to the functionality and performance of the device. The RTL-SDR V4 model also adds minor enhancements to circuitry while changing the tuner chip from the RTL2832U to the R828D.
Balazs' Impressive Handheld Linux Terminal Features an Ortholinear Keyboard and Custom Character Set
Semi-pseudonymous "hobby-hopping person" Balazs has built an impressive portable Linux handheld, featuring a custom ortholinear keyboard and a full-color display with custom character set — primarily designed "to play around with the Linux command line," its creator says.
Miniature Macintosh with Raspberry Pi
The original Macintosh’s boxy all-in-one design is iconic, but has long been surpassed by modern computing options. If you’d like a reminder of this techno-touchstone, in a boxy beige form factor that won’t dominate your desk, The_Old_Wolf's Tiny Mac III uses a Pi 4 to cram lots of retro goodness into a very small package.
Espressif's New ESP32-S3-BOX-3 Demonstrates Next-Generation IoT with ChatGPT Example
Espressif has introduced a new ESP32-S3-based development board family member: the ESP32-S3-BOX-3, an all-in-one platform for IoT and edge AI applications. The BOX-3 plugs into four new accessories: the DOCK, BREAD, SENSOR, and BRACKET modules extend its capabilities.