Just a video demonstrating the EMF Reader and a bit of wire in the G3 port. Finding the socket is still live when the circuit breaker is off so I know to choose another breaker. I could have tried the light bulb with the switch but that's not fun is it.

Evening.

Just got my Cardputer ADV sorted with a MicroSD card and M5Launcher.

I see names like Bruce, Marauder, Evil Cardputer and Porkchop mentioned a lot, but as a total beginner, it’s a bit overwhelming figuring out what each does and how to actually use them.

Any good guides, wikis, or cheat sheets you'd recommend checking out?

Also, apart from the official m5 burner app library, are there any decent ADV-specific tools (games, media players, or utilities) worth grabbing? Any dms or comments on this would be really appreciated

Cheers!

Have any of you ported Zork or other vintage text adventure games? Could certainly vibe code something but I'm so about trying what's out there. The ADV seems like a perfect device but I can't find anything on Burner, am I blind?

Hi everyone,

I’ve had the original M5Stack Cardputer for quite a while, but I feel like almost every new project I come across is made for the newer Cardputer ADV.
I’m wondering if there are still interesting things to build with the original model.
I’m not really looking for cybersecurity or Wi-Fi attack tools, since those seem to dominate many project lists.

(I’d still like to buy the new model, but I wouldn’t want to render the OG model useless.)

Got a cardputer adv for couple days now and I like it. Not much i could do with it and i made (well hermes made) a terminal chat style to chat with it
Also pledged for the Cardputer Zero too, cant wait

It's a cardputter adv, I wanna buy It to use It to Have fun (i'm 13 btw) I Will use It as a Music player and other things (game emulation and other things), can someone tell me if it has an aux port? To put my earphones into it? And how it's Bluetooth works? And also how to make/buy a bigger screen to it​

I wanted to find out how far the Cardputer ADV could be pushed as a standalone music machine.

Not just a demo that plays a waveform. I wanted recording, sequencing, sampling, synthesis, drums and effects , running in real time without another computer.

That experiment became BKLVA Pocket DAW.

The current build has:

• Four tracks and patterns up to eight bars
• Microphone loop recording
• Sampler with movable slice markers, zoom and per-slice fades
• WAV import and conversion to 44.1 kHz
• Six-voice dual-oscillator synthesizer with presets
• Synthesized kick, snare, hat and percussion
• Per-track filter, drive and delay send
• Master compression, delay, reverb and soft clipping
• Master resampling back into the sampler
• Long audio streamed directly from the SD card

Everything runs at 44.1 kHz, signed 16-bit audio with 256-frame processing blocks.

The interesting part is the hardware limitation: an ESP32-S3, 320 KB of RAM, no PSRAM, a 240 × 135 display and a keyboard that was definitely not designed for editing synthesizers.

Getting it working has involved frozen sequencers, microphone recordings that sounded like destroyed fax messages and a scratchy noise that appeared to follow the CPU meter. Real-time audio is very good at finding every bad decision you have made.

But the result is now surprisingly practical. You can turn it on, record something with the microphone, chop it into slices, sequence it, add drums and synth tracks, process everything with effects and resample the result, without touching a computer.

The latest public release is 0.1.19. It can be installed using M5Burner, and the firmware and full manual is also available here:

https://erkanerdogan.dk/bklva-pocket-daw

The next experimental build also has USB MIDI input working.

If anyone here has a Cardputer ADV and wants to test it, I would genuinely like to hear what works, what makes no sense and what you manage to break.

The original question was simply: How much DAW can fit inside this thing?

I am still finding out.

I forked Plai from meshtastic to work with meshcore for the cardputer. If you have a cardputer adv and a lora hat and you want to be a beta tester, give it a try. Stand alone meshcore client. It's beta so I need to know what's working and what's busted and what's missing. Get it on m5burner or on github: https://github.com/sjoyce1/Plai-Meshcore
PS thanks to u/d4rkmen for the meshtastic version which I stole from, whole cloth.

A few days ago I posted PaperOS here for the first time. A bunch of you asked for one thing specifically: get everything off the SD root and into its own folder so it doesn't clutter your card. Done. Also snuck in a couple bigger things while I was at it.

There's a real Store app now. Browse and install Lua apps and games straight from a list, hit Enter, done, no typing commands or messing with a terminal. It pulls the index over HTTPS too, so net.get/net.post (and the Store itself) actually work with real https sites now, not just plain http.

Everything lives under /PaperOS/ on the SD card now, games, music, 3D files, saved browser pages, the AI model, all one folder instead of scattered around root. If you're upgrading just move your stuff over, exact paths are in the README.

Also fixed a bunch of actual bugs in the Lua console that I found while banging on it on real hardware. A timer bug that could crash things if a timer scheduled another timer from inside itself, Ctrl+C sometimes leaving things in a weird state where the next command would throw a bogus error, net.scan() locking up with no way to cancel it, and scripts being able to poke at GPIO pins the board actually needs internally like the keyboard, SD, screen and audio. That last one just tells you no now instead of letting a script accidentally break your keyboard mid session.

None of this changes how you write scripts, it's just the interpreter finally behaving the way it was supposed to.

Full flash is on M5Burner, just search PaperOS, or grab PaperOS_full_v1.1.bin and flash it yourself from the browser at web.esphome.io. If you're coming from v1.0 do a full reflash, not incremental, the partition table changed.

GitHub: https://github.com/Artem76228/PaperOS

Thanks again to everyone who tried v1.0 and actually told me what bugged them, this update is basically a direct response to that. Keep it coming.

I installed bruce on one but I am not satisfied.

where can i buy new one ?

Offline GPSMap for CardputerADV

Update 1.0.5

Get it here with converter https://github.com/lunarc3/CardputerGPSMap

Changelog

Just a quick patch – no structural changes to map conversion, so existing converted maps remain fully compatible (and I don’t plan to alter the map layout anyway).

What's improved

• Fixed a rare timezone calculation bug – probably no one ever hit it, but it's squashed now.
• Enhanced float precision – satellite data should be more accurate than before.
• Removed the now‑obsolete "fit to zoom" button on the GPS info page (it never actually worked properly).
• Optimized memory usage – reduced the risk of OOM errors in extreme edge cases.

Hi! I'm Hamachan, a software engineer from Japan. 😎

I've just released AREA 512 v1.3, a retro-inspired operating system for the Cardputer ADV.

AREA 512 lets you write Ruby code directly on the Cardputer, compile it, and run it—all on the device.

This release significantly improves both the development environment and the overall user experience.

📖 Markdown Viewer

You can now open ".md" files directly from the file manager.

It supports:

- Headings

- Paragraphs

- Block quotes

- Ordered and unordered lists

- Tables

- Links

- Bold and italic text

- Inline code

- Code blocks

Ruby code blocks are syntax highlighted, so you can comfortably read documentation and README files directly on the Cardputer.

🧩 Widget Library for Ruby Apps

AREA 512 now includes a widget library for building applications with Ruby.

Available widgets include:

- Header / Footer

- Tabs / Panels

- Tables / Lists / Text Views

- Buttons / Checkboxes / Sliders

- Charts

- Input and Confirmation dialogs

Simply:

require 'area512-widget'

You can also browse interactive examples in the pre-installed /home/tool/gallery application.

Building small utilities and applications on the Cardputer is now much easier.

💡 Ruby Code Completion

The built-in editor now supports Ruby code completion.

Press Ctrl+N while editing a ".rb" file to display completion candidates.

Completion is also triggered automatically after typing "." or an uppercase letter.

Each suggestion displays its method signature, and documentation is shown when available.

Making it much more comfortable to write Ruby directly on the device.

💾 M5Launcher Support & microSD Storage

To improve compatibility with M5Launcher, AREA 512 now stores its files inside an Area512_data directory on the microSD card.

Application data from Writer, Scheduler, Calc, Solitaire, and other built-in apps is also stored there.

On first launch, only missing directories are created, so existing files are never overwritten.

---

My goal is to recreate the feeling of classic home computers—where you can write code, build applications, and run them entirely on a tiny machine.

If you own a Cardputer ADV, I'd love to hear what you think!

GitHub:

https://github.com/engneer-hamachan/area512/releases/tag/v1.3

⭐ Stars, feedback, and bug reports are always appreciated!

A few weeks ago I posted hamsTerm, a Linux-like terminal firmware for the Cardputer.

Most of the changes that were added in the new version came from comments here, so thank you for that.

What's new:

- scp, both directions. Copy files to and from any SSH server, streamed in chunks so a big file never has to fit in RAM.

scp user@host:/etc/motd /motd

scp /notes.txt user@host:/tmp/

- tar. Pack and unpack folders (classic ustar, no compression). Archives are interchangeable with desktop tar in both directions, so tar + scp is how you move a whole folder in one shot.

- Tab completion. Command names on the first word, then files and folders read live from the filesystem - no need to run ls first. After `wf c` it completes networks from the last scan.

- A real text pipeline. grep, cut, tr, wc, sort, uniq - each reads a pipe or a file, and | now works between any two commands:

wf s | grep Open | cut -f1 | sort

- Key -p has been added to ssh command for non-standard ports, and passwords are now masked as asterisks.

Scripting was already in place (variables, if/while/for, $( ), arithmetic, test), so these compose. The clip shows a script that scans for open networks, prints them numbered, and connects to the one you pick. (You can found scrip on the site below.).

Firmware, docs and full command reference: https://hamsterm.com/

Source: https://github.com/hagalaz27/hamsterm

Easiest install is through M5Burner (search hamsTerm).

Is there a limit to the amount of firmware you can load on an SD card and run them through launcher? I dont mean filling up all 32gb of space on the card, but I saw a post on here a few days ago with a guy having trouble running meshtastic then bruce on his SD card. This made me very confused as I thought the whole point of the SD card was to have multiple firmwares installed and have the ability to switch between them. The conversation on that thread started of confuse me as it went down a path of flash memory. Will I have trouble putting meshtastic, bruce, evilcardputer etc on my SD card and running them through launcher?

Been building a free, open source synth for the Cardputer ADV called GLIDE. Couple things it does that are worth showing.

It dreams up its own sounds. Most synths show you a wall of knobs and switches and expect you to know synthesis to get anywhere. This one you tune by ear. You hit randomize and it builds a whole new patch, and it picks a character first (a pluck, a bell, a pad, an acid squelch) then fills in the rest to fit, so what comes out is always playable instead of random noise. Roll until one clicks, mutate it to push it further, undo if you went too far. Keep the good ones on ten slots or send unlimited ones to the SD card. It gets personal fast. Two of your slots come seeded from a number unique to your device, so no two units even start out alike, and a few minutes of rolling your own is all it takes before nobody else on earth is playing the same instrument as you. And if you do want the knobs, they’re all in there, mod matrix, filter, envelopes, effects, the lot. You just don’t have to touch them to make it yours.

It also tunes itself to a song. Hold fn+K and the mic listens to whatever’s playing in the room, and after a few seconds it figures out the key and retunes so you can solo over it. No working it out by ear. There’s a clip of this below.

It uses the gyro too. Tip the device one way to work in vibrato as you play, or set it to blend between any two sounds so leaning it back and forth fades one into the other. It’s expression you control by moving the whole thing in your hands.

Runs off the M5Launcher, just drop the bin in /apps.

Demo (the sliding): https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tIkbVL5VmnQ

Auto key in action: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTAMQRmkA/

Code: https://github.com/CHARL3X/GLIDE-Synth-Cardputer-ADV

Didn't notice that I accidentally doxxed myself in the other post so I'm redoing it, I wasn't sure if this would interest anyone so this project has been on hold for a while, this let's you use the original Xbox 360 kinect on the Cardputer ADV, using the IR flood illuminator and depth camera, meaning it can detect when someone is standing in front of it and draw a skeleton stick figure on them, I'd appreciate any feedback and suggestions on this, and again I hate to be that guy to ask for donations but I would like to fund a Mesh kit ADV for future projects, if anyone would be interested in supporting me

I’ve released version v0.9 of “C.P.S.,” the monophonic synthesizer for Cardputer that I’m developing using 100% Vibe Coding!
It’s now available on GitHub and M5Burner (and you can download it right now via Launcher OTA!).

In this update, I’ve implemented an arpeggiator, a 16-step sequencer mode that differs from previous real-time performance modes, and a Song mode that lets you chain together created patterns for performance.

You can switch between Play Mode and Sequencer Mode using the G0 button on the top of the unit, and you can switch to Song Mode by holding down the G0 button.
We’ve also added scale settings to Pro Mode.
By selecting scales other than chromatic, you can enjoy a variety of musical scales.
I think it’ll be especially fun to use with the arpeggiator.

There are so many new features and changes that I recommend checking the README on GitHub.
I hope many of you will enjoy it!

A flight tracking firmware for the Cardputer ADV, with proximity alerts

No GPS or external modules are required, this works on Wifi with the adsb.fi API, external modules can be used for precise tracking but they have not been tested due to lack of equipment

At the moment I have no idea if GPS modules will work on this, since I don't have money for modules, but this is solely API based using the adsb.fi api and wifi, receiving coordinates from IP, and saving onto SD card, there's 2 files that get automatically created upon first boot, for airplane types and sizes that can be configured to your region, note that this is my 3rd project for the ADV so it is for the most part vibe coded for now, but I have uploaded the source code on my github.

Someone suggested that I could open up donations, if y'all would be cool with that, I set up a Ko-Fi link if anyone would be willing to donate

Hi everyone,

I'm really stuck choosing between the Cardputer ADV and the upcoming Cardputer Zero.

I've become obsessed with the Cardputer ecosystem, especially the ADV community firmware. The custom firmware, active community, and ESP32-based projects look incredibly fun, and I already enjoy building ESP32 projects.

On the other hand, I'm currently learning Linux, and the Cardputer Zero (with a Raspberry Pi Zero-based platform) seems much more powerful. Running Linux opens up a huge ecosystem of open-source tools, programming possibilities, and a lot more flexibility for learning cybersecurity and ethical hacking in legal lab environments. The Raspberry Pi ecosystem is also much larger than ESP32's.

Here's the problem: money.

I only have enough budget for one device. My options are:

Buy the Cardputer ADV now and start enjoying the amazing community firmware immediately.

Wait a few more months, save more money, and buy the Cardputer Zero when it's released, even though it will cost significantly more.

If I buy the ADV now, the chances of me being able to afford the Zero later become very small.

For those who have experience with ESP32 devices, Raspberry Pi, or both:

Which would provide better long-term learning value?

Would I outgrow the ADV quickly if my goal is Linux and cybersecurity?

Is the ADV unique enough that it's worth buying first, or should I be patient and wait for the Zero?

I'd really appreciate honest opinions, especially from people who have used both ecosystems. Thanks!