GameCube Dock for Switch, revisited.

While modern game consoles are certainly excellent, there is still something magical about the consoles of yore. So why not bring the magical nostalgia of a GameCube controller to the excellent modern Switch series of consoles?

This isn’t [Dorison Hugo’s] first attempt at building a Switch dock, but with seven years of development, there are a lot of updates in the project to unpack. One version allows the user to play on the Switch’s screen instead of on a docked display, and another comes with a mechanical lock to prevent the console from being stolen. But what really caught our eye is the modifications made to the OEM Switch docks.

As it turns out, there is enough space inside a Switch dock to stuff in four GameCube ports. Short of spinning a custom board, the trick was picking the right commercial adapter to start with. The Wii U branded adapter [Dorison] was using wouldn’t fit. However, a rather small third-party adapter from Input Integrity got the job done. Space was still rather tight, and the ports needed to be removed from the board to fit. Some cables with simple connectors on the GameCube connector side make cable management a bit simpler later. Holes have to be very neatly cut into the front of the Switch dock to complete the look, with the mods held in with some superglue, epoxy, and hot glue.

Shortly after the completion of the dock, the Switch 2 was released, so naturally, that dock went through a similar process. While there is more internal space for cable management on this iteration of the console, there is too little space for the ports to fit without modification. Shaving off a few millimeters from the top of the ports allows them to fit inside the case, but makes cutting professional-looking holes in the front panel all the more challenging. Unfortunately, there is no good way to connect the adapter’s USB cable to the dock’s PCB, so an extraUSB cable became necessary.

Regardless of any imperfections, both of [son’s] modified docks look excellent, with near-OEM quality!

youtube.com/embed/NfM-JLqdszg?…

hackaday.com/2026/02/15/gamecu…

The WalMart Atomic Clock

In the realm of first-world problems, your cheap wall clock doesn’t keep time, so you have to keep setting it. The answer? Of course, you connect it to NTP and synchronize the clock with an atomic time source. If you are familiar with how these generic quartz clock movements work, you can probably guess the first step is to gut the movement, leaving only the drive motor.

The motor is somewhat like a stepper motor. The ESP8266 processor can easily control the clock hands by sending pulses to the motor. The rest is simple network access and control. If the network time is ahead, the CPU gooses the clock a little. If it is behind, the CPU stalls the clock until it catches up.

If you’ve ever done a project like this, you know there is one major problem. At some point, the processor needs to know where the hands are now. On initial setup, you can force the issue. However, if the power goes out, it won’t work well. If the power goes out at, say, 8 AM and turns back on at 9 AM, the CPU will be happy to correct the time to agree with the NTP time. The problem is that the processor has no idea that the hands started at 8 AM, so the time will be off.

To combat this problem, the design uses an EERAM chip to store the current time. In the event of a power failure, the CPU knows where its hands are and can adjust accordingly.

While you usually use these movements to keep time, once you can control them, you can do any crazy thing you like. Or, even anything as artistic as you can dream up.

hackaday.com/2026/02/14/the-wa…

Real-Time 3D Room Mapping with ESP32, VL53L5CX Sensor and IMU

ST’s VL53L5CX is a very small 8×8 grid ranging sensor that can perform distance measurements at a distance of up to 4 meters. In a recent video,[Henrique Ferrolho] demonstrated that this little sensor can also be used to perform a 3D scan of a room. The sensor data can be combined with an IMU to add orientation information to the scan data. These data streams are then combined by an ESP32 MCU that streams the data as JSON to a connected computer.

Of course, that’s just the heavily abbreviated version, with the video covering the many implementation details that crop up when implementing the system, including noise filtering, orientation tracking using the IMU and a variety of plane fitting algorithms to consider.

Note that ST produces a range of these Time-of-Flight sensors that are more basic, such as the VL53VL0X, which is a simple distance meter limited to 2 meters. The VL53L5CX features the multizone array, 4-meter distance range, and 60 Hz sampling speed features that make it significantly more useful for this 3D scanning purpose.

The Python-based viewer that runs on the PC can be found on GitHub, along with the ESP32 firmware.

youtube.com/embed/s32OUzhjf4U?…

hackaday.com/2026/02/14/real-t…

Una laurea a Cazzullo

C'è chi laurea ad honorem #FrancescaAlbanese lpost.be/2026/01/20/francesca-… e c'è chi laurea Aldo Cazzullo per

la sua capacità di intrecciare giornalismo e divulgazione culturale, di utilizzare l’intervista come strumento di rivelazione e di calare temi di grande impatto storico, culturale e religioso in un linguaggio capace di raggiungere ampi strati della società civile, aprendosi anche alle modalità espressive del teatro". (lanazione.it/pisa/cronaca/una-…)

sul quale ricordo il commento di @smaurizi :
xcancel.com/SMaurizi/status/17…

Condivido la presentazione - che raccoglie opinioni non mie - sulla persona in questione. Ha convinto i rappresentanti delle persone che studiano (studenti, dottorandi, ricercatori precari) e, nel consiglio del dipartimento a cui appartengo, tre coraggiosi colleghi. Io sono stata l'unica, fra i docenti ordinari, a votare contro. cryptpad.fr/file/#/2/file/ntwu…

#FrancescaAlbanese si è laureata regolarmente in giurisprudenza proprio a Pisa.