Embedded

For most hobbyist PCB work, the Pinecil V2 at around $26 is the best value soldering iron thanks to its USB-C PD and QC3.0 power flexibility, RISC-V open-source firmware (IronOS ), and sub-10-second heat-up time. But the Hakko FX-888D (now succeeded by the FX-888DX at around $130-150) remains the superior benchtop station for marathon soldering sessions due to its thermal recovery and ceramic heater. The Miniware TS101 at roughly $50-70 splits the difference as a portable iron with an OLED display and dual power input that handles everything from SMD rework to through-hole joints with interchangeable TS-series tips.

The consumer SBC market in 2026 is not dead. It is just no longer what it was sold as. Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, Rock Pi, and the rest of the single-board computer crowd now ship 70-80% of their units to industrial customers. Think factory automation, digital signage, point-of-sale terminals, and medical devices. The $35 computer that was meant to put a hackable Linux machine in every teenager’s bedroom is now more likely bolted inside a mall vending machine.

Klipper is a 3D printer firmware that moves motion planning off the printer’s microcontroller. The work runs on a Raspberry Pi or similar single-board computer instead. You get faster print speeds (300-500mm/s on a tuned Voron), pressure advance for cleaner corners, input shaping to kill ringing artifacts, and live config changes with no re-flashing. Klipper paired with a Mainsail or Fluidd web UI on a Raspberry Pi 5 is now the default stack for serious 3D printing.

You can wire any microcontroller into Home Assistant over MQTT . Publish sensor data to discovery topics and subscribe to command topics. You get full firmware control without ESPHome’s abstraction layer. The trick works on any chip: ESP32, RP2040, STM32, or a Raspberry Pi Pico W. It’s the right pick when your device needs custom protocols, bare-metal timing, or firmware features ESPHome can’t reach.

This post covers when raw MQTT makes sense, the discovery protocol that auto-registers devices, firmware examples on the ESP32 and RP2040, two-way control patterns, and security hardening.

Small Language Models, sub-4B parameter models built to run on local hardware, now handle most of the edge AI work that used to need the cloud. Phi-4 , Gemma 3 , and Llama 3.2-1B run offline on Raspberry Pi boards, phones, and industrial PLCs. The economics, latency, and privacy story all point the same way: edge first.

What Counts as a Small Language Model

In 2023, “small” meant under 13B parameters. Today, three tiers matter for edge work.

A DIY air quality monitor built on an ESP32 and a modern particle sensor is one of the best home automation projects you can finish in a single afternoon. Wire a PMS5003 or the newer Sensirion SEN66 to an ESP32 and flash ESPHome . Within minutes, Home Assistant finds the device on your local network. No cloud account, no monthly fee, no privacy worries.

Why Monitor Air Quality at Home?

Most people think of air pollution as an outdoor problem. In fact, indoor air is often worse. Cooking on a gas stove, burning candles, running a laser printer, using sprays, or even new furniture off-gassing formaldehyde can push indoor pollutants well above outdoor levels for hours.