🔧 Tool of the Week

esptool — Espressif flasher (GitHub releases)

Small, reliable flasher and utilities for Espressif chips. Recent releases include new targets and P4/C6 improvements — useful if you flash modern ESP32 boards or build flashing automation. 🔗 [https://github.com/espressif/esptool/releases](http

🔧 Tool of the Week

esparagus

A Rust-based, machine-friendly ESP32 flasher that emits NDJSON events, stable exit codes, and a machine-readable final report — ideal for CI, HIL test rigs, or agent-driven flash→test→fix loops. Use it when you need programmatic failure reasons instead of human text parsing. 🔗 [Gi

🔧 Tool of the Week

PicoPD Pro A Pico‑form factor dev board that makes USB‑PD/PPS/AVS work with an RP2040 — useful for testing chargers, negotiating voltages, and building PD‑aware bench supplies. 🔗 https://github.com/CentyLab/PicoPD_Pro. ([github.com](https://github.co

🔧 Tool of the Week

Sipeed SLogic (Combo8 / 16U3)

Cheap, fast USB logic analyzers that are finally getting proper PulseView/libsigrok support. If you do embedded debugging (UART, SPI, I2C) and want more channels or higher sample rates than the old 24 MHz clones, SLogic is now a practical, budget option. 🔗 [S

🔧 Tool of the Week

PulseView (nightly AppImage)

The easiest way to get the latest sigrok/PulseView decoders and device support without touching distro packages — download the nightly AppImage and run. Ideal if you use cheap FX2-based analyzers or need a decoder that landed after the last stable release. 🔗 [si

🔧 Tool of the Week

Seeed XIAO nRF54LM20A (Sense) A tiny, ultra‑low‑power multiprotocol XIAO with Nordic’s nRF54LM20A (BLE 6.0, Matter/Thread, NFC), useful for battery sensors, TinyML wake‑up patterns, and Matter testbeds. Great if you need lots of wireless options in a thumb‑sized board. 🔗 [Seeed: Meet XIAO nR

🔧 Tool of the Week

ESP32‑S31 (Espressif)

A new dual‑core RISC‑V SoC with Wi‑Fi‑6, Bluetooth 5.4 (LE + Classic), 802.15.4 and a big peripheral set — useful when you need a single chip for multimedia, HMI, and multi‑protocol IoT devices. Great for developers targeting audio, camera, or Ethernet‑connected embedd

🔧 Tool of the Week

openocd-esp32 (prebuilt) — Espressif fork Prebuilt OpenOCD binaries targeting Espressif chips (H4/P4/S31/etc.) so you can skip building from source and get a working debug/flasher quickly. Useful if you wrestle with platform-specific OpenOCD builds or need Windows/arm64 binaries. 🔗 [GitHub r

🔧 Tool of the Week

ESP‑GMF (Espressif General Multimedia Framework)

A lightweight pipeline framework for audio/video/image streaming on ESP32-class chips — useful if you’re building cameras, audio devices, or on-device streaming/AI demos that need low RAM and composable elements. Start with the examples and t

🔧 Tool of the Week

PulseView (sigrok) — the free logic‑analyzer UI you actually use

If you work with USB logic analyzers or cheap FX2/STM32 boards, PulseView is the fastest way to capture, decode, and iterate on signals. The latest installers and platform builds are on the sigrok downloads page. 🔗 [sigrok / P

🔧 Tool of the Week

PulseView (sigrok) — 0.4.2 / AppImage builds A solid, free GUI for logic analyzers, mixed-signal captures and protocol decoding. If you use Saleae clones, DSLogic or cheap USB analyzers, grab the PulseView AppImage or installers — it’s the quickest way to get decoders and cross-platform captu

🔧 Tool of the Week

STM32CubeIDE for Visual Studio Code — 3.10.0 A practical VS Code extension of STM32CubeIDE: better build analysis (ELF support), Zephyr integration, CLI project creation, and a few usability fixes that matter when you actually ship firmware. Good if you use STM32s and prefer VS Code over Ecli

🔧 Tool of the Week

ESP‑GenUI

A lightweight, browser-based drag‑and‑drop designer that generates complete ESP32 web‑server sketches (Arduino or ESP‑IDF) and can compile/flash over WebSerial. Good for makers who want a quick device UI without hand‑writing routes and HTML. 🔗 [https://espgenui.com/](https://espge

🔧 Tool of the Week

I²CDriver

A small, open‑hardware USB→I²C adapter with a built‑in display, three I²C ports, programmable pullups, live address map and Python/CLI bindings — great for calibrating sensors and debugging tricky buses. 🔗 https://i2cdriver.com/. ([i2cdriver.com](https://

🔧 Tool of the Week

ESP‑GenUI

A browser-based drag‑and‑drop UI builder that generates web dashboards for ESP32 devices (can export Arduino code or flash directly). Fast way to get a touchscreen or web-control panel on an ESP‑based project without hand‑coding the whole UI. 🔗 [https://espgenui.com/](https://espg

🔧 Tool of the Week

TI — Up to 1500V Stackable Battery Management Unit (BMU) reference design A full reference design for high‑voltage, stackable battery systems with integrated EIS (electrochemical impedance spectroscopy) and test reports — useful if you design large battery racks, EV/ESS prototypes, or need a

🔧 Tool of the Week

sigrok coordinated release (libsigrok / sigrok-cli / pulseview updates) A coordinated point release landed on the sigrok download server this week — tidy if you use logic/analyzer workflows (libsigrok, libsigrokdecode, sigrok‑cli and updated binaries). Grab the new builds or snapshots and che

🔧 Tool of the Week

pico-usb-wifi

Turn a Raspberry Pi Pico W into a driverless USB Wi‑Fi adapter (enumerates as CDC‑NCM, bridges layer‑2 frames). Fast to build, useful for embedded test rigs where you need a simple USB‑attached network without host drivers. Good for Linux/macOS/Windows/Android hosts; throughput

🔧 Tool of the Week

Scrutiny Debugger

A runtime instrumentation debugger you can embed in firmware to inspect variables, stream graphs, and run HIL tests without stopping the target. Great for bare-metal and constrained systems where SWD/JTAG doesn’t give the full picture. 🔗 [https://scrutinydebugger.com/](htt

🔧 Tool of the Week

Sigrok / PulseView Open, cross-platform logic-analyzer + basic oscilloscope frontend that turns cheap USB LAs into usable debugging tools — great for protocol sniffing and quick captures on embedded boards. 🔗 [PulseView user manual / sigrok (PDF)](https://www.sigrok.org/doc/pulseview/0.4.

🔧 Tool of the Week

MakerSuite 3D

Open, inspect, and share PCB, schematic, and STEP files entirely in your browser — no upload, no account, fast 3D view and BOM price checks. Great for reviewers, mechanical checks, and quick procurement. 🔗 https://pcbviewer.app/en ([pcbviewer.app](

🔧 Tool of the Week

Raspberry Pi Kernel Binaries

Pre-compiled kernels and firmware for stable Pi projects – skip source builds and deploy fast. 🔗 https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux

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🛒 Deals & Finds

• Refurbished Soundcore Life Q20 on Newegg – $36 for nois

🔧 Tool of the Week

Joulescope JS110 / JS220

The gold standard for low-power profiling. It allows you to see the tiny current spikes of an MCU waking up from sleep in real-time with incredible dynamic range. If you are optimizing battery life for IoT, this is the tool. 🔗 [https://www.joulescope.com/](https://ww

🔧 Tool of the Week

Sipeed Logic Analyzer (USB 3.0)

A massive step up from the dirt-cheap clones. This $70 unit handles higher sample rates and deep buffers, making it the perfect middle ground for engineers who need more bandwidth than a $10 Saleae clone but don't want to drop $1k on professional hardware. 🔗

🔧 Tool of the Week

PulseView / Sigrok

The gold standard for open-source signal analysis. When paired with a cheap $15 logic analyzer, it decodes everything from I2C and SPI to CAN bus and DHT11 protocols in real-time. 🔗 https://sigrok.org/wiki/PulseView

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🛒 Deals & F

🔧 Tool of the Week

KiCanvas

A high-performance, browser-based viewer for KiCad files. It allows you to share schematics and PCB layouts with teammates or clients who don't have KiCad installed. It’s incredibly fast and works on mobile. 🔗 https://kicanvas.org/

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🛒 Deals & Finds

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🔧 Tool of the Week

Wokwi

A browser-based electronics simulator that actually works for modern MCUs like the ESP32, RP2040, and STM32. It’s perfect for testing firmware logic or UI code before you even touch your breadboard. 🔗 https://wokwi.com/

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🛒 Deals & Finds

• Milk-V Duo S

🔧 Tool of the Week

GDB Dashboard

A modular, visual interface for GDB that runs entirely in your terminal. It gives you a clear view of registers, assembly, and memory without the overhead of a massive IDE. 🔗 https://github.com/cyrus-and/gdb-dashboard

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🛒 Dea