Tindie

You may well have seen the Micro Journal device before as it’s featured heavily over on Hackaday and been picked up by lots of sites. It’s a fabulous concept for those looking to dramatically reduce distraction whilst writing. Built around an ESP32 microcontroller and a display with an SD card, slot the Micro Journal adds mechanical keyswitches to round out this chic portable device. Often sold as a complete device, it’s great to see this Micro Journal DIY Kit version hit the Tindie shelves.

The kit supplies the majority of the bill of materials needed to create a revision 6 build of the Micro Journal. This includes the custom PCB for the mechanical keyboard, the enclosure parts, the ESP32, the display and SD card holder, the battery holder and all the fixings and fasteners. You’ll need to add an 18650 cell which are pretty common to source; you’ll also need to add the Cherry MX (or compatible) keyswitches and keycaps of your choice to round out the build.

The onboard SD card acts as local storage and, as Micro Journal is all text based, even a tiny 2GB card is going to be able to contain an individual’s lifetime of work. Yes, it will hold around 400 million words! For ease of use though you can set up Micro Journal to sync to your Google Drive (and, presumably, other similar services) meaning your work is near instantly available for further editing.

An 18650 cell will give around 30 hours of distraction free writing time and due to the nature of the ESP32 and firmware the device is instant on, meaning it’s ready whenever and wherever you are when inspiration strikes.  You’ll need a few basic tools like screwdrivers and a glue gun to assemble the kit but the build process and the whole project is well documented. Just check out the GitHub and documentation links on the product page!

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If you’ve even just skirted the periphery of badge life culture, you’ll know of SAO, or Simple Add Ons. They are small boards that add some decorative or functional features to many conference badges with a compatible SAO 6-pin connector. The six pins are a 3.3V supply and ground, a pair of GPIO and an I2C bus. If you are working on a SAO that uses more than just the power pins it can be cumbersome to have to use a conference badge for testing and development. The SAO Demo Controller solves this with a small standalone RP2040-based SAO development board.

Supplied in kit form, the included RP2040- Zero is hooked up to a custom PCB and there are two SAO connectors oriented at 90 degrees to each other. This is a simple but fantastic feature that accommodates a wide variety of SAO form factors. There is also a pair of qwiic/STEMMA QT sockets on board making it trivial to add further I2C devices for experimentation and development.

All the pins of the RP2040-Zero are broken out and the unit is powered via the USB C connector. On board the RP2040-Zero there is an RGB LED visible which can be utilised as a power indicator or for other feedback. It’s a perfect device for SAO development if you aren’t lucky enough to have a SAO equipped conference badge, but it also could be handy when doing simple demonstrations or for simply showing off your SAO collection. Bring one of these along to Supercon in case someone has trouble with their SAO at the last minute!

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The CardKB from M5Stack is a useful, tiny keyboard. With it’s small low-profile tactile switches and its credit card footprint, it’s become a popular choice for small builds requiring keyboard input. This Silicone Cover for CardKB adds a layer of luxury and protection to your tiny keyboard.

Whilst the CardKB isn’t included in this product it’s worth noting a few details about the CardKB itself. It’s primarily a keyboard layout with an I2C interface via a Grove connector. It can be programmed via the Arduino IDE or M5Stack’s UIFlow environments. There’s an addressable RGB LED on board for feedback and interestingly the device is somewhat Lego compatible with two mounting holes being the standard brick size and spacing. With all this functionality in a small package and a low price, it’s become a popular add-on for all manner of projects, both within the M5Stack ecosystem and beyond.

Back to the silicone cover; it covers the entire CardKB PCB apart from the Grove connector, so as well as making the whole device a little softer, it offers some protection to the keyboard. While it doesn’t make the device waterproof, we can imagine this cover combined with some kind of enclosure making for a pretty rugged setup.

The cover is available in black or white silicone with printed characters on all the keycaps. Check it out if you want to add some style to your next pocket computer project!

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It’s truly a testament to the huge computational power we’ve seen come to less expensive microcontrollers over the last years that many of them can generate video signals on the fly. The Pico has recently been used to directly generate DVI for HDMI signalling, and many other microcontrollers can generate VGA using a simple resistor ladder DAC. However, controlling six VGA displays at the same time truly is absolute madness!

In the past few years, an application like this would almost certainly have been done with an FPGA using six VGA design blocks, with a very fast serial interface to a microcontroller to get the display information. The fact that a single ESP32 can do this is truly remarkable and is a testament to the hardware and software skills of bitluni.

Why would you want to control 6 VGA displays at the same time? Well, other than it just being a super cool challenge, you could use the inexpensive ESP32 to generate a large 3×2 tiled screen for message display — bezels can sometimes be an issue in these applications, so your options are to look for VGA displays with tiny bezels or remove the bezels altogether and 3D print a custom retaining bracket for all the display guts.

It looks like there are only a few of these available due to parts shortages right now, but we are really hoping to see a future version released here! bitluni also has a few other VGA-related boards on their store page, so make sure to check them out if you miss out on this batch of the VGA Madness boards.

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While the name “SAO” might generate lots of heated discussion about what it should stand for (Simple Add On, SuperCon Add On, or its earlier more unmentionable name) the premise of what they are is straightforward. These little SAO doohickeys are small circuits that can be added on to SAO-compatible badges, with many hacker/geek/maker conferences badges being SAO compliant, featuring the standard SAO 6-pin header on board. These revamped Rocket SAO are a beautiful example of a fabulous badge adornment using diffused reverse mount NeoPixel addressable RGB LEDs to light and animate parts of the design.

The lovingly crafted PCBs are now available in red, blue or purple solder masks and each one features 3 NeoPixel mounted on the reverse. Aside from the SAO 6-pin connector, there is an ATtiny 412 microcontroller on board with one of the 6-pin connectors used as a UPDI pin to make it easy to program. If you haven’t used the slightly newer ATtiny412 before there are plenty of excellent tutorials online and it’s very similar to using the older ATtiny85 variants, plus they are compatible with the Arduino IDE.

While we can appreciate how good these would look attached to a nice conference badge SAO connector, we love that these also have fittings to attach to a small lanyard or key ring and we think they would look lovely connected as a series of rockets in flight!

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The Open Souce Hardware Association have been a driving force in certifying and promoting open-source hardware. This year, they’re having a fundraising drive and will be doing a live stream on October 2nd to kick off October, which is Open Hardware Month! Part of this stream is about sharing and discussing open hardware projects, talking about how to get projects certified, and also trying to get 100 new OSHWA members.

Supporting OSHWA is a great way to help promote open hardware in general and OSHWA certification in particular! It also helps them organize and put on the annual Open Hardware Summit, which this year was in Montreal, Canada if you missed it. It was an awesome event with tons of great talks and workshops, and the 2025 event promises to be just as amazing. It will be taking place in Edinburgh, Scotland this coming May 30th and 31st, 2025!

I (Tindie Blog editor Alexander Rowsell) will be on the Show & Tell stream at 9:20PM Eastern Time to talk about Tindie’s relationship with Open Hardware and how we promote Certified Open Hardware on the website! Drop by if you have any questions for me, and be sure to tune in and catch all the fabulous people that will be talking about all sorts of cool projects.

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Tindie contains a huge amount of accessories, add-on boards and kits for the Flipper Zero. We have boards that expand the frequency ranges, macro keypads, IR blasters, game link devices and more. Sometimes Flipper Zero modification feels like Game Boy modding; no more so than when we spotted this RGB Backlight mod.

The RGB LED module consists of the LEDs and a PCB which needs soldering into position inside your Flipper Zero. One nice aspect is that this board is compatible with all the different versions of the Flipper Zero so you don’t need to worry about compatibility.

Supplied with a little bit of 28 AWG wire this is a pretty straightforward mod. Note that you will void the warranty of your Flipper Zero if you crack it open and fit this mod. Speaking of opening the Flipper Zero, note that the supplied screws that come with the Flipper Zero aren’t the best quality. There is an option to add some better quality ones to your order in case you strip the originals when removing them. If all this sounds a bit much but you still want to bathe in the glorious RGB goodness then there’s also a link on the product page to an installation service.

Finally, you’ll need to flash a custom firmware to have control of the RGB backlight module in the Flipper Zero menu systems. There are plenty of suggestions for suitable firmware again on the product page. Your Flipper Zero will stand out among the crowd once you’ve got this board fitted!

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The classic NES. It brought a whole new generation of video game consoles to market, showing what could be done with the more modern technology that had developed since the previous generation of consoles. Though we in the West missed out on some of the cool features of the Famicom (like Famicom BASIC!) we certainly did get our share of amazing video games. The Legend of Zelda. Super Mario Bros. Metroid. Final Fantasy. Castlevania. So many incredible series got their start on the humble NES. But for us collectors who nurse our old hardware, it can get pricey and difficult to maintain things. Introducing the USB-C Power Mod for the NES. Internally, the NES runs everything on 5 V, so why not supply it that instead of having it generate it with a fairly inefficient supply?

The design here is extremely well-made. It fits in perfectly with the back panel, looking quite natural. Only those who know what they are looking at will realize the anachronistic USB-C connector. Installation does require some desoldering, so make sure to use the right tools. A vacuum desoldering pump is ideal, but a solder sucker can work if you get a decent amount of heat into the board.

The trick is to use a combination attack — a decent soldering iron to apply some fresh solder, a hot air gun to heat up the board and ground plane surrounding the points to be desoldered, and if you have it, a small hot plate to heat the opposite side of the board where needed. The number one cause of damage when desoldering is not getting the area well-soaked in heat. Remember, it doesn’t need to be hotter than your usual soldering temperature, it just takes time for the heat to permeate into the copper and attached components. Hot air is a must for a clean job! The designer, GilTesa, wrote a great installation guide that will walk you through the whole process. They also have a ton of other USB-C mods for various consoles that are worth checking out.

Once complete, the only downside is the RF output will no longer function, though I doubt that is much of a problem for most modern NES owners. There are mods to get even better quality video out, so you might want to take a look around for one of those to install at the same time! Then you can power your NES off of a power bank, and with a small composite monitor that runs off of USB, you could play Final Fantasy at your local park!

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I tend to avoid posting about products where the information on the product page isn’t totally clear, but this one has me a little intrigued.  What we can definitely tell from the product write-up is that it’s a fun LED mask that looks great!

What is a little less clear is some of the functionality. It’s stated that there are 50 LED patterns with 2 banks, one containing 25 dynamic animations and the other containing 25 static patterns. Searching around online there are similar-looking masks with more memory and Bluetooth to connect to apps which make for a more versatile mask, but they seem to be double or triple the price. This one lists no such features, but does allude to a “gesture sensor”. Our best guess is that when enabled you might be able to swipe your hand in front of a sensor to change the display to the next pattern in the bank, but we really aren’t sure.

Made from ABS the mask is described as lightweight and comfortable to wear and with its internal battery can last for 8-10 hours before re-charging via the USB C port.

So while this perhaps isn’t a wholehearted recommendation, this product definitely falls into the devices that might be useful to hack around on!

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At first glance, you might just presume this is a regular off-the-shelf Raspberry Pi Pico. Your eye might then be drawn to the USB C connector and the very keen-eyed might notice a few slightly different components on board. However, delve a little deeper, and this is an extensively modified and rugged almost indestructible re-imagining called the Dact Pico.

The first major headline is this Pico-compatible board has over-voltage and over-current protection and also includes discharge protection on every IO pin. The switching power supply on board can receive up to 32 volts without issue, dramatically increasing power options for the board; it can also supply up to 700mA as a constant supply and up to 2A as a burst. There are ferrites on the power input and plenty of extra bypass capacitors meaning the supply is very clean. Polyfuses, standard diodes and transient voltage suppression diodes also abound should you try to connect things up backward or accidentally short an output.

USB-C is a nice addition and is slowly becoming the de-facto standard for developer boards and again the USB input is well-protected with fuses nearby. The other additional feature above and beyond the standard Pico is that the Dact Pico has a reset button on board.

It seems like everything is a well-thought-out addition to the Dact Pico and you’ll have to work pretty hard to damage it. It’s perfect for a mission-critical Pico project!

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