Tag Archives: Gadgets

MagSafe Breadboard Turns Your iPhone Into a Circuit Prototyping Lab

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Show me another MagSafe breadboard. I’ll wait. Kevin Yang’s Commi Board is the only one, and that alone tells you something about how design students occasionally see opportunities that entire industries miss. The engineering is smarter than it looks: instead of embedding a full microcontroller and battery into a phone accessory, Yang uses GPIO communication to let your smartphone handle the processing. Your phone already has more power than an Arduino Mega, better connectivity than most dev boards, and a screen you actually want to look at. Commi Board just provides the physical interface for components and the software to make it work. You get four programming methods ranging from conversational AI to a proper IDE, real-time circuit validation, and a small display that shows execution status. Dimensions are tight: 62mm by 98mm when installed, with the board itself at 62mm by 82mm when detached.

The color scheme gives strong Flipper Zero vibes, but there’s a key difference between that infamous pen-testing tool and this humble breadboard. Flipper wants to be everything: NFC reader, IR blaster, sub-GHz radio, GPIO interface, and more. Commi Board has a tighter scope and probably benefits from that focus. It’s specifically for prototyping circuits and validating code, not for pentesting your neighbor’s garage door. The modular design splits into the breadboard surface and a MagSafe mounting frame with that distinctive ring cutout for phone cameras. Everything connects through USB-C 3.2, BLE, or Bluetooth, and the cloud storage means you can start a project on your phone and pick it up later without dealing with local file management. Yang has a working theoretical PCB prototype with tested connectivity, though the full API integration is still in mockup phase. For a student project that started in June 2024, this is surprisingly far along.

Designer: Kevin Yang

Most IoT hardware tries to do everything and ends up mediocre at all of it. You get a device with its own processor, battery, screen, and connectivity stack, essentially rebuilding a worse version of the phone already in your pocket. Yang went the opposite direction. Commi Board is parasitic by design, borrowing your phone’s computational power, display, internet connection, and power management. What remains is pure interface: holes for components, GPIO pins for communication, and minimal onboard electronics to translate between physical circuits and software. This approach means lower weight, cheaper manufacturing, and no battery degradation to worry about in three years. After 3 years, swap your phone, but continue your tinkering. Sounds almost revolutionary, no?

You can tell Yang actually built and tested this thing because of how the modular split works. Sometimes you want the board magnetically stuck to your phone for portable testing. Other times you need it detached because your circuit blocks the camera or needs more space to breathe. The MagSafe frame has that circular cutout positioned exactly where iPhone camera arrays sit, which matters more than it sounds. Misalign that by a few millimeters and the magnetic connection feels sketchy. The orange border serves double duty as brand identity and a visual indicator of where the two pieces separate. Good industrial design makes functional divisions obvious without needing instruction manuals, and this pulls it off cleanly.

Four programming methods cover a wide range of experience levels, from ‘never touched circuitry in my life’ to ‘I ship builds and hardware for a living.’ Beginners can type “make an LED blink every second” and watch AI spit out working code. That builds intuition about syntax without requiring fluency first, which is how people actually learn instead of how computer science departments think they should learn. Visual block programming handles the intermediate phase where you understand logic flow but typing semicolons still feels unnatural. Puzzle-piece interfaces work surprisingly well for teaching conditionals because the physical constraints mirror logical ones. Then there’s the full IDE for anyone comfortable with text editors or shipping actual products. Most educational platforms force you to switch ecosystems as you level up, losing all your previous projects in the migration. This keeps you on the same hardware using the same project files, just changing how you communicate with the circuits.

Yang claims GPIO communication lets the phone simulate most microcontrollers, which holds up for Arduino-class applications but gets questionable under pressure. Smartphones have absurd amounts of raw compute, but they run full operating systems with schedulers and background processes that introduce latency. Blinking LEDs and reading sensors? Totally fine. Tight timing loops or bit-banging niche protocols? You’ll probably hit walls. The spec sheet lists USB-C 3.2 alongside Bluetooth and BLE, which tells me Yang ran into exactly these problems during development. USB-C handles the demanding stuff while Bluetooth covers casual wireless control. That’s the kind of tiered connectivity you see from someone who tested their assumptions and had to architect around reality.

And the Commi Board comes with cloud storage too, allowing you to save your projects/builds/experiments in a secure place that isn’t bound to your phone. Imagine the alternative – you get inspired, start wiring something up, then life happens and three weeks later you can’t remember which transistor you needed or where you saved that working code. Friction kills momentum harder than technical difficulty does. Being able to pull up a half-finished project on your phone while standing in a component aisle trying to remember your parts list solves a real problem. The project-sharing community is obviously coming next, which transforms this from a standalone product into a platform. If Yang opens the API properly for third-party development, this could turn into something way bigger than a thesis project. Right now there’s a working PCB prototype with tested connectivity, which means the core tech functions. Let’s hope Yang gets to a point where he can take this to a startup level, or even crowdfunding. I know I’d have my money ready.

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Record setting Pocket Lab shrinks a full AI supercomputer into the size of a power bank

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We have come a long way from the computers the size of entire rooms to the sleek personal computers that sit comfortably on our desks. The evolution of computing has consistently pushed toward smaller form factors and greater efficiency. The Mac mini, for example, illustrates how compact modern PCs have become. Yet the question persists: how miniature can a powerful computing device truly be? A recent Guinness World Records certification offers a striking answer.

Tiiny AI, a US-based deep-tech startup, has unveiled the Pocket Lab, officially verified as the “world’s smallest personal AI supercomputer.” This palm-sized device, no larger than a typical power bank, is capable of running large language models (LLMs) with up to 120 billion parameters entirely on-device, without relying on cloud servers or external GPUs.

Designer: Tiiny AI

At its core, the Pocket Lab aims to make advanced artificial intelligence both personal and private. Traditional AI systems often depend on cloud infrastructure, which can raise concerns around data privacy, latency, and carbon emissions associated with large server farms. The Pocket Lab addresses these issues by enabling fully offline AI computation. All processing, data storage, and inference happen locally on the device, reducing dependence on internet connectivity or cloud resources.

Despite its compact size, measuring 14.2 × 8 × 2.53 centimeters and weighing roughly 300 grams, this mini supercomputer delivers noteworthy computing power. The system operates within a typical 65-watt energy envelope, comparable to a conventional desktop PC, yet manages to support extensive AI workloads. The hardware architecture combines a 12-core ARMv9.2 CPU with a custom heterogeneous module that includes a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU), together achieving approximately 190 TOPS (tera-operations per second) of AI compute performance. This configuration is backed by 80 GB of LPDDR5X memory and a 1 TB solid-state drive, allowing large AI models to run efficiently without external accelerators.

Two key technologies underpin the Pocket Lab’s ability to run large models so efficiently in such a small package. TurboSparse improves inference efficiency through neuron-level sparse activation, reducing computational overhead while preserving model intelligence. PowerInfer, an open-source heterogeneous inference engine with a significant developer following, dynamically distributes workloads across the CPU and NPU, delivering server-grade performance at far lower power and cost than traditional GPU-based solutions.

In practical terms, the Pocket Lab supports a wide ecosystem of open-source AI models and tools. Users can deploy popular LLMs such as GPT-OSS, Llama, Qwen, DeepSeek, Mistral, and Phi, alongside agent frameworks and automation tools, all with one-click installation. This broad software compatibility extends the device’s usefulness beyond enthusiasts and hobbyists to developers, researchers, professionals, and students.

By storing all user data and interactions locally with bank-level encryption, the Pocket Lab also emphasizes privacy and long-term personal memory. This feature contrasts with many cloud-based AI services that retain data on remote servers. Tiiny AI plans to showcase the Pocket Lab at CES 2026, but has not yet disclosed full details on pricing or release dates.

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DIY Lo-Fi Cassette Machine turns Bluetooth streaming into a living, analog kinetic sculpture

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This Lo-Fi Cassette Machine feels like something pulled straight from an alternate timeline—one where streaming never erased the tactile magic of analog media. It takes the quiet charm of a vintage cassette deck, stretches the tape into a kinetic sculpture, and fuses it with modern Bluetooth convenience to create an experience that’s as visual as it is sonic. The moment you see the exposed tape gliding across acrylic panels and the fluorescent VU tube pulsing to the beat, the build instantly recalls the nostalgic futurism that makes retro tech so irresistibly alive.

At its core, this DIY creation is more than a typical Bluetooth speaker. Julius Curt engineered a fully analog tape loop recorder and player with Bluetooth input, custom electronics, and a striking stainless-steel enclosure. Instead of playing streamed music directly, the device first records the Bluetooth audio onto a continuous loop of magnetic tape. The tape then travels through the playback mechanism before delivering sound through an integrated amplifier and speaker. This process infuses the music with the warm saturation, gentle hiss, and subtle pitch fluctuations that define lo-fi tape character, giving familiar digital tracks a tangible, analog soul.

Designer: Julius Makes

Magnetic tape formats, such as compact cassettes, once dominated personal audio, prized for their portability and DIY spirit. They faded from mainstream use as digital formats and streaming services rose to prominence. Yet, they have maintained a cult resurgence among audiophiles and makers who appreciate their physicality and imperfections. Curt’s project taps into this resurgence by exposing every moving part, turning what is usually hidden into the centerpiece of the experience.

The construction blends salvaged and custom components. An old cassette deck forms the foundation, but it is repurposed to drive a looped tape rather than a standard cassette reel system. Custom printed circuit boards designed in KiCad house the Bluetooth module, analog op-amps, and a TDA2030 amplifier, while a reclaimed cold-cathode fluorescent lamp serves as an analog VU meter that visually dances with the audio signal. The housing combines laser-cut acrylic, 3D-printed elements, and sheet-metal work, reflecting a high degree of craftsmanship.

Using the system is simple and engaging. After pairing a Bluetooth device and starting music playback, there is a brief delay—typically around three seconds—while the streamed signal is recorded onto the tape loop and then read back. Once the loop engages, listeners hear their chosen tracks transformed by the analog circuitry and tape path, complete with the characteristic warble and texture that tape enthusiasts seek out.

Beyond its technical novelty, the Lo-Fi Cassette Machine invites reflection on how we interact with sound. Modern streaming prioritizes clarity and convenience, often at the expense of emotional engagement with the medium. This one-off creation takes the opposite route with its unique approach, and that’s what I love.

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Clover Emotion Tracker Turns Small Happy Moments into a Daily Desk Ritual

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People are more stressed than ever, yet still find it hard to talk honestly about how they feel, even with therapists or friends. Most mental health tools live inside apps that want you to rate your mood on a slider or fill out forms about your day, which can feel clinical or like homework you forgot to do. Clover is a concept that tries to make emotional check-ins gentler and more tangible, focusing on collecting small moments that went right instead of cataloging everything that went wrong.

Clover is a small ecosystem built around three pieces: a pocketable voice recorder, a desk-calendar device, and a companion app. Instead of logging stress or symptoms, you press a button and record short voice notes whenever something makes you genuinely happy. Those moments are then visualized on the calendar and analyzed in the app, turning your week into a kind of happiness log that quietly reframes how you see your days.

Designers: Seyeon Park, Bhin Son, Yu Jin Song, Jiwon Park, Jinya Kim

The recorder is a small, circular object with a single orange button and a loop strap, designed to be grabbed and pressed quickly. It is meant for capturing tiny, specific moments, sunlight on your desk, a good cup of tea, a joke from a friend, in your own voice. The goal is to lower the friction so much that recording a positive moment feels as easy as taking a photo, no unlocking, no tapping through screens, just press and speak.

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The desk calendar is a tilted white slab with a large circular dial labeled with days of the week and a small screen that displays words like “Sunlight” or “Spring.” It plays back or summarizes your voice recordings by day, and turning the dial lets you move between Day mode, Q&A mode, and long-term overview modes. Checking your emotional log becomes a physical ritual, more like flipping through a calendar than scrolling a feed or staring at another glowing interface.

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The app brings everything together, with daily cards asking “What is your today?”, weekly and monthly views full of dots and bars, and simple text insights that highlight recurring themes. You can tag entries by time, category, or keywords, and later see which people, places, or activities show up most often in your happiest moments. The analysis stays gentle, showing patterns without drowning you in numbers or making you feel like you failed when a week looks sparse.

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Clover’s visual language, white and grey surfaces with orange accents, soft typography, and a clover icon that appears on hardware and UI, keeps the system from feeling like medical equipment. The core values, self-honesty, emotional balance, and everyday positivity, are baked into how it looks and behaves. It frames itself as a friendly desk object and app you would not mind seeing every day, not a reminder that something is broken.

Clover quietly flips the usual tracking script. Instead of asking you to monitor symptoms or productivity, it asks you to notice and collect small good things, then shows you that they happen more often than you think. For people who are tired of mood sliders and habit streaks, the idea of a physical recorder and calendar that simply help you remember what felt right might be the most calming part of the concept.

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Xteink X4 is a wallet-sized eReader That Snaps Onto Your Phone

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You buy a Kindle or Kobo, load it with books, then leave it on a nightstand while your phone follows you everywhere. Reading apps on phones compete with notifications and social feeds, so you end up doomscrolling instead of finishing that novel you downloaded. Xteink’s X4 tries to solve that by becoming a tiny, magnetic e‑ink sidekick that literally rides on the back of your phone, going wherever it goes.

The Xteink X4 is an ultra-thin magnetic back eReader with a 4.3-inch e‑ink screen and a footprint closer to a deck of cards than a tablet. At 114 by 69 by 5.9 millimeters and just 74 grams, it snaps onto MagSafe or Qi2 compatible phones, or onto any handset using the included adhesive magnetic ring, turning your phone into a dual-screen reading machine without much extra bulk.

Designer: Xteink

The 220 ppi e‑ink display is not as sharp as a Paperwhite, but it is perfectly fine for text at this size. There is no touchscreen and no frontlight, just physical page turn buttons and a power key, so it behaves more like a tiny paperback than a gadget. You need ambient light to read, but in return, you get a very focused, distraction-free surface that does not glow or buzz at you.

The internals are minimal: an ESP32 processor, 128 megabytes of RAM, and a bundled 32GB microSD card with support up to 512GB. The 650mAh battery lasts up to fourteen days with one to three hours of reading per day. It charges over USB-C and connects via 2.4GHz Wi‑Fi and Bluetooth for file transfers, so you can grab books wirelessly or just swap the microSD card.

The X4 only supports EPUB and TXT for documents, plus JPG and BMP for images, and does not run third-party apps or connect to any bookstore. You sideload everything, either over Wi‑Fi or by copying files to the card. For people tied to Kindle or Google Play, this is a hurdle, but for readers with DRM-free libraries, it feels refreshingly simple and vendor-neutral, just you and your files.

Xteink markets it as “More Than a Reader,” suggesting you use the X4 as a digital business card, a tiny calendar, a film production workflow board, or a reference screen for notes and checklists. Because it displays static images and text, it doubles as a little always-on panel you can stick to a monitor, fridge, or phone, not just a book page. The magnetic back makes those experiments feel natural and reversible.

The X4 is really for minimalists, tinkerers, and people who like the idea of a dedicated reading screen that goes everywhere their phone does. It is quirky, with no light, no touch, and no store, but those constraints are the point. It is a tiny reminder to read instead of scroll, thin enough to forget until you need a page instead of a feed, and cheap enough at $69 that the experiment feels worth trying even if you already own a proper eReader gathering dust at home.

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This Tiny Retro PC Is Your Alarm Clock, Speaker, and Pixel Canvas

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Cozy desk setups have become a competitive sport. Tiny CRTs, retro keyboards, and beige plastic everywhere, usually looking very cute but doing very little beyond collecting dust and likes. Most of that gear is either pure decor or pure utility, rarely both. MiniToo leans into the 80s PC silhouette hard, complete with a CRT-style screen and chunky keyboard buttons, but it tries to earn its footprint by being a Bluetooth speaker, alarm clock, white noise machine, and pixel art display all at once.

The MiniToo Retro PC Style Pixel Bluetooth Speaker & Alarm Clock looks like a palm-sized beige desktop computer that escaped from an 8-bit office. The CRT-style screen sits on top with a thick bezel, while the sloped keyboard base sports four large square buttons and a bright orange volume knob. It measures about 3.2 by 2.4 by 2.9 inches and weighs just over 200 grams, small enough to fit between your laptop and coffee cup.

Designer: Kokogol

The 1.77-inch TFT screen runs more than seventy clock faces, from DOS blue screens with chunky pixel fonts to colorful analog dials and animated scenes. The companion app lets you design your own pixel faces, animations, and text, then sync them with a tap. You can also cast photos to the screen, turning it into a tiny digital photo frame that cycles through your favorite shots in gloriously chunky pixel form, which somehow makes even vacation snapshots feel more fun.

The audio side packs a 5-watt full-range driver with enhanced bass reflex tuned for near-field listening, good for a desk or bedside but not built to fill a room. Bluetooth 5.3 handles wireless playback, plus it supports white noise and twelve wake-up sounds. You can set alarms, play music, and fall asleep to ambient sounds, all from the same little box that looks like it should be running floppy disks instead of Spotify or whatever you streamed last night.

Built-in pixel tools include a Pomodoro timer, reminders, and simple games that live on the device. It can sit next to your laptop as a focus timer during the day, then shift to an alarm clock and white noise machine at night. The four front buttons and knob make it easy to use without always reaching for your phone, helping it feel like a standalone object rather than just another Bluetooth accessory demanding app attention.

Connectivity options cover Bluetooth 5.3, USB audio, and TF card playback, so it works with laptops, phones, or local files. The app is still required for deeper customization, but once your faces and sounds are set up, the device runs on its own. The compact size makes it easy to move between desk and bedside, or pack as a little travel speaker with personality and actual utility instead of just nostalgia.

MiniToo is clearly gift-ready, shipped in a neat box, and aimed at teens, designers, and retro lovers who want their desks to look like fun. What makes it interesting is not just the nostalgia, but the way it folds real utility into that nostalgia, giving you a tiny computer that finally behaves like the playful, expressive desk companion those beige boxes never were when they were actually new and just ran spreadsheets.

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This Pocket Hydrator Adjusts Mist Strength Based on Face Distance

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Skin loses the hydration war quietly in today’s modern world. Office air conditioning runs all day, planes recycle cabin air for hours, and cars blast heat or cold depending on the season. Most hydration routines still happen at a bathroom mirror with a cotton pad and a bottle, even though the real damage shows up at desks, in conference rooms, and halfway through a flight when your face feels tight and tired.

NanoHydra Pro tries to close that gap by shrinking a fairly advanced hydrator into something pocket-sized. It looks like a small metallic gadget with a gradient finish, the kind of thing that sits on a desk next to a phone or slips into a bag without announcing itself. A dual pump nano mist system atomizes toner or serum into a 10 micron droplet cloud, fine enough to sit on skin rather than drip off.

Designer: iNewMe

Click Here to Buy Now: $189 $269 (30% off). Hurry, only 121/200! Raised over $109,000.

The 10 micron mist feels different from a regular spray bottle. Most misters shoot larger droplets that either evaporate too fast or run down your cheeks, leaving streaks on your makeup or pooling near your jawline. NanoHydra Pro atomizes liquid into something closer to a soft fog, light enough to absorb quickly without leaving skin wet or sticky, and you can use the same toner you already have.

What makes it feel smarter is the ToF distance sensor built into the front. It reads how close the device is to your face and quietly adjusts mist output in real time. Hold it near, and the spray softens to avoid oversaturating small areas. Pull it back, and coverage expands for broader strokes. Step outside the detection range, and it shuts off automatically, saving product and avoiding accidental desk misting.

The design seems built for people who keep skincare at their desk rather than just in the bathroom. Five modes let you shift between everyday hydration, a gentler setting for sensitive days, a lifting mode when skin feels slack, an infuse mode for deeper serum sessions, and a manual option for one quick burst. Each mode adjusts mist intensity and duration to match the moment.

The battery lasts around a week with regular use, so it sits there ready without becoming another thing to plug in every night. You press a button, pick a mode on the small LCD screen, mist your face, and go back to work. It fits into the kind of routine where hydration happens between calls or emails rather than as a separate event you have to carve out time for at home.

Travel is where the leak-proof capsule starts to matter. The chamber locks toner or serum inside with enough seals that you can toss it into a bag, check it in luggage, or carry it through airport security without spills soaking into clothes or electronics. The compact body fits easily into a jacket pocket or backpack side slot. On a long flight or dry commute, pulling it out and misting your face takes less effort than digging through a toiletry kit.

A companion app adds a layer for people who like tracking routines. It lets you adjust mist intensity, log each session, and review hydration trends over time, turning a simple spritz into something more intentional. The app also offers guidance based on your skin type and habits, though the device still works perfectly well as a one-button hydrator if you would rather skip the data layer entirely.

NanoHydra Pro hints at a version of skincare tools that pay attention to context instead of just pushing liquid through a nozzle. It reads distance, tunes droplet size, and fits into spaces where traditional routines fall apart, like desks, cars, and airplane seats. As hydration stops being something that only happens at a mirror, a small object that adapts quietly in your hand starts to feel like the more useful kind of upgrade.

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Remember Need For Speed? Someone built a real-life Mini Map from the game to use in your car

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The mini map has been a staple of racing and open-world games for decades, teaching us to navigate virtual cities with quick glances at a corner of the screen. A developer has now made that experience tangible, building a GPS-based mini map system for actual driving that recreates the look and feel of Need for Speed Underground 2. What everyone said was impossible on an ESP32 microcontroller is now working smoothly in a real car, tracking position, displaying waypoints, and making everyday drives feel unexpectedly game-like.

Getting this to work on a $20 microcontroller meant processing the entire UK into 2.5 million map tiles, totaling 236GB of data stored on an SD card. The ESP32 loads them dynamically based on your heading, only pulling in new tiles from the direction you’re traveling because each one takes a tenth of a second to load. We’re talking weeks of optimization just to get map tiles loading fast enough, clever tricks to avoid tanking the frame rate, and some creative compromises that make the whole thing feel polished despite running on hardware that costs less than takeaway for two. What’s particularly cool is that all the code is open-source, meaning you could theoretically generate tiles for your own city styled after whatever game you’re nostalgic for.

Designer: Garage Tinkering

The project runs on an ESP32-P4, the flagship chip in the ESP32 family, paired with a 3.4-inch 800×800 pixel WaveShare display. If it couldn’t work on this combination, it wasn’t going to work on any ESP32, which is exactly why the developer chose it. The alternative would have been admitting defeat before even starting, and where’s the fun in that?

The map generation process alone is wonderfully excessive. Using QGIS, a geospatial mapping tool, the developer pulled road data from Ordnance Survey, transportation waypoints from the UK Department of Transportation, and petrol stations from Open Street Maps via a custom Python script that parsed through a 2GB dataset looking for anything tagged with “amenity=fuel.” The result was 2.5 million map tiles covering the entire UK at zoom level 16, totaling 236GB of data. Processing took 35 hours. Converting those tiles to a format the ESP32 could read took another 18 hours. Transferring everything to an SD card took 22 more hours. This is the kind of project where you start things running before bed and hope they’re done by morning.

Getting smooth performance meant rethinking how traditional GPS navigation works. Each tile takes roughly 0.1 seconds to load from the SD card, which sounds fast until you realize how many tiles you’d need if you loaded everything around you constantly. The solution was directional loading. If you’re heading north, only load new tiles coming in from the top. The tiles on the sides and bottom don’t need refreshing because you’re moving away from them. Just shuffle the existing data around in memory and you’ve saved yourself a bunch of unnecessary SD card reads.

The other big performance win came from abandoning authenticity. The original plan was to rotate the entire map grid so it moved like it does in Need for Speed, with the car always pointing up. Turns out rotating large image grids on an ESP32 makes everything stuttery and unpleasant. The fix was keeping the map oriented north and rotating just the car icon to show your heading. It’s less true to the game but infinitely smoother in practice, which matters more when you’re actually using the thing.

The current prototype isn’t exactly plug-and-play elegant though. The GPS module sits on a breadboard outside the main device, creating a larger footprint than the sleek circular display suggests. It’s functional but definitely looks like a dev setup rather than a finished product. Still, the developer plans to integrate everything into a full Need for Speed inspired dashboard for their Nissan 350Z, which should clean up the form factor considerably. And since all the code is open-source and free to use, anyone with the patience for multi-day processing times can adapt it for their own area and preferred game aesthetic.

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The 8BitDo 64 controller just got an iMac G3 inspired makeover in 8 new colors

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Remember when technology came in flavors instead of just space gray and black? 8BitDo certainly does, and the company is channeling serious late-90s energy with its newly announced Funtastic Limited Editions. These eight new colors for the 64 Bluetooth Controller embrace the translucent design language that once made the iMac G3 a cultural phenomenon and the N64 Funtastic series highly collectible. Now that aesthetic is back, adapted for modern gaming needs.

The lineup includes seven see-through variants alongside a solid Gold option, bringing the total 64 Controller color count to eleven. Each model maintains full compatibility with the Analogue 3D, Nintendo Switch family, Android devices, and Windows PCs through Bluetooth or USB connectivity. At $44.99, they command a small premium over standard colors, but that hasn’t stopped 8BitDo from warning potential buyers about extremely limited quantities. Pre-orders begin December 10 at 8 AM PST, with units shipping in February 2026.

Designer: 8bitdo

Look, I get why 8BitDo went this route. The Analogue 3D crowd skews heavily nostalgic, and these controllers speak directly to people who spent their formative years with an atomic purple N64 controller in hand. Clear, Jungle Green, Watermelon Red, Smoke Black, Ice Cyan, Fire Orange, Gold, and Grape Purple. These aren’t subtle nods to the past. They’re full-throated love letters to an era when product designers believed technology should spark joy rather than disappear into minimalist oblivion. The translucent shells let you peek at the circuit boards inside, which feels refreshingly honest in an age where everything’s sealed up tighter than Fort Knox. There’s something genuinely appealing about seeing the guts of your gear, even if modern miniaturization means there’s less to actually see than there was in 1998.

What strikes me is how this design language has aged. When Jonathan Ive and his team at Apple dropped the iMac G3 in Bondi Blue, it felt revolutionary because computing had spent decades looking like beige office equipment. Nintendo followed suit with their Funtastic series, and suddenly every product category had a translucent variant. Then it all died out around 2002, victim of its own ubiquity and the rising tide of aluminum unibody minimalism. But here we are in 2025, and these candy-colored shells feel fresh again. Maybe enough time has passed, or maybe we’re all just exhausted by the relentless sameness of contemporary industrial design.

The $44.99 price point sits five bucks above the standard black and white models, which retail for $39.99. That’s a reasonable premium for limited edition colorways, especially given that 8BitDo isn’t skimping on features. Full Bluetooth connectivity, wired USB support, compatibility across multiple platforms. The February 2026 ship date feels distant, but that’s standard for limited runs where manufacturing slots are precious. What concerns me more is 8BitDo’s emphasis on “highly limited quantities.” That phrasing usually means either genuine scarcity or artificial hype-building, and with gaming peripherals, it’s often hard to tell which until pre-orders go live. Either way, if you want one of these translucent beauties sitting next to your Analogue 3D, setting a December 10 alarm is probably wise.

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Timeless rotary phone reborn as modern AI-powered companion that plays music

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Who can forget the charm of rotary phones that were a lifeline in the early ’90s and ’80s? Their iconic mechanical dialling wheel with finger holes, solid build quality, and the unique clicking sound. Everything inside the machine was mechanical and wired on the inside to make communication possible. Even after their technical innovation was surpassed by mobile phones, the appeal of these robust dialers was not forgotten.

A recent re-imagining of this nostalgic device by designer Nico Tangara, who’s impressed us with the Self-Snoozing Alarm Clock shows how enduring designs can bridge analog heritage and modern digital convenience. Tangara’s project revives a vintage rotary telephone, carefully restoring original components while removing outdated elements such as the high-voltage bell and corroded wiring, to make space for low-voltage digital hardware.

Designer: Nico Tangara

At the heart of the redesign is the original rotary dial, preserved as the primary input mechanism. Rather than simply dialing phone numbers, each pulse created by turning the dial is translated into a digital signal. This allows the dial’s mechanical action to control contemporary digital functions. The transformed device blends vintage form with modern intelligence. On the inside, a small single-board computer, which was initially a Raspberry Pi 4, was later swapped for a Raspberry Pi 2 for lighter loads, handles the digital processing. The original speaker and microphone are replaced with improved audio components connected via a USB sound card, ensuring clearer playback and compatibility with the new system.

Beyond its physical transformation, the device gains new functionality: it operates as both a music player and an AI-powered voice interface. By integrating a voice-based model (e.g., ChatGPT), speech-to-text transcription (via Whisper), and text-to-speech output (via Google TTS), the retro telephone can respond to voice commands, play music, and offer interactive voice chat. Interestingly, it can do it all while preserving the tactile nostalgia of rotary dialing phones.

The project demonstrates how old objects can find new life when design respects their identity while embracing innovation. By retaining the rotary dial, handset cradle logic, and the device’s physical essence while embedding modern electronics, the hybrid telephone becomes more than a novelty. It becomes a functional link between eras, and I’m sure people will absolutely love the idea.

In doing so, the designer’s work suggests that the past need not be discarded. Instead, elements of design that once felt obsolete can offer fresh value when rethought for contemporary contexts. The resulting hybrid device stands as a tribute to the charm of mechanical telephony and an example of how thoughtful design can merge tradition with modern technology. Perhaps the ideal starting point for budding DIYers who want to create something out of the ordinary.

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