Raspberry Pi RP2350 A4 Stepping Addresses E9 Current Leakage Bug

July 31, 2025 by Maya Posch 18 Comments

When Raspberry Pi’s new RP2350 MCU was released in 2024, it had a slight issue in that its GPIO pins would leak a significant amount of current when a pin is configured as input with the input buffer enabled. Known as erratum 9 (E9), it has now been addressed per the July 29 Product Change Note from Raspberry Pi for the A4 stepping along with a host of other hardware and software issues.

Although the PCN is for stepping A4, it covers both steppings A3 and A4, with the hardware fixes in A3 and only software (bootrom) fixes present in A4, as confirmed by the updated RP2350 datasheet. It tells us that A3 was an internal development stepping, ergo we should only be seeing the A4 stepping in the wild alongside the original defective A2 stepping.

When we first reported on the E9 bug it was still quite unclear what this issue was about, but nearly a month later it was officially defined as an input mode current leakage issue due to an internal pull-up that was too weak. This silicon-level issue has now finally been addressed in the A3 and thus new public A4 stepping.

Although we still have to see whether this is the end of the E9 saga, this should at least offer a way forward to those who wish to use the RP2350 MCU, but who were balking at the workarounds required for E9 such as external pull-downs.

2025 One Hertz Challenge: 555 Timer Gets A Signal From Above

July 24, 2025 by Adam Zeloof 6 Comments

One of the categories we chose for the One Hertz Challenge is “Could Have Used a 555.” What about when you couldn’t have, but did anyway? The 555 is famously easy to use, but not exactly the most accurate timer out there — one “ticking” at 1 Hz will pulse just about once per second (probably to within a millisecond, depending on the rest of the circuit), but when you need more precise timing, the 555 just won’t cut it. Not on its own, anyway.

An Allan deviation plot — Allan Deviation can be a bit confusing, but generally — lower is more accurate

This entry by [burble] shows us how the humble 555 can hold its own in more demanding systems with some help from a GPS receiver. He used the One Pulse per Second (1PPS) output from a GPS module to discipline the 1 Hz output from a 555 by modulating the control voltage with a microcontroller.

Okay, this sounds a bit like baking a cake by buying a cake, scraping all the icing off, then icing it yourself, but what better way to learn how to ice a cake? The GPS-disciplined 555 is way more accurate than a free running one — just check out that Allan Deviation plot. While the accuracy of the standard 555 begins to decrease as oscillator drift dominates, the GPS-disciplined version just keeps getting better (up to a point — it would also eventually begin to increase, if the data were recorded for long enough). Compared to other high-end oscillators though, [burble] describes the project’s accuracy in one word: “Badly.”

That’s okay though — it really is a fantastic investigation into how GPS-disciplined oscillators work, and does a fantastic job illustrating the accuracy of different types of clocks, and some possible sources of error. This project is a great addition to some of the other precision timekeeping projects we’ve seen here at Hackaday, and a very fitting entry to the competition. Think you can do better? Or much, much worse? You’ve got a few weeks left to enter!

The Open-Source Multimeter: The HydraMeter

Designing An Open Source Multimeter: The HydraMeter

July 20, 2025 by John Elliot V 23 Comments

Our hacker [John Duffy] wrote in to let us know about a video he put together to explain the design of his open-source multimeter, the HydraMeter.

If you’re interested in how the circuitry for a voltmeter, ohmmeter, or ammeter might work, this video is a masterclass. In this long and detailed video, [John] walks us through his solutions to various challenges he had while designing his own multimeter. We covered this multimeter last year, and this new video elaborates on the design of the HydraMeter which has been a work in progress for years now.

The basic design feeds voltage, current, and resistance front-ends into an Analog to Digital Converter (ADC), which then feeds into a microcontroller and out to the (detachable) display. You can find the KiCad design files on the GitHub page. There is also a write-up on hackaday.io.

The user interface for the meter is… opinionated, and perhaps not to everyone’s taste. In the video, [John] talks a little bit about why he made the UI work the way that it does, and he noted that adding a rotary range switch is a goal for version 2.0.

Thank you, [John], for putting this video together; it is an excellent resource. We look forward to seeing version 2.0 develop soon!

Continue reading “Designing An Open Source Multimeter: The HydraMeter” →

Software Defined Retro ROMs

July 19, 2025 by John Elliot V 6 Comments

Here’s something fun from our hacker [Piers]: Software Defined ROMs.

In this series of three videos, [Piers] runs us through what a software defined ROM is, how to make them, and then how to use them.

As [Piers] explains, one frustration a retro technician will face is a failed ROM chip. In the era he’s interested in, there are basically three relevant kinds of ROM chip, all 24-pin Dual Inline Package (DIP):

2364 ROM chip: 8KB; 1x chip-select line
2332 ROM chip: 4KB; 2x chip-select lines
2316 ROM chip: 2KB; 3x chip-select lines

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ESP32 Plugs In To Real-Time Crypto Prices

July 17, 2025 by Bryan Cockfield 8 Comments

In today’s high-speed information overload environment, we often find ourselves with too much data to take in at once, causing us to occasionally miss out on opportunities otherwise drowned out in noise. None of this is more evident in the realm of high-speed trading, whether it’s for stocks, commodities, or even crypto. Most of us won’t be able to build dedicated high speed connections directly to stock exchanges for that extra bit of edge over the other traders, but what we can do is build a system that keys us in to our cryptocurrency price of choice so we know exactly when to pull the trigger on a purchase or sale.

[rishab]’s project for doing this is based on an ESP32 paired with a 10″ touchscreen display. It gathers live data from Binance, a large cryptocurrency exchange that maintains various pieces of information about many digital currencies. [rishab]’s tool offers a quick, in-depth look at a custom array of coins, with data such as percentage change over a certain time and high and low values for that coin as well. The chart updates in real time, and [rishab] also built a feature in which scales coins up if they have been seeing large movements in price over short timeframes.

Although it’s not a direct fiber link into an exchange, it certainly has its advantages over keeping this information in a browser window on a computer where it could get missed, and since it’s dedicated hardware running custom firmware it can show you exactly what you need to see if you’re day trading crypto. Certainly projects like this are in the DIY spirit that crypto enthusiasts tout as ideals of the currency, and as people move away from mining and more into speculative trading we’d expect to see more projects like this.

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2025 One Hertz Challenge: Building A Better Jumping Bean

July 17, 2025 by Seth Mabbott 4 Comments

Do you feel nostalgia for a childhood novelty toy that had potential but ultimately fell short of its promise? Do you now have the skills to go make a better version of that toy to satisfy your long-held craving? [ExpensivePlasticCrap] does and has set off on a mission to make a better jumping bean.

Jumping beans, the phenomenon on which the novelty of [ExpensivePlasticCrap]’s childhood is based, are technically not beans, and their movement is arguably not a jump — a small hop at best. The trick is that the each not-a-bean has become the home to moth larvae that twitches and rolls on the ground as the larvae thrash about, trying to move their protective shells out of the hot sun.

The novelty bean was a small plastic pill-like capsule with a ball bearing inside what would cause the “bean” to move in unexpected ways as it rolled around. [ExpensivePlasticCrap]’s goal is to make a jumping bean that lives up to its name.

Various solenoids and motors were considered for the motion component of this new and improved bean. Ultimately, it was a small sealed vibrating motor that would be selected to move the bean without getting tangled in what was to become a compact bundle of components.

An ATtiny microcontroller won out over discrete components for the job of switching the motor on and off (once per second), for ease of implementation. Add this along with a MOSFET, battery and charging board for power into a plastic capsule, and the 1 Hz jumping bean was complete.

[ExpensivePlasticCrap] offers some thoughts on how to get more jump out of the design by reducing the weight of the build and giving it a more powerful source of motion.

If insect-inspired motion gets you jumping, check out this jumping robot roach and these tiny RoboBees.

Pulling At Threads With The Flipper Zero

July 15, 2025 by Adam Zeloof 13 Comments

Gone are the days when all smart devices were required an internet uplink. The WiFi-enabled IoT fad, while still upon us (no, my coffee scale doesn’t need to be on the network, dammit!) has begun to give way to low-power protocols actually designed for this kind of communication, such as ZigBee, and more recently, Thread. The downside of these new systems, however, is that they can be a bit more difficult in which to dabble. If you want to see just why your WiFi-enabled toaster uploads 100 MB of data per day to some server, you can capture some network traffic on your laptop without any specialized hardware. These low-power protocols can feel a bit more opaque, but that’s easily remedied with a dev board. For a couple of dollars, you can buy Thread radio that, with some additional hacking, acts as a portal between this previously-arcane protocol and your laptop — or, as [András Tevesz] has shown us, your Flipper Zero.

He’s published a wonderful three-part guide detailing how to mod one such $10 radio to communicate with the Flipper via its GPIO pins, set up a toolchain, build the firmware, and start experimenting. The guide even gets into the nitty-gritty of how data is handled transmitted and investigates potential attack vectors (less worrying for your Thread-enabled light bulb, very worrying for your smart door lock). This project is a fantastic way to prototype new sensors, build complicated systems using the Flipper as a bridge, or even just gain some insight into how the devices in your smart home operate.

In 2025, it’s easier than ever to get started with home automation — whether you cook up a solution yourself, or opt for a stable, off-the-shelf (but still hackable) solution like HomeAssistant (or even Minecraft?). Regardless of the path you choose, you’ll likely wind up with devices on the Thread network that you now have the tools to hack.