Author: Arya Voronova

514 Articles

Putting KDE On Raspberry Pi OS Simpler Than Expected

December 9, 2025 by 29 Comments

Raspberry Pi boards are no longer constrained – these days, you can get a quad-core board with 8 or 16GB of RAM to go around, equip it with a heatsink, and get a decently comfortable shop/desk/kitchen computer with GPIOs, cameras, speedy networking, maybe even NVMe, and all the wireless you’d expect.

Raspberry OS, however, remains lightweight with its pre-installed LXDE environment – and, in many cases, it feels quite constrained. In case you ever idly wondered about giving your speedy Pi a better UI, [Luc] wants to remind you that setting up KDE on your Raspberry OS install is dead simple and requires only about a dozen commandline steps.

[Luc] walks you through these dozen steps, from installation to switching the default DE, and the few hangups you might expect after the switch; if you want to free up some disk space afterwards, [Luc] shows how to get rid of the original LXDE packages. Got the latest Trixie-based Pi OS? There’s an update post detailing the few necessary changes, as well as talking about others’ experiences with the switch.

All in all, [Luc] demonstrates that KDE will have a fair bit of graphical and UX advantages, while operating only a little slower, and if you weren’t really using your powerful Pi to the fullest, it’s a worthwhile visual and usability upgrade. For the regular desktop users, KDE has recently released their own distro, and our own [Jenny] has taken a look at it.

Super Simple Deadbuggable Bluetooth Chip

December 9, 2025 by 21 Comments

We’re all used to Bluetooth chips coming in QFN and BGA formats, at a minimum of 30-40 pins, sometimes even a hundred. What about ten pins, with 1.27 mm pitch? [deqing] from Hackaday.io shows us a chip from WCH, CH571K, in what’s essentially a SO-10 package (ESSOP10). This chip has a RISC-V core, requires only three components to run, and can work Bluetooth through a simple wire antenna.

This chip is a RISC-V MCU with a Bluetooth peripheral built in, and comes from the CH57x family of WCH chips that resemble the nRF series we’re all used to. You get a fair few peripherals: UART, SPI, and ADC, and of course, Bluetooth 4 with Low Energy support to communicate with a smart device of your choice. For extra hacker cred, [deqing] deadbugs it, gluing all components and a 2.54 mm header for FTDI comms onto the chip, and shows us a demo using webBluetooth to toggle an LED through a button in the browser.

You need not be afraid of SDKs with this one. There’s Arduino IDE support (currently done through a fork of arduino_core_ch32) and a fair few external tools, including at least two programming tools, one official and one third-party. The chip is under a dollar on LCSC, even less if you buy multiple, so it’s worth throwing a few into your shopping cart. What could you do with it once received? Well, you could retrofit your smoke alarms with Bluetooth, create your own tire pressure monitors, or just build a smartphone-connected business card!

PCB Design Review: TinySparrow, A Module For CAN Hacking, V2

December 9, 2025 by 12 Comments

A year ago, I’ve design reviewed an MCU module for CAN hacking, called TinySparrow. Modules are plenty cool, and even more so when they’re intended for remaking car ECUs. For a while now, every car has heavily depended on a computer to control the operation of everything inside it – the engine and its infrastructure, the lights, and  Sadly, ECUs are quite non-hackable, so building your own ECUs only makes sense – which is why it’s heartwarming to see modules intended to make this easier on the budding ECU designer!

Last time we saw this module, it was quite a bit simpler. We talked about fixing a number of things – the linear regulator, the unprotected CAN transceiver, and the pinout; we also made the board cheaper to produce by reducing the layer count and instead pushing the clearance/track width limits. This time, we’re seeing TinySparrow v2 , redesigned accounting for the feedback and upgraded with a new MCU – it’s quite a bit more powerful!

For a start, it’s got ESD diodes, a switching-linear regulator chain for clean but efficient power supply, and most importantly, an upgraded MCU, now with USB and one more CAN channel for a total of two! There’s a lot more GPIOs to go around, too, so the PCB now uses all four of its sides for breakout out power, programming, and GPIO pads. Only a tiny bit bigger than its v1, this module packs a fair bit of punch.

Let’s revisit the design, and try to find anything still left to improve – there’s a few noteworthy things I found.

Continue reading “PCB Design Review: TinySparrow, A Module For CAN Hacking, V2” →

RP2350 Done Framework Style

December 8, 2025 by 24 Comments

Ever want a microcontroller addon for your laptops? You could do worse than match one of the new and powerful microcontrollers on the block to one of the most addon-friendly laptops, in the way the Framework RP2350 laptop card does it. Plug it in, and you get a heap of USB-connected IO coming out of the side of your laptop – what’s not to love?

The card utilizes the Framework module board space to the fullest extent possible, leaving IO expansion on SMD pads you could marry to a male or female header, your choice. With about seventeen GPIOs, power, and ground, there’s really no limit on what you could add to the side connector – maybe it’d be a logic analyzer buffer, or a breadboard cable, or a flash chip reader, maybe, even an addon to turn it into a pirate version of a Bus Pirate? There’s a fair few RP2350 peripherals available on the side header GPIOs, so sky’s the limit.

Naturally, the card is fully open-source, and even has two versions with two different USB-C plug connectors, we guess, depending on which one is better liked by your PCBA process. Want one? Just send off the files! Last time we saw an addon adding GPIOs to your laptop, it was a Pi Zero put into the optical bay of a Thinkpad, also with an expansion header available on the side – pairing yet another legendary board with a legendary laptop.

One Lucky 3DS Gets A Switch-Style Dock

December 8, 2025 by 4 Comments

The Nintendo Switch dock set a new bar for handheld docking user experience – just plug your console in to charge it, output image to your monitor, and keep it working with any USB peripherals of your choice. What if a 3DS is more your jam? [KOUZEX] shows off a Switch-style dock design for his gorgeous yellow 3DS, with Switch Pro controller support, and this dock wasn’t just a 3D printing job – there’s a fair bit of electronics to show, too.

While the 3DS looks stock at a glance, it has already been upgraded internally – there’s a USB-C capture card built in, half-ticking the “monitor output” requirement, and a Raspberry Pi board turns that output into HDMI. Building a charging dock is also pretty simple, with just two contacts on the side that desire 5V. Now, the pro controller support was a fair bit harder – requiring an internal modchip for emulating buttons, and trying out receiver boards for the Switch controller until a well-functioning one was found.

The build video is quite satisfying to watch, from assembling some QFNs onto tiny OSHPark boards using a hotplate and soldering them into the 3DS, to planning out, building, and dremeling some prints to create a true slide-console-into-dock experience, same way the Switch pulled it off. It even has the same USB-C and HDMI arrangement as the Switch dock, too! Want a simpler dock for your 3DS? Don’t forget that you can build a charger dock for yours with just a 3D print and a few wires.

Continue reading “One Lucky 3DS Gets A Switch-Style Dock” →

Cheap And Aggressive DRAM Chip Tester

December 8, 2025 by 6 Comments

People enjoy retrocomputing for a wide variety of reasons – sometimes it’s about having a computer you could fully learn, or nostalgia for chips that played a part in your childhood. There’s definitely some credit to give for the fuzzy feeling you get booting up a computer you built out of chips. Old technology does deteriorate fast, however, and RAM chip failures are especially frustrating. What if you got a few hundred DRAM chips to go through? Here’s a DRAM chip tester by [Andreas]/[tops4u] – optimized for scanning speed, useful for computers like the ZX Spectrum or Oric, and built around an ATMega328P, which you surely still have in one of your drawers.

Continue reading “Cheap And Aggressive DRAM Chip Tester” →

Standalone USB-PD Stack For All Your Sink Needs

December 6, 2025 by 6 Comments

USB PD is a fun protocol to explore, but it can be a bit complex to fully implement. It makes sense we’re seeing new stacks pop up all the time, and today’s stack is a cool one as far as code reusability goes. [Vitaly] over on Hackaday.io brings us pdsink – a C++ based PD stack with no platform dependencies, and fully-featured sink capabilities.

Continue reading “Standalone USB-PD Stack For All Your Sink Needs” →