Surprisingly not CR*P - Vibing hardware - Well folks, what an adventure! After vibe coding our vibing button, I took up the challenge to vibe code the actual hardware for an ESP32 S3 dev board. Used a tool called at pile and gave it a whirl with some AI help from Claude. Interestingly, it handled everything from sourcing components with LCSC part numbers to wiring them up. Had a wee hiccup with missing capacitor in the RC circuit, but overall it was a thrilling ride watching the AI process! A bit of tweaking here and there, and we're good to go! Can't wait to see it in action.

Tearing Down a Bistable Cholesteric Display - So, I finally tried out this bistable cholesteric display from my AliExpress stash after seeing Big Clive's teardown. It's super cool to play with, and I mean, it just clears up with a button press after you scribble on it. Gave it a whirl to understand the voltage involved and even ended up sparking it with some reverse polarity action (not the smartest move, I know). I might've broken it, but hey, it still sort of works manually. Check out Big Clive for a deeper dive into its reverse engineering, and remember to like and subscribe!

Level Shifter Circuit - simulation and real world test. - Hey there! If you're around my age, you'll probably get nostalgic over the sound of old school tape loading on the ZX Spectrum. I took a deep dive into how the data loads, using my oscilloscope to break it all down, and even built a circuit to handle the signal for my ESP32. Throw in some cool simulations using CircuitLab, and I'm all set! Plus, I discovered a neat trick using diodes to perfect the signal. Hands-on and really quite fun!

We don't need a DAC - ESP32 PDM Audio - In this video, I've made some fascinating explorations with the ESP32 S3 chips and TinyS3 boards from Unexpected Maker. Intriguingly, even without a DAC converter, S3 chips can produce an audio waveform. I've played around with a basic RC filter to reconstruct the analogue audio signal from a PDM signal. The result was quite impressive for a board without a native DAC! I also discussed the possibility of creating a simple amplifier using just a MOSFET as a switch. Finally, I gave a peek into some of my new boards from PCBWay and looked at how Delta Sigma modulation can be played with to recover original data. It's all quite a fun foray into the world of circuitry and audio signals!

This Number Does Nothing… when you have native USB - This video's all about how the baud rate setting on an ESP32S3 with native USB does absolutely nothing. Testing with different baud rates showed no effect on performance; every rate worked flawlessly. With USB full speed, you can expect data transfers of up to 7 megabits per second. So, baud rate? Totally irrelevant with native USB—it's full steam ahead, folks! Grab my test code from GitHub, give it a go, and share your results in the comments. If that blew your mind, don't forget to like and subscribe for more ESP32 insights!

I made a 10 Cent MCU Talk - I taught a 10¢ CH32V003 RISC‑V MCU to talk. By bit-banging PWM as a DAC and using a tiny 2‑bit ADPCM decoder, I squeezed ~6–7 seconds of recognizable audio into 16 KB of flash. Then I went full retro with LPC speech synthesis (Think: Speak & Spell) using the Talkie library and a small web tool I built to generate LPC data—so this little 8‑pin chip can now play samples and ‘speak’ lots of words with only a few kilobytes.

Old school tape loading - If you're anything like me, the nostalgic screeches of ZX Spectrum games loading might bring a smile to your face. I've taken a trip down memory lane by working on my own tribute to this iconic machine—introducing the ESP32 Rainbow. It’s on Crowd Supply, where we're closing in on full funding! This blog post walks you through the journey of harnessing audial data to load games directly into my emulator—faster and more reliable than those temperamental cassette decks from our childhood.

Esp32 s3 zx spectrum - In a bid to quench my nostalgia and flex my ESP32 chops, I managed to get a ZX Spectrum emulator running on my ESP32-TV board! Then, spurred on by PCBWay's new full color silk screen service, I pursuit the audacious task of recreating the ZX Spectrum's iconic keyboard. It's been quite the joyride - wrangling touch pins, shrinking screens and creating a thing of beauty on PCB. It's not quite ready for the spotlight, but keep an eye on my newsletter for more eagerly-awaited updates. It's like the Spectrum is reborn!

A Life in Tech - The Early Years - I was fortunate enough to enter the world in 1971 alongside Intel's 4004 microprocessor – a moment that ushered in the digital era as we know it. Although a bit of an educational renegade, my curiosity steered me down a path filled with ZX Spectrums, Christmas wish lists, dangerously strewn cables and a legion of half-disassembled childhood toys. In spite of the haphazard approach to my intellectual explorations, I eventually managed to grasp the fundamentals of assembly language and savoured the glory of publishing a small utility, all whilst navigating the complex prepubescent minefield of Dungeons & Dragons. Looking back, I wish I could've broken out of my shell to learn more from my peers and mentors. Still, I cherish these nerdy memories and the doors they opened for me in life...

10 Cent Music Machine - I built a tiny coin‑cell music board around the $0.10 WCH CH32V003J4M6 (8‑pin, 48MHz RISC‑V, 16K flash/2K RAM). The PCB is just 16.3×11.7mm with a piezo buzzer and transistor, and in standby it sips 7–8µA. I did hit a snag: playback caused 130mA peaks that browned out a CR2032. A LiPo fixed it, but I really wanted coin‑cell, so I upped the buzzer’s base resistor to 10k, dropping peaks to 56mA and average to ~7mA—now it runs happily (and loudly) from a coin cell. Pro tip: if standby bricks programming, wlink can erase via power-off mode. I’m bit‑banging audio, published a simple MIDI→buzzer tool with a 1‑bit SFX generator, and all the code’s on GitHub.