Programming Category - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

April 7, 2026April 7, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

wolfIP – An open-source, lightweight TCP/IP stack with no dynamic memory allocations for embedded systems

wolfip TCP/IP library no memory allocations

Better known for its open-source wolfSSL SSL/TLS library, wolfSSL (the company) has now released the wolfIP open-source, lightweight TCP/IP stack with no dynamic memory allocations (e.g., no malloc calls) designed for resource-constrained embedded systems.

The company highlights that wolfIP “supports both endpoint-only mode and full multi-interface support with optional IP forwarding. By default, it operates as a network endpoint, but can be configured to forward traffic between multiple network interfaces”.

April 4, 2026April 4, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Velxio is an open-source, self-hosted Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and ESP32 simulator

Velxio is an open-source, self-hosted simulator for Arduino, ESP32, and Raspberry Pi boards that works directly in your web browser. You can drag-and-drop boards, connect components and modules, write and run code in Arduino or Python, and access the serial console, all without hardware. If it looks similar to what the Wokwi simulator has to offer, it’s because Velxio was inspired by it and even integrates the AVR8 CPU emulator, RP2040 emulator, and QEMU fork for ESP32 Xtensa emulation from the Wokwi project. But the key difference is that Velxio can be self-hosted, although there’s also an online demo. Velxio currently supports 19 targets across five architectures AVR8 (ATmega / ATtiny) Arm Cortex-M0+ (Raspberry Pi RP2040) RISC-V RV32IMC/EC (ESP32-C3 / CH32V003) Xtensa LX6/LX7 (ESP32 / ESP32-S3 via QEMU) Arm Cortex-A53 (Raspberry Pi 3 Linux via QEMU) The project also offers 48 components. The developer mentions that additional features compared to […]

February 13, 2026February 13, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Mimiclaw is an OpenClaw-like AI assistant for ESP32-S3 boards

MimiClaw is an OpenClaw-inspired AI assistant designed for ESP32-S3 boards, which acts as a gateway between the Telegram messaging application and Claude online LLM to control the hardware by just chatting to it. We’ve just written about PicoClaw, an ultra-lightweight personal AI Assistant for cheap Linux boards that just needs 10MB of spare RAM. It was itself inspired by Nanobot, a lightweight assistant written in Python, that’s 99% smaller, in terms of lines of code, than the original OpenClaw project that started it all. Since most of the processing is done through messaging apps and online LLMs, it was only a matter of time until this type of solution was ported to microcontrollers. MimiClaw highlights: Written in C; relies on the ESP-IDF 5.5 framework System requirements – ESP32-S3 board with 16 MB flash and 8 MB PSRAM, such as the LILYGO T7-S3, FireBeetle 2 ESP32-S3, ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1-N16R8, Seeed Studio’s XIAO ESP32S3 […]

January 29, 2026January 29, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

MicroPythonOS graphical operating system delivers Android-like user experience on microcontrollers

Yesterday, I wrote about Ariel OS RTOS for microcontrollers written in Rust, but there’s another interesting open-source operating system for microcontrollers that will be covered at FOSDEM 2026: MicroPythonOS. While Ariel OS is designed for secure, memory-safe, networked IoT applications on microcontrollers, MicroPythonOS targets applications with graphical user interfaces and is heavily inspired by Android and iOS, with an appstore, an LVGL-based touchscreen and button UI with plenty of widgets, gestures and theme support, and a wifi manager, as well as over-the-air (OTA) firmware updates. You’ll probably be astonished to learn that MicroPythonOS is written in… MicroPython. It’s comprised of a Thin OS which handles hardware initialization, multitasking, and UI, and everything else is an app, including system features like WiFi configuration and OS updates. MicroPythonOS highlights: Native MicroPython foundation Runs on ESP32 microcontrollers, but the FOSDEM 2026 talk mentions that it can run on anything that supports MicroPython, including […]

January 28, 2026January 28, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Ariel OS – A Rust RTOS for IoT microcontrollers

Ariel OS is a new RTOS for microcontrollers written in Rust with support for popular hardware architectures (Arm Cortex-M, ESP32, RISC-V) and boards from Espressif, Nordic Semi, Raspberry Pi, and STMicroelectronics. Ariel OS is built on top of Embassy Rust framework and embedded-hal Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) for embedded systems, and adds several OS functionalities and a multi-core capable scheduler. It is mainly designed for secure, memory-safe, networked applications on microcontrollers. The developers further describe Ariel OS as follows on the project’s website: Ariel OS follows an approach whereby it simultaneously integrates a curated ecosystem of libraries (available via crates.io), and adds missing operating system functionalities as depicted below. Such functionalities include a preemptive multicore scheduler, portable peripheral APIs, additional network security facilities, as well as a meta-build system to bind it all together. As a result, a low-power IoT developer can focus on business logic sitting on top of […]

January 16, 2026January 16, 2026 by Sponsored Post - No Comments

The End of the “AI Toy” Era: YouWare Launches YouBase to Deliver Production-Ready Business Tools (Sponsored)

In the rapidly evolving landscape of digital transformation, a technical plateau has emerged. While many “AI-coding” tools offer the promise of rapid development, a predictable pattern has surfaced: they generate visually impressive landing pages in seconds, but falter when tasked with building a functional business. Projects requiring user authentication, data persistence, or secure transaction handling often hit a technical ceiling, resulting in digital “toys” rather than scalable business tools. The release of YouBase by YouWare marks a significant shift in this narrative. Since its debut in March 2025, YouWare has pioneered the concept of “vibe coding,” capturing 500,000 monthly active users and a $200 million valuation. With the introduction of YouBase, the platform transitions from a prototyping environment to a production-ready engine, offering a missing link for enterprises looking to leverage AI for full-stack development. The Competitive Edge of Vibe Coding The efficacy of YouBase is built upon YouWare’s core […]

December 13, 2025December 17, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 21 Comments

CIX releases P1 CPU TRM and developer guides for GPU, AI accelerator, OS and firmware/BIOS

CIX has finally released the technical reference manual (TRM) for the P1 (CD8180/CD8160) Arm Cortex-A720/A520 SoC, along with developer guides for the GPU (Arm Immortalis G720 and NVIDIA/AMD discrete graphics cards), the AI accelerator, as well as OS (Android, Linux, and Windows) and firmware (BIOS) installation and development. A slow (but steady?) progress There was a lot of excitement when the Radxa Orion O6 mini-ITX motherboard was introduced in December 2024, as we were told the CIX P1 12-core Armv9 processor would offer performance similar to Apple M1 SoC and Qualcomm 8cx Gen3 platform, at an affordable price ($199 and up for the mini-ITX board), and software support would include a Debian image, full UEFI via an open-source EDKII implementation, as well as an SDK along with hardware and software documentation, community forum support, and regular firmware & OS updates. CIX was even called “a native open source ecosystem chip […]

December 9, 2025December 9, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

FlashESP is an all-in-one web-based tool for ESP32/ESP8266 Arduino development and firmware flashing

FlashESP Web-based ESP32 programming tool

FlashESP is a web-based tool allowing the development of Arduino sketches and firmware flashing for ESP32 and ESP8266 hardware platforms. I initially thought it was similar to ESP Web Tools for flashing firmware from the web and used by projects like ESPHome, but it goes further than that, and it looks like an Arduino Cloud Editor for ESP32/ESP8266 instead, since users can select boards, write code, load libraries, and flash the resulting firmware from a compatible web browser without installing anything else on their computer. FlashESP key features: Cloud Compilation – Real-time compilation with live logs. Auto Configuration – Intelligent board and library detection. One-Click Flash – Web Serial integration. Connect your ESP via USB and flash directly from a compatible browser (WebSerial support needed) without any drivers or downloads. Public Explorer – Discover community projects. Flexible Visibility – Create private projects for your team, public for the world, or […]