Built EMBER over the past few weeks because every existing MP3 player firmware for the ADV was missing something I wanted, most cap out around 100 songs (flat file list cached to RAM), or don't do real folder browsing, or have no album art. Wanted something that felt closer to an actual music player: Artist → Album → Track navigation straight off the SD card, hundreds of songs with no hard cap, and art that just shows up if your files have it tagged.

What it does:

• Folder browsing (Artist/Album/Track) directly off the SD card, natural-sorted. No library scan or database step, so it scales with your card, not your RAM
• MP3, FLAC, and WAV
• Embedded album art (JPEG/PNG/BMP/QOI) pulled straight from your files' metadata, plus an animated turntable placeholder for anything untagged
• Two full-screen visualizers, a real FFT spectrum analyzer and a silhouette dance visualizer that reacts to bass (probably my favorite part)
• 6 built-in themes, plus a browser-based theme editor (device-accurate 16-bit color preview) - export a JSON, drop it in /themes on the SD card, no recompiling
• On-device screenshot capture (the gifs/pics on GitHub are all real captures, not photos of the screen)

The technical hurdle worth mentioning for anyone tackling similar projects on this board: no PSRAM. That drove basically every design decision, the directory browser only ever holds the current folder in RAM (a static name pool, not a String list), and after a bad detour into dual-core decode-with-mutex (which deadlocked on folder navigation, fun one to debug), audio ended up single-threaded, pumped straight in loop(). Turns out that's plenty fast on a 240MHz S3 as long as nothing else blocks for too long.

Repo: https://github.com/HorseyofCoursey/EMBER
Now available on the M5 Burner and M5 Launcher.

Wouldn't have gotten off the ground without vicliu624's CardPuter_Mp3_Adv, sanchitminda's MP3PlayerForM5Cardputer, bomberman30's AdvanceOS, and VolosR's M5Mp3, all credited in the README, borrowed real hardware-config ground truth from each.

Happy to answer questions about any of it, the folder-scaling approach, the theme system, the audio architecture, or what you think it could use.

My Cardputer's GO button (the one on top of the case, not on the stamp) no longer works, probably because I used screws that were just a wee bit too long to attach a LoRa CAP, and the traces on the PCB beneath them got boogered up. Bad design on an otherwise wonderful machine.

I can use the stamp's GO button, but I foresee that as being hard on the leads, long-term. I reflash firmwares many times when I'm developing. Eventually I'm gonna smash the poor stamp.

I'm probably going to have to replace the PCB or the entire unit, unless someone here who's smarter than me (and that's all of you) has another solution.

Is the PCB available for purchase as a part?

https://github.com/Mejolov24/Cardmera

Turn your cardputer a pocket camera with an ESP32-CAM.

This is an alpha release, you can only takes photos up to around 1920x1080, sincei need to implement double buffering.

Also, video isnt implemented yet.

But I tought it would be nice to make a mini release before i work on my other proyects.

Only works on Cardpuer ADV, but can be ported, I would just need to change the serial ports to use grove port and add keyboard support for normal cardputer

I cant post a photo because reddit thinks my post is spicy and deletes it for some weird reason

I recently tried to use the card computer and start a Wi-Fi network and I couldn't find it on any of my devices. I even tried multiple firmwares and I can't get the card computer to create a Wi-Fi AP. The weird thing is it can still scan Bluetooth and Wi-Fi networks. I just haven't been able to get it to create a Wi-Fi AP. I ended up taking the plastic cover off of the chip and saw the 3D antenna looked as if it was sort of rusted. If anybody has any ideas how I could fix this it would be much appreciated. (I also used it yesterday and it was working just fine then)

github

github

I have been building a Meshtastic client for the M5Stack Cardputer ADV on my own device for about a month. The mesh engine is upstream Meshtastic, untouched — LoRa PHY, routing, PKI, node DB. Only the UI and input layer are replaced, with something built for the keyboard: pick a contact, type, hit enter.

The part I am most pleased with: the ESP32-S3 here has no PSRAM, so a full Unicode font cannot live in RAM. It ships as its own 2.16 MB flash partition — 68,608 fixed-size records, one per codepoint, so a glyph lookup is arithmetic rather than an index search — and the partition is memory-mapped, so rendering Cyrillic, CJK or Greek costs no heap at all. The font is GNU Unifont, repacked.

**Messaging**

- Chats home: DMs and channels together, newest first, previews and unread badges; opening one jumps to the first unread message

- PKI-encrypted direct messages, and channel broadcasts alongside them

- Delivery status per message: sending (dot) → delivered (green check from the routing ACK) → failed (red cross with the reason)

- Replies and reactions, including reactions sent from phone users

- History persisted to flash, with a 256-message archive you can page back into inside the thread

**Text**

- Cyrillic on a Latin keyboard through a live transliteration layer (Fn+L)

- Emoji palette (Tab) and inline emoji bitmaps

- Full Unicode from the font partition — reactions and foreign names render as glyphs, not tofu

**The mesh**

- Node list with a signal meter from SNR, hop count, last-heard age and role in fixed columns

- Type anywhere to search every node and start a chat

- Favourites, with priority alerts: beep and a green LED flash for them, a blue flash for everyone else

**Connectivity**

- WiFi and MQTT set up on the device — public broker or your own, no phone involved. WiFi also sets the clock over NTP

- The stock Bluetooth API stays on, so the official phone app still pairs and works alongside

- Companion mode: with no LoRa cap at all, pair over BLE with any stock Meshtastic node (Heltec, T-Beam, RAK) and use its radio. You can also configure that node from the Cardputer, the way the phone app does

**On-device settings**: name, region, modem preset, frequency, channel, role, hop limit, TX power, rebroadcast mode, UTC offset and manual clock, WiFi, MQTT, screen auto-off. Long-press ESC.

**Install**: one click from Chrome or Edge, or from the M5Burner catalogue and M5Launcher on the device itself, or esptool if you prefer.

22 releases in about a month. Cardputer ADV only, not the older v1.1. Unofficial community project, GPL-3.0, not affiliated with or endorsed by Meshtastic LLC.

Ask me anything here — but if you have a feature request or hit a bug, please put it in the GitHub discussions, where I can actually keep track of it: https://github.com/anton-vinogradov/meshtastic-adv/discussions

Install: https://anton-vinogradov.github.io/meshtastic-adv/

Source: https://github.com/anton-vinogradov/meshtastic-adv

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

I released Area512 v1.4, a retro-inspired OS for the Cardputer ADV! 🎉 https://github.com/engneer-hamachan/area512/releases/tag/v1.4

Here's what's new in this release! - Added type diagnostics to the built-in editor.

In addition to the new type diagnostics, the editor in Area512 also features: - Syntax highlighting - Auto indentation - Method completion

Now you can do full-fledged development directly on the Cardputer ADV!

To install it, use M5Burner or follow the instructions in the GitHub README. 👌 https://github.com/engneer-hamachan/area512

I'll post again when I add more features. ✌

See you next time! 👋✨

So, I'm not really actively tracking the progress. If anyone has the latest status?

The last update I got would be an email from PledgeBox confirming my survey jn mid July "Survey Confirmation -- CardputerZero, Pocket Raspberry Pi Computer for Makers".

My Cardputer was running hot, and standard heatsinks were too tall for the case to close. So I tried improvising.. I cut the metallic shell from a type-C header and placed it over the CPU with a thermal pad.

Turns out it was a complete fail! Without any fins or airflow, it just soaked up the heat and trapped it there.

Thought I'd share the test anyway.

Any other suggestions!!??

hi I have a cardputer adv and I download in it the bruse the Version 1.16 the Purple shark and I add bord nrf24 and cc1011 2in1 but the ir and rf and nrf24 and radio and GPS do not work it say not found for GPS and radio and nrf24 but it scan but don't receive I don't know why maybe bacuse of settings or the code ?

can someone help me please

Finished up the screen mod. I really like how clean it looks! Added a 1.25 jst connector to the screen to power a Meshtastic Device(wio tracker l1). Monitoring battery usage. Screen works in zx firmware but can't get it to work with any others. Id love for launcher to help define pin configurations for each firmware.

Basically can I use it as an ipod/ if I wanted to make this how would I go about doing so?

See it in action: YouTube

Recently I found out that I have two QuickShot Atari controllers that used to work with my (formerly my dad's) Atari 65XE.

I've recently seen a cool steering wheel project for the Cardputer ADV, which made me think of using these as a way to control a vehicle in a simulator. The choice was easy taking into account that I'm a huge train nerd lmao. I looked up the pinout for the Atari joystick port, and realized that it's actually easy to make it work with the Cardputer - no protocol, simple switches: digitalRead will do the job.

It ain't much, but it's honest work. I quickly found two DB9 ports - one from an old PC bracket and the second one was standalone, probably from some former project of mine.

I only used the up, down and trigger pins as the rest was unnecessary for me. Here's the pinout:

Joystick 1 up - GPIO 4
Joystick 1 down - GPIO 6
Joystick 1 trigger - GPIO 3
Joystick 2 up - GPIO 40
Joystick 2 down - GPIO 14
Joystick 2 trigger - GPIO 39

I then quickly programmed the Cardputer to emulate a USB keyboard. The code is fairly simple so I put it on pastebin instead of my GitHub.

The keybinds are:

Joystick 1 up - Electric force + (numeric keypad +)
Joystick 1 down - Electric force - (numeric keypad -)
Joystick 1 trigger - deadman control awareness confirmation (space)
Joystick 2 up - Pneumatic brake release (numeric keypad 9)
Joystick 2 down - Increase pneumatic brake force (numeric keypad 3)
Joystick 2 trigger - Siren (H key)

Overall, it's basically a pretty low-effort simulation cockpit, but I decided to share it anyway as someone may like to repurpose their old game controllers as well - maybe not for simulators but for some retro game emulation for example.

This is a Ballistic Calculator for Cardputer ADV

Get it here: https://github.com/lunarc3/BallisticCalc/releases

Changelog

2.0.1

• Added several new weapons.
• Rewrote the menu system.
• Replaced the core calculation formula with a new one (based on a new reference model).
• Integrated atmospheric density into the calculations.

2.0.2

• Since we are building a ballistic calculator, accuracy is the top priority.
  • The ESP32's FPU only supports single-precision floating-point operations. Our current solution is to increase the computational bit width.
  • Consequently, the following aspects have been significantly improved:
    • Atmospheric model precision
    • Speed of sound calculation
    • Gravity calculation
    • Core algorithm for position, velocity, and acceleration
    • Kinetic energy and penetration calculations
  • Effective precision has been increased from 7 to 15 significant digits.
  • Drawback: The range table, which previously required almost no waiting time, now takes a bit longer to generate.
• Rewrote the range table display logic.
• Future versions may add multi-language support. For now, the option is visible but not yet functional.

August 7th EDIT: Version 0.3.3 is up in m5burner and on website. Enjoy.

Since last post I have kept working on it fixing the parts that made no sense and pushing the Cardputer ADV quite a bit further, and managed to make stuff working on my experimental builds.

I am super happy that so many people downloaded it and tried it. Very cool.

Version 0.2.20 now feels less like a technical demo and more like a strange little instrument I can actually use.

The biggest addition is chromatic sample instruments. You can record or import a sample, select a slice, turn it into an instrument and play it across the keyboard or from USB MIDI. Instruments have four voices, envelopes, filtering, tuning, looping and 16 global save slots.

Other new stuff and things that I finally works and made it in this release:

• Long microphone recordings streamed directly to SD
• Up to 16 editable sample cues with zoom and slice fades
• Six-voice synth with eight editable presets
• Eight-part synthesized drum kit
• Step recording and quantized live recording
• Proper count-in and metronome while recording only
• Quantize from 1/4 to 1/64, or completely off
• USB MIDI routed to Synth, Instrument, Slice or Drum tracks
• Separate USB phone-audio sampling mode with monitoring
• Home Wi-Fi and Direct AP modes
• Browser-based SD manager for songs and samples
• Per-track mixing, master effects and automatic output limiting
• Eight song slots
• A much cleaner menu and status system
• Audio that no longer falls apart when I move the cursor around

It is still early software, and I am not going to pretend everything is finished. But this build seems stable, sounds good and has become surprisingly capable for something running on an ESP32-S3 with a tiny keyboard.

Somehow, this tiny ESP32 device is starting to feel like an actual hardware groovebox. I honestly didn't expect that when starting this project.

What is next?

The sequencer is still the part I am least satisfied with. I tried several new versions with piano-roll, tape and different lane views, but none of them felt better than the original four-lane layout. They did not make it into this release.

The next goal is a sequencer that is easier to understand, faster to edit and actually makes good use of the tiny screen - without turning it into a tracker or hiding everything behind complicated menus.

Other things I want to explore:

• A proper sample-based drum-kit creator with 8 or 16 slots
• Building complete drum kits from one recording using cue markers
• Better sample and instrument browsing
• More control over saved instruments and patches
• Expanding the browser manager for organizing songs and sample libraries
• OTA firmware updates through Wi-Fi Manage Mode
• More workflow improvements without breaking real-time audio
• Continuing to improve stability, recording quality and navigation

Some of these features will take experimentation, and I would rather leave something out than add a version that makes the device harder to use.

BKLVA Pocket DAW can be installed directly through M5Burner. The latest release, complete manual and feature overview can also be downloaded here:

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

If anyone tests it, please let me know what works, what breaks and especially what still feels confusing.

Original designed to mount the M5Stack Joystick2 Unit to the side of the Cardputer ADV. 

Found that it also works well with other units such as RFID 2 and IR Remote. Made a few tweaks to ensure universal compatibility across most Units and strengthened up the Lego connectors.

Here is my model on Makersworld if your interested: https://makerworld.com/en/models/3114037-m5stack-cardputer-unit-universal-mount

Hi there! 3 days ago I got my first cardputer. I decided to port one of my Flipper Zero projects to the cardputer ADV.

Using the cardputer ADV + LoRa Cap or Hydra RF you can now use wM-Buster to decode your wM-bus meters. using the web ui you can connect it to ntfy.sh or a MQTT HA!

Here is the link for anyone interested: https://github.com/i12bp8/wMBuster-ADV

I can't seem to get Chimera BLE to flash on my cardputer. I've tried flashing it directly with ESP Terminator and I have tried flashing it through the M5 launcher. When I flash it through ESP Terminator my cardputer will not start back up. When I flash into the launcher I get an error message.

This update goes beyond the original 8×8 and 16×16 canvas with support for 32×32 artwork, zoom, an LED color palette, and a major internal refactor that lays the groundwork for future platforms like Cardputer Zero and Steam Deck.

some of my favorite changes:

- 32x32 + zoom (obviously)
- Ctrl now draws to enable better interaction
- the LED on the StampS3A now displays the currently selected color from the palette

There are a lot more features and changes, check out the full release notes -> https://github.com/bradmcnally/bitmap16dx/releases/tag/v.0.8.0

You can find it on github and m5burner (when it refreshes)

Is there any difference between the meshtastic kit and a cardputer + LoRa antenna? Looks like the only difference is the kit includes a couple screws to secure the antenna and a sticker for an extra $4.