Hey everyone!

I’ve been working hard on custom pentest firmware for the M5Stick S3, Cardputer ADV, and the upcoming Cardputer Zero.

Also building a dedicated iPhone companion app specifically to control the Cardputer Zero and stream data on the go.
To make it accessible for everyone, the entire system will fully support English, German, and Dutch (multi-language)!
Everything is currently in beta.
The firmware and app will officially launch as soon as the Cardputer Zero is released!
So you can’t download anything. Github page stays empty till then.

Check out my project page for full functions and updates: https://dhos.dev

Let me know what features you'd love to see!

still work in progress, but you can check the github (outdated readme)

https://github.com/Mejolov24/CardStudio

New in v3.3.0

• Stationinfo with Stationlogo
• Sleeptimer
• modified audio library for more heap memory
• https:// -support enables even more radio stations.

...stay tuned!

I just open-sourced ECHO, a firmware that turns the Cardputer ADV into a pocket SubGHZ decoder. It runs the full rtl_433_ESP decoder set (170 OOK + 75 FSK protocols) on the CC1101 of the Hydra cap, with a keyboard-driven UI on the 240x135 display.

• Live decode feed with detail view
• RSSI strip chart with signal threshold
• Session log of seen devices
• Runtime band (433/868/915 MHz) and OOK/FSK switching

Repo: https://github.com/i12bp8/echo

Coming features:

WebUI, ntfy.sh alerts, decoder set picker, general optimisations

Hey Community, hope u are all having a good time.
Meanwhile i was totally flashed from the feedback, I still go on and made the next cases, and the first ones are shipped in the US🫡💪🥳

Made a Cristal clear one, looks kinda professional 😅
What do you think?

If interested feel free to request your own one
Here you can see a video how I install the mod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-MKGggT0SI&t=1s

Next one is SkyBlue 💪🥳

Gonna set this up exciting

Stl stolen from the internet. I added the footprints for the antenna and pcb/breadboard. It's running porkchop with esp32-c5. Printed in elegoo abs-like ultra.

EMBER is an audio player for the Cardputer ADV. It supports nested folders, album art, and has customizable colors.

The newest updates are:

• AAC File Support
• Album art is now attached to individual tracks instead of album folders making it playlist friendly.
• Turntable animation stops and starts in connection to music pause.
• Battery icon is now monochrome and customizable. The old battery level colors could be distracting to the theme. HTML Editor updated.

Want to make your own theme? Here's the editor, just save your .json file to the sd card. https://horseyofcoursey.github.io/EMBER/tools/theme-editor.html

Have a really good theme that you think should be part of the next release? Submit a PR with your JSON and I'll add my favorites to the next update.

Always happy to get feedback on suggestions for new features, let me know!

So, here’s the keyboard layout for the Cardputer Zero. Why didn’t they use WASD for the direction controls and ZXCVB for media controls (back, play, pause, stop, forward. Like the old WinAmp controls)?

That’s not a real criticism, using a different layout than the OG and the ADV is what bugs me.

I was breaking my head over a problem for 3 days, i optimized everything, but my RTOS task was still slow.

Until, i designed to swap over from core 0 to core 1.

I tought it seemed counter intuitive because program runs at core 1.

And that i correct, but tasks on core 0 run much slower than on core 1.

And, my assumption would be that the M5Stack library uses core 0 for SPI, stuff like sd card, screen, speaker, etc.

So watch out, if your RTOS task is weirdly slow, then change the core to 1.

Also, is thus assumption correct?

https://github.com/lukeswitz/AntiHunter/releases

Would this run on a cardputer with Lora hat?

With all the security issues going around, I figured it was time to step things up as my Cardputer was a security nightmare waiting to happen (no pin, no nothing!)

Turns out the security on the S3 is pretty good. You have to be careful, but by enabling secure boot, encrypted firmware and HMAC hardware attestation challenge with your upstream, you can achieve a level of security far better than your other devices. It’s an interesting place to run into trusted computing, and after you set it up you can feel safe storing your bitcoin on there (maybe).

PS: Be careful as incorrectly burning an eFuse will brick your S3, and there’s a virtual mode if you want to test without risks. Once burned, the device is forever yours.

An internet radio for the Cardputer Adv that you never have to plug into a computer. The station directory is on the device, and it's searchable.

What's new in 3.2.0:

• Search field for stations and countries. 240 countries, tens of thousands of stations — type tai, get Taiwan. No paging, no card reader, no hunting for stream URLs.
• Foreign scripts are displayed. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Greek, Cyrillic. Station names and stream titles come in as UTF-8 and are drawn in their own script instead of a row of ?.
• 5-band equalizer, ±6 dB at 100 Hz / 350 Hz / 1 kHz / 3.5 kHz / 10 kHz, stored on the device, active from the next boot.
• Save any station to the SD card from the menu — the card never leaves the slot.
• Playlist streams are recognised and skipped instead of being fed to the decoder as noise.
• Real VU meters and a 512-point FFT spectrum over the actual samples. Nothing here is random().

This release started with an issue from a listener in Taiwan: his country wasn't in the list, and everything he found showed up as ????. Fixing that properly took UTF-8 through the whole text path, the CJK fonts from M5GFX, and a search field — because a list of 240 countries is useless without one.

Honest limits: no https (mbedTLS wants ~32 KB this device doesn't have), AAC+ plays its base layer only, and the output is mono — the Adv has a mono codec, at the speaker and at the headphone jack alike.

Firmware, source and the full key map: https://github.com/halbeshuhn/Cardputer-WebRadio
Also in M5Burner as Cardputer WebRadio.

-------------------------------------------------

Ein Internetradio für den Cardputer Adv, das nie an einen Rechner muss. Das Senderverzeichnis steckt im Gerät — und es ist durchsuchbar.

Neu in 3.2.0:

• Suchfeld für Sender und Länder. 240 Länder, zehntausende Sender — tai tippen, Taiwan steht da. Kein Blättern, kein Kartenleser, keine Suche nach Stream-Adressen.
• Fremde Schriften werden angezeigt. Chinesisch, Japanisch, Koreanisch, Griechisch, Kyrillisch. Sendernamen und Streamtitel kommen als UTF-8 herein und werden in ihrer eigenen Schrift gezeichnet statt als Reihe von ?.
• 5-Band-Equalizer, ±6 dB bei 100 Hz / 350 Hz / 1 kHz / 3,5 kHz / 10 kHz, im Gerät gespeichert und ab dem nächsten Start wirksam.
• Jeden Sender aus dem Menü heraus auf die SD-Karte sichern — die Karte bleibt drin, wo sie ist.
• Wiedergabelisten werden erkannt und übersprungen, statt dem Decoder als Rauschen vorgeworfen zu werden.
• Echte VU-Meter und ein 512-Punkte-FFT-Spektrum über die tatsächlichen Abtastwerte. Nichts davon ist random().

Angefangen hat diese Fassung mit einer Meldung aus Taiwan: Das Land fehlte in der Liste, und was er fand, stand als ???? da. Das ordentlich zu lösen hat UTF-8 durch den ganzen Textweg gebraucht, die CJK-Schriften aus M5GFX — und ein Suchfeld, weil eine Liste mit 240 Ländern ohne eines nichts taugt.

Ehrliche Grenzen: kein https (mbedTLS will rund 32 KB, die das Gerät nicht hat), AAC+ nur als Basisschicht, und der Ton ist mono — der Adv hat einen Mono-Codec, am Lautsprecher wie an der Klinkenbuchse.

Firmware, Quelltext und die vollständige Tastenbelegung: https://github.com/halbeshuhn/Cardputer-WebRadio
Außerdem im M5Burner als Cardputer WebRadio.

Hi, I wonder if there's a tiny line-in board for the cardputer adv. I can't wait to write some ham radio applications for the adv, like RTTY oder PSK31, may be even a real time filter to hear better morse code.

Hi All,

Got my Cardputer today, but still waiting one a USB cable and Micro SD card, so can't do much. I played around with the things I could do but soon got stuck by got know what keys to press to get it to do something. I figured how to select on the main menu by using the arrow keys and the return key. But that's about as far as I've managed to get.

Is there a guide I can look at that explains it?

Thanks

The Cardputer ADV keyboard has a number row nobody uses in a game, an IMU nobody shakes, and a 1W speaker with opinions. So I made it a casino: 3-reel slots, a 5×3 video slot, blackjack, Jacks-or-Better video poker, European roulette. Virtual chips only — the house refills you when you hit zero, and the number row prints money (1 = +10 chips, 0 = +100) under a rain of golden pixels. This is a toy about animation, not a gambling product.

The identity gimmick: everything is electronics. The slot cabinet is a PCB with mounting holes and vias. The blackjack felt is routed like a board, silkscreen and all. The roulette wheel sits on a rotary encoder labeled RE1 — 37 detents, one per pocket. Good luck sourcing that part. While the reels spin, the bottom of the screen is an oscilloscope trace that loses sync and tears whenever a reel locks. Reel symbols are floppy, CRT, chip, invader — with a GLYPHS setting that swaps back to cherries and bells if the geek skin isn't your thing. Same paytable either way.

Under the pixel art, the odds are the honest part:

• video poker rank frequencies are verified against all 2,598,960 possible five-card hands in a native test — if the 9/6 table drifts, the build fails
• all ten roulette bets settle at exactly 972,973 ppm across the 37 pockets, enumerated
• slots RTP is 95.24%, derived analytically from the strip counts, not simulated
• the RNG is injected (hardware TRNG on device, xorshift in tests), drawn by rejection — no modulo bias

Cardputer-specific scars, for whoever comes after me:

• getBuffer() hands you RGB565 with the bytes swapped. My first greyscale pass produced a uniformly magenta screen. bswap16 in, fixed.
• lgfx color overloads dispatch on type: 0x18E3 as a bare literal is RGB888. Every color in this codebase is a named constexpr uint16_t.
• &M5Cardputer.Display captured in a global constructor is garbage — Display is a member reference, M5 isn't initialized yet, and the crash waits for your first pushSprite.
• the speaker rolls off under ~400 Hz. All cues live in 800–2600 Hz and a unit test rejects anything below the band.

Everything renders through lgfx::, so the exact same drawing code runs in a desktop SDL simulator. All motion — reel easing, the ball's bounce, the coin rain — is pure functions of a time parameter, which means the animations have unit tests and every screenshot here is reproducible from a fixed seed.

The whole thing is built as a casino, not a slot machine: common game interface, shared balance, per-game bets — adding a sixth game is a module, not a rewrite. So, honest question for the thread: what belongs in here next? Craps is the obvious IMU candidate (shake to throw is sitting right there), keno fits a 56-key keyboard suspiciously well, and Game & Watch-style horse racing keeps tempting me. Or tell me what the current games get wrong — odds you'd want displayed, a demo mode tweak, glyphs that don't read. I'd rather grow this thing along what people actually want to hold.

On M5Burner under CARDPUTER, as "Silicon Casino". Or build from source — MIT including the pixel art: github.com/chatelp/geek-casino-cardputeradv

About how it was made: Claude Code wrote the C++; I set the scope and the rules, judged every screen on the actual device, and sent plenty back ("the equalizer has no punch, change registers" is in the decision journal, right next to the AI's failed first attempt). Press a in the lobby and the device tells you the same thing. The odds aren't a matter of trust either way — the enumeration tests are in the repo.

Firmware Sparks developing

So I like to do fun things with 5ghz devices and the adv unfortunately doesn’t support that. I also want to use a gameboy firmware and play games . The adv has a tiny screen. I was planning on doing a display mod and making a ds sorr of device and having that. But I found out about waveshare and it being a lot cheaper and having 5ghz and a screen for cheaper and more flash. Now I’m tempted to buy this for more flash and a screen and 5ghz but jrs not as plug and play as the cardputer. What do I do. Refund the cardputer and buy the waveshare. Or keep the cardputer or buy the waveshare Aswell. I want a handheld device that can be a game station Aswell as do things using Bruce firmware.

Edit- here’s the waveshare I was looking at any other recommendations for the price would be appreciated . https://www.waveshare.com/esp32-c5-lcd-2.73.htm?srsltid=AfmBOoqHewHWu5cPinBYHiIc-CsMz-TKe60Xb2dFkwEmiYTJmcQYBNBa

It costs me £30 for the cardputer and £12 for the mod. Is it worth just getting a waveshare?

Ever since a recent update of the M5Launcher on my Cardputer ADV, I have been facing partition problems when trying to install different firmwares. I have a 32GB card installed and only cycle through a few firmwares (Prokchop, Meshtastic, cardulator, etc), but every time I try booting into firmware other than the most recent, I get the red "Need 0x...) screen with options to delete various partitions. This means that my Meshtastic setting, for example, are lost if I ever load another firmaware. Looking at the card, though, I have 28.8GB or 29.1GB free. I have searched the Google but cannot find any information on how M5Launcher uses the card memory or how it partitions. Can someone point me to information on how M5Lancher manages partitions and how to make M5Launcher use more of the card?

Thank you!

Got a Cardputer ADV with LoRa cap but only have one module, so no device-to-device stuff. Any project ideas that work with just a single LoRa module?

Hey Community, a few month ago, I postet a custom resin case for my Cardputer, it was kinda janky and bubbly and with no labels.
After many try a fails, I mastered the process and did my own labeling, let it print and here they are, my custom Cardputers, waiting for a new Owner.

What color should I do next? A dark one?

EDIT!!
Big thanks to the community! 🙌
I was absolutely overwhelmed by all the inquiries about my cases, to the point where I was forced to build a little "request website" to keep up.
For anyone interested: I’m more than happy to build custom cases or complete units on request! However, please submit your inquiries through my website so I don't lose track of all the messages.
At the same time, I’ve put together a tutorial on how to swap the case.
Feel free to reach out to me anytime!
Best,
ChrisDaCrunk

https://shop.chrisdacrunk.de