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August 8, 2026August 8, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

LILYGO T-Echo Card – A weatherproof, solar-powered, nRF52840-based LoRa + GPS development kit

LILYGO T-Echo Card is a thin development kit based on Nordic Semi nRF52840 wireless MCU and a Semtech SX1262 LoRa transceiver with a solar panel for charging an 800 mAh battery. It supports Bluetooth 5, NFC, Bluetooth Mesh, ANT, 802.15.4 (Zigbee/Thread), LoRaWAN, and GNSS (L76K module) connectivity. The board also features a 0.42-inch OLED information display, a magnetic USB interface, a 9-axis motion sensor, a digital microphone, a speaker, and an RGB LED for status/notifications. It’s mainly useful for off-grid communication (text and audio), GNSS location sharing, personal/asset tracking, and as a compact mesh network node. T-Echo Card specifications: SoC – Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 CPU – 32-bit Arm Cortex-M4F microcontroller @ 64 MHz Memory/Storage – 1 MB Flash, 256 KB RAM Wireless – Bluetooth 5, NFC, Bluetooth Mesh, 802.15.4 (Zigbee/Thread), ANT, 2.4 GHz proprietary Storage – 32 Mbit SPI flash (ZD25WQ32CEIGR) LoRa transceiver – Semtech SX1262 with global coverage support: […]

August 6, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Espressif Systems releases ESP RainMaker Neo open-source device-to-cloud-to-phone IoT platform

Espressif Systems has just released ESP RainMaker Neo, providing a complete device-to-cloud-to-phone app stack, including the cloud backend, firmware SDK, firmware examples, phone app SDK, and reference phone app. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because it’s essentially the open-source version of ESP RainMaker cloud service introduced in 2020. Both are still built on AWS Serverless architecture, but while ESP RainMaker, now known as ESP RainMaker Classic, is managed by Espressif, ESP RainMaker Neo is hosted on the customer’s own AWS instance(s), providing more flexibility and control over the cloud architecture. While the company has made efforts to keep the same hybrid mobile app SDK and similar device-side APIs, RainMaker Neo is a new implementation with a different cloud architecture from ESP RainMaker Classic. That means existing ESP RainMaker Classic deployments cannot be directly migrated to Neo, and the open-source implementation is only recommended for new deployments. Released under the Apache […]

August 5, 2026August 5, 2026 by Debashis Das - No Comments

ZecTrix Note 4 – A 4.2-inch ESP32-S3 wireless e-paper display for voice tasks

ZecTrix Note 4 4.2 inch AI e paper smart note

Designed by ZecTrix Lab in China, the Note 4 is an ESP32-S3-based AI smart note with a 4.2-inch e-paper display and built-in voice input. The device is designed to display reminders, notes, clocks, weather, images, and custom templates, while the Note 4C variant replaces the monochrome display with a four-color e-paper panel. The device features 2.4GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity, a microphone, a speaker, NFC, physical buttons, a USB Type-C port, a 2,000mAh rechargeable battery, and GPIO expansion for custom hardware projects. ZecTrix Note 4 / Note 4C specifications: SoC – Espressif Systems ESP32-S3 CPU – Dual-core Tensilica LX7 up to 240 MHz with vector extension for AI/ML workloads RAM – 512KB SRAM; 8MB PSRAM Wireless – WiFi 4 and Bluetooth LE 5 Storage – 16MB flash Display Note 4 – 4.2-inch monochrome E-Ink display, 400 × 300 resolution; supports partial refresh Note 4C – 4.2-inch four-color (BWRY) E-Ink display, […]

July 31, 2026July 31, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

reTerminal Sticky 3.97-inch touch ePaper display is supported by four open-source firmware projects (so far)

Seeed Studio’s reTerminal Sticky is a 3.97-inch “AI-powered” magnetic touch ePaper display powered by an ESP32-S3 microcontroller, which serves as a sticky-note alternative, an e-reader, a live dashboard, or a home automation controller. The 800 x 480 resolution display comes with 8MB PSRAM, 32MB Flash, a microSD card slot, and next/previous page buttons. It’s “AI-powered” through a microphone and an AI Voice button leveraging the ESP32-S3 Edge AI capabilities for a voice-to-note feature. It also features a temperature and humidity sensor and a 3-axis accelerometer, as well as a built-in magnet and a magnetic ring for easy mounting. reTerminal Sticky specifications: SoC – Espressif ESP32-S3R8 CPU – Dual-core Tensilica LX7 microcontroller up to 240 MHz with vector instructions for AI acceleration Memory – 8MB PSRAM Wireless – 2.4 GHz WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.0 LE Storage 32 MB flash MicroSD card slot (SanDisk recommended) Display 3.97-inch monochrome (B&W) ePaper 4-level […]

July 29, 2026July 29, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

SensWear – An open-source modular Nordic nRF54L15 development platform for wearables

SensWear nRF54L15 wearables development platform

SensWear is an open-source hardware development platform for wearables based on Nordic nRF54L15 Bluetooth LE SoC and a range of sensors designed for researchers, developers, and companies building smart rings, wristbands, patches, and other custom devices. The solution is mainly comprised of flexible boards, including the SensWear core board with an nRF54L15 MCU and a 6-axis IMU sensor, and daughter boards with either PPG and optical sensing, temperature sensing, capacitive touch sensing, or haptic feedback. SensWear key features and specifications: Core mainboard SoC – Nordic Semi nRF54L15 CPU Arm Cortex-M33 @ up to 128 MHz RISC-V coprocessor for “software-defined peripheral” Memory – 256 KB SRAM Storage – 1.5MB Non-volatile Memory (NVM) Wireless Bluetooth LE 6.0 Thread, Zigbee (IEEE 802.15.4-2020) Matter Amazon Sidewalk Proprietary 2.4 GHz protocols with a new 4 Mbps mode NFC support Sensors Bosch BHI360 six-axis smart IMU and sensor hub Standardized interface for interchangeable daughter boards I2C and […]

July 16, 2026July 16, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

pico-usb-wifi firmware converts the Raspberry Pi Pico W into a driverless USB WiFi adapter

pico-usb-wifi is an open-source firmware project that converts the Raspberry Pi Pico W into a driverless USB WiFi adapter that works with Windows, Linux, macOS, and other operating systems with USB CDC-NCM support. The Infineon CYW43439 chip found in the SBC can’t be used directly as a USB to WiFi bridge, and instead, the firmware implements a transparent Layer-2 bridge between the Pico W’s wireless module and USB interfaces. It basically works as an Ethernet to WiFi gateway/bridge, which exposes an Ethernet connection through USB (aka USB gadget mode) used to route Wi-Fi packets from the network. pico-usb-wifi highlights: Transparent Layer-2 Bridging between the Pico W’s wireless and USB interfaces Exposed as a USB CDC-NCM device IPv4 and IPv6 with no NAT, no private subnet, and no port-forwarding to configure Out-of-band management and debug consoles over CDC-ACM serial WPA2-PSK and WPA3-SAE authentication (and open networks) Throughput – Average 4.75 Mbits/sec; […]

July 2, 2026July 2, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

PaperBoy Game Boy Emulator works at 60 FPS on ESP32-S3 E Ink devkit

PaperBoy E Ink ESP32-S3 Gameboy emulator

60 FPS gaming on an E Ink display? That doesn’t seem right… But that’s exactly what Wenting Zhang’s PaperBoy Game Boy emulator project does, using the M5Stack PaperS3 devkit, pairing an ESP32-S3 wireless microcontroller with a 4.7-inch E Ink display with 960 x 540 resolution. One of the tricks here is that the bottom part of the ePaper touchscreen display is used for control buttons and doesn’t need to be refreshed, while the active part only requires 160 x 144 resolution, scaled three times to represent various shades of grey. Contrary to most small Eink devkits, the PaperS3 features a screen with a raw row/column driver interface, which enabled him to drive the display while bypassing the normal waveform method, and deliver a higher refresh rate up to 60 FPS. Wenting didn’t reinvent the wheel for the Game Boy emulation part, and after testing three different emulators, he went with […]

June 25, 2026June 25, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Louder ESP32 Mini board adds WiFi and Bluetooth to old speakers for SqueezeLite, Snapclient, or ESPHome support

Sonocotta’s Louder-ESP32-Mini is a compact version of the Louder ESP32 board that converts old speakers into WiFi (and Bluetooth) connected speakers for your Smart Home. The board aims to replace the speaker terminals on your old speakers, and comes in two sizes: 42x42mm for small speakers, and 52x52mm for larger models. It’s powered by an ESP32-S3 wireless SoC with 8MB PSRAM and equipped with a high-quality TAS5805M DAC with DSP features. Louder-ESP32-Mini specifications: Wireless Module – ESP32-S3-WROOM-N8R8 SoC – Espressif Systems ESP32-S3 CPU – Dual-core Tensilica LX7 up to 240 MHz with vector extension for AI/ML workloads RAM – 512KB SRAM, 8MB PSRAM Storage – 8MB flash Wireless – WiFi 4 and Bluetooth LE 5 Antenna – PCB antenna Audio DAC – Stereo TAS5805M I2S DAC with built-in DSP and D-Class amp DSP Features – EQ, FIR, DRC, AGL, etc… Speaker output via two WAGO connectors 4Ω, 1% THD+N 42×42 […]