finally! local AI is accessible to everyone. we replaced our massive smart home server with a single $8 ESP32-S3 chip processing voice commands entirely on-device. now anyone can build this. here is the full guide:

reverse engineering is actually insane in 2026 you can bring almost any old piece of hardware back to life and rebuild it around what you want two old CRT TVs, repurposed as extra screens for a computer setup figure out what a device expects, work out how to talk to it, and build the missing bridge

your router doesn't need GPS to end up on a map nearby phones can do the locating for it your Wi-Fi broadcasts an identifier called a BSSID. phones can observe it without joining your network, then report it alongside their own location combine enough observations and a positioning database can associate that identifier with an estimated location that's how a box that doesn't know where it is can become a landmark for devices that do the animation shows the mechanism using a fictional map more of what the radio waves around you can reveal in the article below ↓

first question: could this find someone trapped under rubble? the Wi-Fi demo showed movement behind a wall. beneath a collapsed building, someone might be unable to move or call for help but breathing still moves the chest, slightly changing the radio waves reflected back the hard part is picking out those tiny changes from all the other reflections in the debris our animation illustrates that mechanism with modeled signals so yes, dedicated rescue radar can do this. NASA JPL and DHS developed FINDER to detect breathing and heartbeats, and it helped locate four men after Nepal's 2015 earthquake alongside other search methods

you don't even have to be in the same room with the right Wi-Fi setup, someone walking behind brick walls can still leave a measurable trace at the receiver the graph uses real Wallhack1.8k recordings: orange is walking, blue is an empty space, both on the same scale. the 3D scene illustrates the idea if your next thought is “i'll just sit still,” watch the quoted post😁

how does a car hang upside down, let go, and still land on its wheels? watch Tesla’s Roadster on the curved ramp underneath, fans pull air out of the gap between the car and the surface. seals help keep that air from rushing straight back in the result works like a suction cup: the air outside presses the car against the ramp. Tesla says the grip is strong enough to hold it upside down even while standing still once it leaves the ramp, a different system takes over the car carries compressed gas and releases it through small nozzles. think of letting go of an inflated balloon: air shoots one way, the balloon goes the other with nozzles around the car, those pushes can also turn it. push one way to start rotating, then counter that turn to bring the wheels back underneath before landing, downward jets push upward on the car to slow its fall. Tesla says the system makes tiny, rapid adjustments to keep it stable there’s a catch: every burst uses up some of the stored gas. how long it can stay airborne depends on how much it carries and how quickly it spends it

there's a catch in that breathing demo the room was quiet the same Wi-Fi measurements also respond to other movement. those changes can bury the much smaller rhythm of breathing in these real WiRe-Breath recordings, our simple estimate follows the reference sensor in the quiet case, but loses agreement under motion interference orange is the Wi-Fi estimate. gray is the reference sensor compare it with the quoted demo: same processing, different room conditions

/anatomy explain how a vibrating structure inside a microchip measures rotation

i still can’t wrap my head around this Voyager 1 was 24.9 billion kilometers away, and we could still pick up its signal on Earth in December 2024, the 25-meter Dwingeloo radio telescope detected its faint radio carrier that tiny peak in the noise is the signal i wrote about this and other things hiding in the radio waves around us in the article below

your phone can find a clock hidden in noise that’s part of how GPS puts you on a map the receiver searches for a satellite’s known pattern, locks onto the signal and reads the timing data inside it this animation shows the idea using a real recording by Daniel Estévez. we decoded the time field that becomes 11:32:30 in the video combine timing measurements from multiple satellites, and you can work out a position GPS is just one example. the article below explores what else is hiding in the radio waves around you, and how to start decoding it yourself

i sat through 4 years of painfully boring university lectures to put together a radio guide you can read this weekend Wi-Fi, GPS, FPV, radar, and experiments you can start without buying hardware: