Hardware

Component Gallery

Every board we've touched, fried, or fallen in love with. Organized by project.

SoundView // Vision Platform

Smart Glasses Hardware

The boards and modules that ended up in the SoundView prototype. We went through several iterations before this stack — the burn marks on the bench tell the rest of the story.

// Prototype v3 · Active Build

SoundView Glasses

Glasses frame housing an ESP32-S3 Sense (onboard camera + microphone), a Max98357A speaker driver, and a 13MM speaker positioned near the ear. This is the thing we're actually building — for the 43 million people who are blind and the 2.2 billion more with vision impairment who deserve better tools than what exists.

PRT-003ESP32-S3 Sense · Max98357A · 13MM

// Evaluated · 240MHz dual-core

M5 Stack ESP32

Evaluated early on for its built-in display, which made debugging without a laptop easier. Didn't make it into the final SoundView build — the ESP32-S3 Sense's onboard camera and microphone were a better fit for a wearable frame.

U2ESP32 · 240MHz · WiFi+BT

// Firmware Dev · 16MB flash

Nano ESP32 Board

Arduino form-factor ESP32 used for rapid firmware iteration. When you need to flash 40 times in an afternoon, this is the board you reach for.

U3ESP32-S3 · 16MB · Arduino

// WiFi + BLE · USB-C native

ESP32 S2 MINI

Compact enough to fit the glasses frame — barely. Tested as the primary MCU before we settled on the ESP32-S3 Sense, which has an onboard camera and microphone the S2 doesn't provide.

U4ESP32-S2 · WiFi only · 4MB

Environmental // Sensor Research

Monitor Hardware

For the CO₂ and air-quality monitor project. Real sensors, real data, real numbers that surprised us more than once.

// CO₂ Monitor · ATmega328P · 16MHz

Arduino Nano

Drives the MQ135 air-quality sensor and I2C display. Small, cheap, and reliable — the workhorse of the environmental monitor build.

U1ATmega328P · 16MHz · 32KB

// Legacy · WiFi only · 80MHz

ESP8266

Where a lot of this started. 64KB RAM, no Bluetooth, runs hot. Still kicking around the lab. Some of our earliest sensor experiments ran on this chip.

U-LEGESP8266 · 80MHz · 64KB RAM

Lab Inventory // General Purpose

The Workhorses

These live on the bench permanently. The boards you grab when you need something to just work while you figure out the harder problem.

// First Board · ATmega328P · 16MHz

Arduino UNO

The one that started everything. ATmega328P running at 16MHz with 32KB of flash. The first board Caleb ever wired a circuit to. Still the fastest way to test if an idea is stupid.

MCU-1ATmega328P · 16MHz · 32KB

// MicroPython · RP2040 · Dual-core

Raspberry Pi Pico

Dual-core RP2040 with PIO state machines for timing-critical sensor reads. Used when microseconds matter and the ESP32's FreeRTOS scheduling introduces too much jitter.

MCU-2RP2040 · 133MHz · Dual-core