We see some strange software around these parts, but this is probably the strangest. DIVINER is a firmware for the M5 Cardputer, which is an interesting device in its own right, being essentially a tiny ESP32-S3 dev kit with an even tinier screen, keyboard, some GPIOs, I2C, and an audio jack for output. It is essentially a blank canvas that can do anything if you write the firmware for it.

And that’s what DIVINER does: a little of everything. It’s part standalone synthesizer and sequencer, taking advantage of the I2S audio out, part visualization engine, part WiFi and Bluetooth scanner and monitor (what?), with an LLM interface and an IR blaster thrown in for good measure. [voidrane Splicer] even explores the Channel-State Information to do presence detection, like we’ve seen recently elsewhere. Byte-beat player anyone?

The Hackaday.io page talks about the underlying system layer before it even gets to the applications, and we get the feeling that all of the different apps, called “rites”, were crammed in to exercise it and show off the “blood and ember”, Diablo-esque visual style. But that doesn’t stop us from enjoying the audio engine, demonstrated in the video below, or the awesome graphics.

Do these apps hang together more than visually? Do they need to? Is the sum of the parts so large that you don’t even worry about the whole? We don’t know, but it’s also got a simulator so you can try that out while your Cardputer is shipping.

Continue reading “DIVINER: Occult Synth Firmware For The Cardputer” →