Busting The Myth That Plastics Are Chemically Inert In Water

October 17, 2026 by Maya Posch No comments

One of the often made claims about plastics is that they are chemically inert under most conditions, such as when exposed to water. This long-held belief has also challenged the notion that micro- and nanoplastics (MNPs) are dangerous to organisms such as us human animals. A hitherto unknown mechanism between common plastics as investigated by [Naixin Qian] et al. and published in Nature serves to generate highly reactive hydroxyl radicals when exposed to water.

Hydroxyl radicals (HO^•) are the neutral form of the hydroxide ion (OH^–). It’s a free radical that tends to be extremely short-lived due to its reactivity, much like the singular oxygen molecule that is freed at the plastic-water interface. The energy provided for this reactivity comes from the electrostatic effect, itself highly correlated with many plastics, with the six types of microplastics used in the experiment showing varying levels of free radicals, particularly for the more hydrophobic types.

This high reactivity of free radicals is a well-known problem in cellular biology, with evolution having developed many tools over the years to deal with capturing these radicals as well as repair the (DNA) damage that they can cause. The effect of these microplastics and their generated free radicals was thus studied as well.

Of note here is that the electrostatic effect itself already serves to draw charged biomolecules to it, before the impact of free radicals is considered. By using mouse red blood cells and exposing them to polystyrene (PS) microplastics fatal damage was observed to the red blood cells.

This indicates that there are at least three possible ways in which MNPs can be harmful to organisms. It also provides another clue to how this may affect the ageing of plastics, among other implications.

Currently there is still ongoing debate on whether MNPs are truly harmful and just how prevalent they may be in e.g. our bodies. Reliably detecting them in e.g. biological tissues remains a challenge, which this new study may also be helpful with, since one of our biggest blind spots is that we lack solid knowledge of how MNPs may behave inside an organism.

2026 Retrocomputing Challenge: Dollhouse Arcade Cabinet Runs Remote DOS Games

October 17, 2026 by Donald Papp 1 Comment

Classic DOS games never ran from within stand-up arcade cabinets in dollhouses, but [Juha Lilja] imagines a world in which they did. His Micro DOS arcade cabinet is described as a device that “runs nothing” because the tiny unit is actually streaming the games over Wi-Fi from a nearby PC. That doesn’t mean it’s just a glorified movie player, though — the cabinet is playable, if a bit awkward to do so.

An economical development board and a 3D-printed enclosure is all it takes to put classic DOS games into dollhouse-sized arcade cabinet.

The core of the micro arcade cabinet is a M5Stack AtomS3R running as an embedded remote terminal. One tilts the whole cabinet as if it were a virtual joystick to send up, down, left, and right. Button presses are done by pushing on the physical screen; it supports single, double, and long-clicks. While in theory one could install a micro joystick and buttons instead, [Juha] aimed to keep everything self-contained and use only what was already built into the AtomS3R. In this case, that’s a motion sensor and the single button which is activated by pressing the screen.

The games themselves run on a PC, with screen contents being streamed wirelessly to the little display and inputs being sent back. The firmware on the AtomS3R doesn’t know or care what game is being played; all it does is display what it’s told, and send back input events. The back end does the rest. This makes it pretty flexible, and a tiny arcade cabinet is a handy way to demonstrate the whole system. It’s a pretty slick addition to his daughter’s dollhouse, too.

If streaming DOS games (or whatever else) to economical endpoints is giving you some ideas, the GitHub repository holds code and a fuller explanation of how it works. There’s a deeper discussion on some of the finer technical points, as well. Watch it in action in the video embedded just below the page break.

Continue reading “2026 Retrocomputing Challenge: Dollhouse Arcade Cabinet Runs Remote DOS Games” →

Building A Flying Drone With A Single Propeller

October 17, 2026 by Maya Posch 1 Comment

Technically all that you need in order to make a drone fly is a single motor and single propeller, but realistically it becomes basically impossible to fly it at that point. In the case of helicopters you therefore need a second rotor somewhere to provide counterbalance to the first and to be able to steer.

There are of course a number of ways to make a drone fly with a single helicopter, but the compromise usually is to use very large propellers, as well as other mechanisms that make for a very large drone. This wasn’t good enough for [Joshua Bird] who wanted to have a very small, single propeller drone.

Key to making it work is not only a very high RPM, but also a hinged propeller hub that manipulates the angle of the blades in such a way that both pitch and roll can be controlled if you react quickly enough. This turned out to be impossible using standard motor ESCs that do not directly measure the motor’s speed and position but rely on back EMF.

In the final prototype of the drone such details had to be measured directly, with super-fast adjustments to the motor’s speed only possible with custom controller code and a lot of trial and error. Even then the drone would often lose track of its position and crash once more. The solution there was to add an infrared beacon in the room and a sensor on the drone, to give it a fixed reference point.

You can find the project files so far on the GitHub project page, with upcoming changes to the drone design involving improvements like adding a scanner to the drone so that it can autonomously use features in its environment as fixed reference points. That way it might conceivably be able to fly outside as well, which would be quite exciting to see.

Continue reading “Building A Flying Drone With A Single Propeller” →

2026 Retrocomputing Challenge: Oldputer Gives Old Eyes Relief With E-ink Display

October 17, 2026 by Ian Bos 1 Comment

Modern computers are towers of glass and metal with very few large deviations from one to another. Monitor A will go against B, except you can’t tell them apart unless they’re on. At least, that is, compared to how different the old bulky monitors look compared to the new. [Andrzej Górski] seems to agree with this sentiment with his Oldputer, a blast from the past.

[Andrzej Górski]’s inspiration came from one component, and the main component of the project, an old e-ink display. When life gives you one of the slowest versions of a display, there really isn’t too much else to do other than pair it with slow old computers of the past. From that inspiration, there isn’t entirely a whole lot to do other than throw in an ESP32 and some LEDs for indicator lights. Put all this into a fun case, and you get one pretty desk ornament for whatever information you wanna display.

If you want to replicate the past again, you might want to look for the project GitHub here. If you’re looking for something even older, check out the replica of the MCM/70!

Discovering SDRs Everywhere

October 17, 2026 by Elliot Williams 16 Comments

To quote commenter [douyarou], “It’s like our little version of a Precambrian explosion”. A bunch of hackers have discovered, independently and building on each other’s work, software-defined radio (SDR) capabilities in more places than you can shake a stick at.

It all started with [Espargos] and [h0m3us3r] apparently independently discovering that the ESP32 family of chips had a “secret” debug mode that allowed direct access to the radio that’s normally used for WiFi. While the 2.4 GHz radio signal is almost always immediately converted into data by the MAC hardware, here they found a way to listen in upstream, to the raw IQ data.

Seeing this, folks were immediately inspired to find out if they could transmit as well. [marble] not only got transmit functionality working, but integrated the part in with the standard osmosdr data flow, which meant that a whole bunch of existing tools were ready to go. We didn’t know about it at the time, but apparently [jochenhammes] and [z1000biker] concurrently had their TX-capable hacks up and running: here and here.

At this point, folks have already started to use the capabilities for broadcasting digital TV signals, voice signals, FM Hell, and other hijinks. This reminds us of the early days of the RTL-SDR project, when a competent, if receive-only, SDR functionality was found in a bunch of USB TV-tuner dongles. Once the hardware capabilities were sussed out, people started writing all sorts of useful software, and it gave rise to all manner of radio projects, from simply poking at domestic wireless devices to tracking all the airplanes in the world as they fly by.

[Tom] and I were discussing this on the podcast, and he remarked that of course there are SDRs hidden everywhere there is a radio unit these days, and the question is just whether or not we could hack them into usability. And before the podcast was even finally edited, [Samson1te] told us about his find in the LR2021 LoRa chip. This is a radio that’s designed to be a radio, with 16-bit resolution, and covering lower frequencies from 150 MHz to 960 MHz.

Compared to the RTL-SDR revolution, this is all happening at incredible speed. Each of these hacks will enable us to use different slices of radio spectrum with different degrees of ease, but it’s clear that the cost of entry into playing around with digital radio has just dropped precipitously. We will see hundreds of new signals hacks in the next few months – the floodgates have been opened.

SolidCraft Is Parametric, Automation-friendly CAD For Desktop And Browser

October 17, 2026 by Donald Papp 23 Comments

If you’re looking to try a new, open source 3D modeling CAD suite, especially one with automation-friendly interfaces, take a look at SolidCraft. It’s under development but there’s support for all the usual features like sketches, solid modeling, and constraints as well as a full parametric feature timeline.

SolidCraft offers desktop, browser-based, headless CLI, and MCP interfaces.

A parametric timeline essentially means the model exists not as a single discrete object, but as the sum of a sequence of operations. One advantage of this is being able to set things up so that if one changes a value (like wall thickness), all the features that depend on that change automatically get rebuilt as a result. But there’s more!

Written entirely in Rust, SolidCraft can run as a desktop app or as a web app in a browser. Everything the user can do in SolidCraft is a command with JSON parameters, and it offers a built-in headless command line interface and even an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server built specifically to give AI agents a way to use the program, should one be interested in experimenting with that sort of thing.

SolidCraft is still in early development, but so far quite a few features seem to work as they should. Check out the development roadmap for details, and there’s a live online demo if you’re in the mood to click around and get a feel for things.

We have seen quite a few open-source, browser-based CAD efforts over the years and it’s encouraging to see developers continuing to explore fresh ideas and features in the CAD landscape.

Making One Fender From Another

October 17, 2026 by Jenny List 8 Comments

There’s a tendency among cherished brands to licence their name and logo onto all sorts of novelty items in order to make a quick buck. Joining this trend is the guitar maker Fender, who have lent their name to a chopping board in the shape of their famous Telecaster. The existence of such a product seems to have been a direct challenge to [Not A Luthier], who promptly bought one and turned it into a real guitar. It’s a genuine Fender, but is it a genuine Fender guitar? Not really, but it’s an entertaining build.

The chopping board isn’t made of great material, instead it’s a set of strips of wood, we’re guessing probably bamboo or rubberwood, glued together. It’s robust, but noticeably thinner than the guitar whose shape it takes, and with a not-great finish. The build is not too different from any other electric guitar build we’ve seen, with the main challenge being that the bridge and pickups need spacers underneath them to compensate for the reduced thickness of the wood.

The video is below the break and makes for a soothing watch as an in-depth guitar build, complete with a moment of drilling all the way through the board and fabricating a plug to hide the evidence. The final guitar seems to sound alright, but we’re not guitarists so maybe a more practiced ear should judge. The genuine Fender logo is still proudly on it so it’s a Fender of sorts, but just like with the chopping board, it’s best value is in novelty.

Meanwhile if guitar builds are a thing, we’ve had a few in the past.

Continue reading “Making One Fender From Another” →