Author: Lewin Day

3367 Articles

A Trail Camera Built With Raspberry Pi

September 30, 2025 by 11 Comments

You can get all kinds of great wildlife footage if you trek out into the woods with a camera, but it can be tough to stay awake all night. However, this is a task you can readily automate, as [Luke] did with his DIY trail camera.

A Raspberry Pi Zero 2W serves as the heart of the build. It’s compact and runs on very little power, but also provides a good amount more processing power than the original Raspberry Pi Zero. It’s kitted out with the Raspberry Pi AI Camera, which uses the Sony IMX500 Intelligent Vision Sensor — providing a great platform for neural networks doing image classification and similar machine learning tasks. A Witty Pi power management module is used both for its real time clock and to schedule start-ups and shutdowns to best manage the power on offer from the batteries. All these components are wrapped up in a 3D printed housing to keep the Pi safe out in the wild.

We’ve seen some neat projects in this vein before.

Continue reading “A Trail Camera Built With Raspberry Pi” →

Creating Python GUIs With GIMP

September 29, 2025 by 30 Comments

GUI design can be a tedious job, requiring the use of specialist design tools and finding a suitable library that fits your use case. If you’re looking for a lightweight solution, though, you might consider just using a simple image editor with a nifty Python library that [Manish Kathuria] whipped up.

[Manish’s] intention was to create a better-looking user interface solution for Python apps that was also accessible. He’d previously considered other Python GUI options to be unimpressive, requiring a lot of code and delivering undesirable results. His solution enables the use of just about any graphic you can think of as a UI object, creating all kinds of visually-appealing possibilities. He also was eager to make sure his solution would work with irregular-shaped buttons, sliders, and other controls—a limitation popular libraries like Tkinter never quite got around.

The system simply works by using layered image files to create interactive interfaces, with a minimum of code required to define the parameters and performance of the interface. You’re not strictly limited to using the GIMP image editor, either; some of the examples use MS Paint instead. Files are on Github for those eager to try the library for themselves.

We’ve featured some neat GUI tools before, too, like this library for embedded environments. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Creating Python GUIs With GIMP” →

Macintosh System 7 Ported To X86 With LLM Help

September 29, 2025 by 50 Comments

You can use large language models for all sorts of things these days, from writing terrible college papers to bungling legal cases. Or, you can employ them to more interesting ends, such as porting Macintosh System 7 to the x86 architecture, like [Kelsi Davis] did.

When Apple created the Macintosh lineup in the 1980s, it based the computer around Motorola’s 68K CPU architecture. These 16-bit/32-bit CPUs were plenty capable for the time, but the platform ultimately didn’t have the same expansive future as Intel’s illustrious x86 architecture that underpinned rival IBM-compatible machines.

[Kelsi Davis] decided to port the Macintosh System 7 OS to run on native x86 hardware, which would be challenging enough with full access to the source code. However, she instead performed this task by analyzing and reverse engineering the System 7 binaries with the aid of Ghidra and a large language model. Soon enough, she had the classic System 7 desktop running on QEMU with a fully-functional Finder and the GUI working as expected. [Kelsi] credits the LLM with helping her achieve this feat in just three days, versus what she would expect to be a multi-year effort if working unassisted.

Files are on GitHub for the curious. We love a good port around these parts; we particularly enjoyed these efforts to recreate Portal on the N64. If you’re doing your own advanced tinkering with Macintosh software from yesteryear, don’t hesitate to let us know.

Smart Home Gets A Custom Keypad Controller

September 28, 2025 by 3 Comments

Voice assistants and smartphones are often the go-to interfaces for modern smart home systems. However, if you fancy more direct physical controls, you can go that route as well. To that end, [Salim Benbouziyane] whipped up a nifty keypad to work with his Home Assistant setup.

The build is based on an ESP32 microcontroller, which has wireless hardware onboard to communicate with the rest of [Salim’s] Home Assistant setup. Using the ESPHome firmware framework as a base, the microcontroller is connected to a four-by-three button keypad array, built using nice clicky key switches. There’s also an indicator light on top as a system status indicator. A fingerprint scanner provides an easy way for users to authenticate when disarming the alarm.

Security and speed were the push for [Salim] to whip up this system. He found it difficult to disarm his alarm in a hurry when fumbling with his phone, and the direct keypad entry method was far more desirable.

Sometimes, the easiest route to the smart home of your dreams is to just build the exact solutions you need. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Smart Home Gets A Custom Keypad Controller” →

Bluetooth Earrings Pump Out The Tunes

September 27, 2025 by 14 Comments

When you think of a Bluetooth speaker, you’re probably picturing a roughly lunchbox-sized device that pumps out some decent volume for annoying fellow beachgoers, hikers, or public transport users. [Matt Frequencies] has developed something in an altogether different form factor—tiny Bluetooth speakers you can dangle from your earlobes! They’re called Earrays, and they’re awesome.

The build started with [Matt] harvesting circuit boards from a pair of off-the-shelf Bluetooth earbuds. These are tiny, and perfect for picking up a digital audio stream from a smartphone or other device, but they don’t have the grunt to drive powerful speakers. Thus, [Matt] hooked them up to a small Adafruit PAM8302A amplifier board, enabling them to drive some larger speaker drivers that you can actually hear from a distance. These were then installed in little 3D printed housings that are like a tiny version of the speaker arrays you might see hanging from the rigging at a major dance festival. Throw on a little earring hook, and you’ve got a pair of wearable Bluetooth speakers that are both functional, fashionable, and very audible!

[Matt] has continued to develop the project, even designing a matching pendant and a charging base to make them practical to use beyond a proof-of concept. Despite the weight of the included electronics, they’re perfectly wearable, as demonstrated by [DJ Kaizo Trap] modelling the hardware in the images seen here.

We’ve seen plenty of great LED earrings over the years, but very few jewelry projects in the audio space thus far. Perhaps that will change in future—if you pursue such goals, let us know!

An LED Sphere For Your Desk

September 27, 2025 by 1 Comment

The Las Vegas Sphere is great and all, but few of us can afford the expense to travel to out there to see it on the regular. If you’re looking for similar vibes you can access at home, you might enjoy the desk toy that [AGBarber] has designed.

The scale is small — the sphere measures just 98 mm (3.6 inches) in diameter — but that just means it’s accessible enough to be fun. The build is based around various sizes of WS2812B addressable LED rings, and contains 120 individual RGB LEDs in total. They’re wrapped up in a 3D printed housing which does a great job of diffusing the light. Transparent filament was used to print parts that light up with a richly-saturated glow with few visible hotspots. Commanding the LEDs is an ESP8266 microcontroller in the form of a Wemos D1 Mini, which provides plenty of grunt to run animations as well as great wireless connectivity options. [AGBarber] relied on their own Pixel Spork library to handle all the cool lighting effects. Files are on GitHub for the curious.

Maybe you don’t like spheres, and icosahedrons are more your speed. Well, we’ve featured those too—with 2,400 LEDs, no less.

Continue reading “An LED Sphere For Your Desk” →