GoKawiil
Tech News
A developer has released nibnib, an image compression format designed for extremely fast decompression on low-power hardware such as the RP2350 microcontroller. The format uses a palette of color deltas rather than absolute colors, decoding two pixels per byte for 4 bits-per-pixel compression, and was built after experiments with DVI output on the RP2350.
A security researcher built a custom laser fault injection platform to attack the RP2350 microcontroller, targeting Raspberry Pi's DEFCON 2024 Hacking Challenge. Using a single laser-induced fault, the researcher reportedly bypassed the chip's Secure Boot protections and extracted secret data stored in its OTP memory, then submitted the findings to Raspberry Pi.
A new project called Sprout offers two drop-in replacement mainboards, Sprout Pico and Sprout Pi, that upgrade 3rd- and 4th-generation iPods and the iPod mini with modern connectivity. Built on Raspberry Pi RP2350 boards with a custom OS, the no-solder mods add Bluetooth audio, Wi-Fi, USB-C, expandable microSD storage up to 2TB, and support for formats like FLAC and ALAC, while keeping the original click-wheel interface. The pricier Sprout Pi version adds a Compute Module Zero for AirPlay and streaming from Apple Music or Spotify.
Security researchers demonstrated that Raspberry Pi's RP2350 microcontroller (revision A4) can have its permanently disabled Secure debug re-enabled through photon-emission microscopy combined with SWD-guided laser fault injection. By pinpointing the exact register controlling debug enablement and firing precisely targeted laser pulses, the team flipped two bits to restore debugger access to the chip's Secure world, later extracting a protected secret from one-time-programmable memory after a rescue reset bypassed the runtime lock.
Adafruit has released CircuitPython Turbo, a new workflow that compiles specific Python functions into native machine code on a host computer before loading them onto microcontroller boards, while the rest of the program still runs as interpreted Python. Built on MicroPython's existing Native and Viper emitters, Turbo is now bundled into official CircuitPython builds for RP2040 and RP2350 hardware, and Adafruit's documentation shows a Mandelbrot benchmark on a Metro RP2040 dropping from 8.335 to 0.423 seconds, roughly 19.7x faster.
Developers have released FRANK 386, a firmware project built on Tiny386 that emulates an i386 (with partial i486/i586 and optional x87 FPU) PC on Raspberry Pi Pico 2-based RP2350 boards. It supports VGA/HDMI video, SD card storage, PS/2 and USB input, NES gamepads, and multiple sound cards including AdLib and Sound Blaster 16, letting it boot DOS, Windows 3.x/95, and Linux.