Embedded & Hardware

87 explainers
Ghostty and the Art of Architectural Stubbornness
Embedded & Hardware
Ghostty and the Art of Architectural Stubbornness
Why the most anticipated terminal in a decade rejected cross-platform frameworks to build a native-first future in Zig.
8 min read
The $9 Through-Wall Radar: Inside RuView
Embedded & Hardware
The $9 Through-Wall Radar: Inside RuView
How a Rust-powered edge mesh turns raw WiFi signals into real-time human pose maps without a single lens.
8 min read
PicoClaw: The AI Agent Framework Built for $10 Hardware and 10MB RAM
Embedded & Hardware
PicoClaw: The AI Agent Framework Built for $10 Hardware and 10MB RAM
A Go-based, cross-platform agent stack that treats embedded boards, fast boot times, and self-bootstrapped development as the real design center.
11 min read
ArduPilot: The Open-Source Autopilot That Learned to Fly, Drive, and Dive
Embedded & Hardware
ArduPilot: The Open-Source Autopilot That Learned to Fly, Drive, and Dive
A look inside the portable control stack that lets one C++ core power copters, planes, rovers, and submarines with hard real-time discipline and a surprisingly flexible mode system.
10 min read
Stockfish: The 64-Bit Sovereign
Embedded & Hardware
Stockfish: The 64-Bit Sovereign
How a distributed army of CPUs and a "tiny" neural network won the war for chess supremacy.
12 min read
Stockfish: The Distributed God of the 64 Squares
Embedded & Hardware
Stockfish: The Distributed God of the 64 Squares
How a volunteer-driven C++ monolith absorbed the power of neural networks to become the most successful open-source predator in history.
12 min read
Klipper: The 3D Printer Firmware That Split Time in Two
Embedded & Hardware
Klipper: The 3D Printer Firmware That Split Time in Two
A Python host, a timing-obsessed MCU, and a configuration model that turned 3D printing firmware into a distributed system.
11 min read
FreeMoCap: The Open-Source Lab That Turns Webcams Into Motion-Capture Data
Embedded & Hardware
FreeMoCap: The Open-Source Lab That Turns Webcams Into Motion-Capture Data
This repo is not just about tracking bodies. It turns calibration, triangulation, cleanup, and analysis into a repeatable pipeline for research-grade motion capture.
9 min read
WhatCable: The USB-C Truth Layer Mac Users Didn’t Know They Needed
Embedded & Hardware
WhatCable: The USB-C Truth Layer Mac Users Didn’t Know They Needed
A Swift menu bar app that turns Apple Silicon’s hidden USB-C state into plain English, exposes bad cables, and explains why your Mac is charging slowly.
8 min read
OrcaSlicer-bambulab: The Fork That Put a Linux Bridge Between a Slicer and a Cloud Lockout
Embedded & Hardware
OrcaSlicer-bambulab: The Fork That Put a Linux Bridge Between a Slicer and a Cloud Lockout
A Windows build that depends on WSL 2, a CI pipeline that ships a Linux runtime, and a community fork that rebuilt BambuNetwork support instead of settling for LAN-only mode.
10 min read
ground-station: Ground Station: The Software-Defined OS for Satellite Passes
Embedded & Hardware
ground-station: Ground Station: The Software-Defined OS for Satellite Passes
An open-source control plane that fuses orbital prediction, SDR orchestration, automated observations, and real-time transcription into one web-native radio stack.
11 min read
Keychron-Keyboards-Hardware-Design: The Keyboard Brand That Published the Factory Truth
Embedded & Hardware
Keychron-Keyboards-Hardware-Design: The Keyboard Brand That Published the Factory Truth
A rare look at how Keychron turned production CAD into a modding platform, giving makers the geometry for cases, plates, and accessories while keeping the PCB layer closed.
9 min read
Skylight Turns Your Ceiling Into a Live Sky Map
Embedded & Hardware
Skylight Turns Your Ceiling Into a Live Sky Map
A projection-first ADS-B system that blends aircraft, stars, satellites, and local radio data into one room-scale illusion.
8 min read
Goose: A Swift Kernel Extension Proof of Concept
Embedded & Hardware
Goose: A Swift Kernel Extension Proof of Concept
An experimental macOS project that tests a simple but sharp idea: can Swift do work usually reserved for C, C++, and Rust at the system boundary?
8 min read
The BIOS-less Boot: Inside jpd002/play-
Embedded & Hardware
The BIOS-less Boot: Inside jpd002/play-
How a monolithic C++ architecture reverse-engineered the PlayStation 2 operating system to run on everything from iPhones to web browsers.
8 min read
esp32-ai: The LLM That Treats Flash Like Memory
Embedded & Hardware
esp32-ai: The LLM That Treats Flash Like Memory
How slvDev/esp32-ai runs a 28.9M-parameter language model on an ESP32-S3 by splitting weights across SRAM, PSRAM, and Flash, then reading only what each token actually needs.
9 min read
tscircuit: Shipping Hardware at the Speed of a Pull Request
Embedded & Hardware
tscircuit: Shipping Hardware at the Speed of a Pull Request
How a React Fiber reconciler is replacing the GUI-heavy CAD tools of the past with a "Web-native" hardware compiler.
8 min read
SmartNode: The Python Simulator That Turns Satellites Into a Scheduling Problem
Embedded & Hardware
SmartNode: The Python Simulator That Turns Satellites Into a Scheduling Problem
A 3D command center for testing data backhaul, link availability, and resource contention across GEO and LEO networks.
10 min read
Generals-Mac-iOS-iPad: How a 2003 RTS Engine Learned to Speak Apple Silicon
Embedded & Hardware
Generals-Mac-iOS-iPad: How a 2003 RTS Engine Learned to Speak Apple Silicon
A native port of Command & Conquer: Generals: Zero Hour that threads DirectX 8 through Vulkan and Metal, remaps RTS controls for touch, and preserves the original simulation on modern Apple devices.
9 min read
AgentENV: The Distributed Sandbox That Treats AI Agents Like Stateful Processes
Embedded & Hardware
AgentENV: The Distributed Sandbox That Treats AI Agents Like Stateful Processes
How a Rust and Go cluster uses Firecracker, lazy image loading, and snapshot-aware routing to run agent environments at scale without losing identity, speed, or forkability.
10 min read
V3SP3R turns the Flipper Zero into a conversational control plane
Embedded & Hardware
V3SP3R turns the Flipper Zero into a conversational control plane
The Android app maps plain language to hardware actions, then wraps the whole thing in risk checks, protocol translation, and live recovery.
13 min read
Ghostling: Stripping the Terminal to its High-Performance Core
Embedded & Hardware
Ghostling: Stripping the Terminal to its High-Performance Core
How Mitchell Hashimoto decoupled the terminal engine from the emulator to create a universal, embeddable CLI component.
6 min read
TurboVLA: The Robot Policy That Ditches the LLM Bottleneck
Embedded & Hardware
TurboVLA: The Robot Policy That Ditches the LLM Bottleneck
A compact vision-language-action model that uses bidirectional fusion and chunked continuous control to hit real-time performance on consumer hardware.
8 min read
OpenOrbis-PS4-Toolchain: OpenOrbis PS4 Toolchain: The Clean-Room SDK That Makes a PS4 Feel Like a Normal Compiler Target
Embedded & Hardware
OpenOrbis-PS4-Toolchain: OpenOrbis PS4 Toolchain: The Clean-Room SDK That Makes a PS4 Feel Like a Normal Compiler Target
A reverse-engineered toolchain, custom file formats, and LLVM-based plumbing let developers build native PS4 homebrew without Sony’s SDK.
9 min read
soma-retargeter: SOMA Retargeter: The Soft-Limit Trick That Makes Human Motion Fit a Robot Body
Embedded & Hardware
soma-retargeter: SOMA Retargeter: The Soft-Limit Trick That Makes Human Motion Fit a Robot Body
Inside NVIDIA’s open-source retargeting pipeline, where a standardized human skeleton, GPU-accelerated IK, and foot stabilization turn BVH motion into robot-ready joint data.
8 min read
prind: The Printer Stack That Treats Your OS Like a Swappable Part
Embedded & Hardware
prind: The Printer Stack That Treats Your OS Like a Swappable Part
How a Docker-first Klipper environment separates firmware, API, UI, and tooling so you can run a serious 3D printer setup on almost any Linux host, with fewer dependency traps and cleaner scaling.
9 min read
PlaCo: The Robotics Library That Turns Balance Into a Constraint Problem
Embedded & Hardware
PlaCo: The Robotics Library That Turns Balance Into a Constraint Problem
A C++ and Python planning stack from Rhoban that turns humanoid motion into prioritized tasks, then solves them fast enough for real robots that cannot afford to fall.
9 min read
100_Days_100_IoT_Projects: 100 Days of Silicon: The MicroPython Blueprint for the Physical Web
Embedded & Hardware
100_Days_100_IoT_Projects: 100 Days of Silicon: The MicroPython Blueprint for the Physical Web
How `100_Days_100_IoT_Projects` transforms the fragmented world of embedded electronics into a readable, repeatable Python curriculum.
Turbodrone: The Universal Remote That Frees Cheap Drones From Their Apps
Embedded & Hardware
Turbodrone: The Universal Remote That Frees Cheap Drones From Their Apps
A reverse-engineered control stack that normalizes flight commands, rescues video feeds, and turns low-cost WiFi drones into programmable robotics hardware.
9 min read
Ekyso/StS2-Launcher: Performing Runtime Surgery on Slay the Spire 2
Embedded & Hardware
Ekyso/StS2-Launcher: Performing Runtime Surgery on Slay the Spire 2
How a custom Godot engine, memory hot-patching, and C-stubs trick a desktop game into running natively on Android without emulation or piracy.
8 min read
PoloNX/SwitchU and the Underground Art of Console UI Engineering
Embedded & Hardware
PoloNX/SwitchU and the Underground Art of Console UI Engineering
How a custom C++ framework and a clever two-process architecture hijacked the Nintendo Switch to resurrect the beloved Wii U interface.
8 min read
Play-Compatibility: The GitHub Issues Database Behind Play!
Embedded & Hardware
Play-Compatibility: The GitHub Issues Database Behind Play!
How a PS2 emulator tracker turns issue templates, labels, and GitHub Actions into a living compatibility pipeline.
8 min read
The Mathematics of Empathy: Inside esp32-smooth-eye-blinking
Embedded & Hardware
The Mathematics of Empathy: Inside esp32-smooth-eye-blinking
How a minimalist C++ sketch uses partial framebuffers and procedural easing to turn a 240MHz microcontroller into a living character.
6 min read
libprotobuf: How One Unreal Plugin Tames Protocol Buffers for Every Platform
Embedded & Hardware
libprotobuf: How One Unreal Plugin Tames Protocol Buffers for Every Platform
A look inside the build glue, warning suppression, and platform patches that turn Google’s C++ serializer into something UE4 can actually ship with.
8 min read
genebrawl-public: Gene Brawl: The TypeScript Control Layer That Rewrites a Mobile Game in Memory
Embedded & Hardware
genebrawl-public: Gene Brawl: The TypeScript Control Layer That Rewrites a Mobile Game in Memory
A Frida-powered mod for Brawl Stars that hooks native functions, patches behavior at runtime, and uses a high-level runtime to manage a low-level client.
10 min read
SLAMBox: The Node Graph That Turns SLAM Into Something You Can Edit Live
Embedded & Hardware
SLAMBox: The Node Graph That Turns SLAM Into Something You Can Edit Live
A visual programming layer for feature detection, matching, triangulation, and optimization, built to make spatial AI easier to explore, debug, and teach.
8 min read
tele-bot-ipa: Turning Telegram Into a Remote IPA Decryption Console
Embedded & Hardware
tele-bot-ipa: Turning Telegram Into a Remote IPA Decryption Console
A chat bot that drives a jailbroken iPhone, serializes one decrypt job at a time, and ships oversized outputs through a user-session detour.
7 min read
Humanoid Atlas: X-Raying the Robot Economy
Embedded & Hardware
Humanoid Atlas: X-Raying the Robot Economy
Mapping the high-stakes dependencies, geopolitical bottlenecks, and 3D skeletons of the humanoid supply chain.
8 min read
so101-ros-physical-ai: The ROS 2 Stack That Lets a Cheap Robot Arm Borrow a Bigger Brain
Embedded & Hardware
so101-ros-physical-ai: The ROS 2 Stack That Lets a Cheap Robot Arm Borrow a Bigger Brain
A full imitation-learning pipeline for the SO-101 arm, from teleoperation and rosbag recording to LeRobot training and remote policy inference over gRPC or ZMQ.
10 min read
ZeroAI: The Persistent Rust Daemon Turning Android into an Autonomous Agent OS
Embedded & Hardware
ZeroAI: The Persistent Rust Daemon Turning Android into an Autonomous Agent OS
Moving beyond the chat window to build a sovereign, hardware-secured intelligence that lives in the background of your pocket.
8 min read
testflight-lower-install: Why One Fake iOS Version Is Not Enough
Embedded & Hardware
testflight-lower-install: Why One Fake iOS Version Is Not Enough
Inside the jailbreak tweak that persuades both TestFlight and `installd` to accept apps built for newer firmware, and why that double lie is the whole trick.
8 min read
Bypassing the Standard Library: Inside jpd002/Play--Framework
Embedded & Hardware
Bypassing the Standard Library: Inside jpd002/Play--Framework
How a custom C++ utility layer achieves the bit-exact precision needed to emulate legacy console architecture on modern hardware.
8 min read
prosper-together: Prosper Together: How a PS4 and PS5 Save File Becomes a LuaJIT Escape Hatch
Embedded & Hardware
prosper-together: Prosper Together: How a PS4 and PS5 Save File Becomes a LuaJIT Escape Hatch
A game-specific exploit for Don’t Starve Together turns save-data injection, sandbox leakage, and bytecode trickery into a reusable userland control surface.
8 min read
Reclaiming the Island: Inside the ShimaStyle SpringBoard Hijack
Embedded & Hardware
Reclaiming the Island: Inside the ShimaStyle SpringBoard Hijack
How a lightweight Objective-C tweak uses multi-tiered hooks and private APIs to turn Apple’s most rigid UI element into a customizable canvas.
6 min read
`plutoniummod/t5-scripts`: The Scripted Nervous System of Black Ops Multiplayer
Embedded & Hardware
`plutoniummod/t5-scripts`: The Scripted Nervous System of Black Ops Multiplayer
Inside the callback bridge, per-player threads, and DVAR knobs that let a 2010 shooter act like a live server framework.
11 min read
qcacld-2.0: The Vendor Wi‑Fi Driver That Hides a Whole Operating Model
Embedded & Hardware
qcacld-2.0: The Vendor Wi‑Fi Driver That Hides a Whole Operating Model
A deep look at Qualcomm’s split-MAC architecture, the VOS portability layer, and the offload machinery that keeps out-of-tree WLAN support alive across modern Linux kernels.
10 min read
UTOSS/risc-v: The 5-Stage CPU That Teaches You Where the Clock Gets Mean
Embedded & Hardware
UTOSS/risc-v: The 5-Stage CPU That Teaches You Where the Clock Gets Mean
A clean SystemVerilog pipeline, a synchronous-memory fetch stage, and the hazard logic that keeps a real RISC-V core honest.
9 min read
esp3d-homeassistant: Eavesdropping on the Extruder
Embedded & Hardware
esp3d-homeassistant: Eavesdropping on the Extruder
How a clever Python event loop and a four-dollar microchip turned a vintage industrial protocol into a modern smart home integration.
7 min read