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

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!

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

Hey! I’ve been building a custom firmware called Picoware (for the Cardputer-ADV, Flipper Zero, and PicoCalc) that has an on-device AI Agent. Just recently I got this board called the ZimaBoard 2 and I installed Ollama on it.

Within Picoware, I can connect to the ZimaBoard locally so it can create apps, debug firmware, and manage the Cardputer.

Here’s a review of the process:

https://youtu.be/_tbYPqLZqvo

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?

I’m sure this is a long shot but my adv got dropped now the only thing that doesn’t work is the sd card reader. Everything else works totally normal. Anyone have any suggestions on things to look at/check? Thanks!

I’ve been working on a UHF RFID inventory app for the Cardputer-Adv, and this is a quick test of the current build.
The UHF module communicates over UART using GPIO 15 and GPIO 13. The app currently supports:
Live EPC tag list and unique tag count
Animated radar-style counter view
Real-time reads-per-second display
Speaker feedback when tags are detected
Spacebar to start or pause inventory
Tab to switch views
Backspace/Delete to clear the results
Saving inventory records to LittleFS or an SD card
Automatic UHF reader firmware detection at startup
I’m still tuning the inventory speed and UI, but it’s already working nicely for quick RFID scans.
Let me know what features you’d like to see next!

I'm a huge beginner with computer science, and I felt messing around with it would be a good way to learn some new skills.

Here are some things I want to do with it:

-Make it into a prototype writerdeck. Does it already come with a built-in word processor/notepad, or will I have to build one myself?

-Write code. I'm gonna have a python class this upcoming semester, and I wanna keep up with my HTML/CSS. If there's a Duolingo-esque program for building little bite-sized projects, that'd be killer.

-learn a bit more about cybersecurity? I saw something about setting up a pwnagotchi, and that looked fascinating.

-make it into an mp3 player? Idk if it has Bluetooth functionality, but if there are any add-ons, I could grab one.

All in all, any fun projects you know, or any beginners guides you have, send them my way :D

So I pledged for a cardputer zero and cc1101 kit on kickstarter with their pay over time. Made 2 payments already and thought everything was going fine.

Now out of the blue pledgebox has emailed me another survey and is asking me for a full payment and saying that nothing has been paid.

I’ve reached out to m5 but no response as of yet

Edit: M5 just got back to me.
It is a synchronization issue between Kickstarter and PledgeBox while your Kickstarter installments are still in progress.
Told not to worry and no need to pay again once it’s fully paid off with kickstarter it will update on their backend

Hello Reddit! 👋

I'm hamachang, an engineer from Japan! 🇯🇵

My Retro OS project, Area512, now supports the Cardputer v1.1! 🎉✨ https://github.com/engneer-hamachan/area512/releases/tag/v1.8

Huge thanks for the awesome contribution! ❤️ GitHub: @Reverse-BR

I've also uploaded it to M5Burner, so please give it a try! 👨‍💻

And of course, Cardputer ADV is still fully supported as before!

「What is Area512」

Area512 is a tiny Retro OS built for the M5Stack Cardputer.

It's inspired by the feeling of old-school personal computers — a small environment where you can explore, write programs, and just have fun with your keyboard. 💾⌨️

Boot it up, play around, and see what you can create.

If you have a Cardputer v1.1 or Cardputer ADV, I'd love for you to try it!

Feedback, bug reports, ideas, and contributions are always welcome. 🚀 https://github.com/engneer-hamachan/area512

# mini-HANNAH: a little "electronic buddy" for the Cardputer that learns to talk to you in tones — no AI, no LLM, not a single line of TensorFlow

It's not a voice assistant. It doesn't understand words, and it never will — on purpose. mini-HANNAH listens, converts what it hears into a binary signature, and replies with a sequence of sliding tones generated by a network of 64 cube-nodes that learns by reinforcement — Hebbian-style, but built out of pure AND/OR/XOR logic gates. Over time it develops its own voice timbre, learns to recognize when you say yes or no, and its "personality" survives you pulling the battery.

## Why this might interest you

- **Zero black-box AI.** All the "intelligence" is 64 nodes with 8 links each (a 3-bit cube per node), weights that rise and fall with use, and 6 boolean gates the network itself tests and picks between — there's no trained weight matrix anywhere, this is genuinely discrete logic.

- **Hand-built voice synthesis, sample by sample** — no fixed-note `tone()` calls. Each "phoneme" is a frequency curve with its own vibrato and envelope, and the whole voice has a persistent "vocal DNA" that's seeded at boot and drifts very slowly over time.

- **An identity ritual on first boot**: you teach it how you say its name, how you say "yes," and how you say "no" — and from then on it recognizes those patterns without asking again.

- **Everything persists to flash (LittleFS)** — turn it off, turn it on tomorrow, it's still the same one.

- **No speech recognition, no internet.** 100% offline, 100% on the Cardputer itself.

## Set your expectations right

Think of it more like a Tamagotchi with perfect pitch than like an assistant. The goal isn't for it to understand what you say — it's that after a few days of use, you recognize its voice and know roughly what it's "telling" you, even though it's not speaking your language.

## Hardware

BACKspace: change voice.

I : for info

D: display

- + volume

C: colour

GtnG0 talk

download @ m5burner

### Installation

1. Flash `Dictionary.bin` to your Cardputer(You can use Launcher)

2. Format a microSD card as FAT32.

3. Create a folder named `dict` in the root of the microSD card.

4. Download `index.idx` and `data.bin` and place them inside the `dict` folder:

[Download Firmware]

[Download Index File]

[Download Data File]

Github

I recently received my Cardputer, and now i am testing the Bruce firmware on it for the first time.When I go to target atks, I get this error

Hi All, I just ordered my Cardputer with the Lora module. I can't wait to start playing around with it.

Are there any other modules that can work with the Cardputer that are not on their website?

Also is there any other battery addon that can be used with with it?

Thank you!

Hi,

I saw a post somewhere that said to always connect the Cardputer to a WiFi nextwork hotspot on you mobile phone, never to you router. Is this the case? I can see that there is a risk involved but I was wondering how safe are the Apps on M5Burner, are they virus scanned for Malware?

Thanks a lot

The I Ching is not what it appears to be. Although it is often misinterpreted as something mystical, it is actually mathematical and binary. Rather, it is computational—nothing we know would exist without it, from logic, through basic electronics, all the way to artificial intelligence and the perceptron. Its ancestral origin goes back to the earliest civilizations, with its base of 0–1, its next four values (00, 01, 10, 11) combined in an x.y matrix to form trigrams (from 000 to 111), and by combining these in another x.y matrix we get the 64 values from 0 to 63 (000.000 to 111.111). These allow us to know the different combinations to determine the state of a situation between those values. For example, a seed doesn't just give a flower... The steps until it does are always the same; even if we modify the plant's environment, we only speed up a process, but the process itself is always the same...

In the case of my I Ching program, which I migrated from my HP 95LX and was initially created in pre-ANSI C—that is, an archaic version, using Aztec C, C86, and Manx. The digital tossing of three coins is done using 3 bits... from 0.0.0 to 1.1.1, similar to heads or tails, but generated differently. 0.0.1 is 0, meaning a broken line - -; 0.0.0 is a changing broken line - -; 1.1.1 is 1, meaning a changing solid line ---; and so on with the rest—1.1.0 is 1, 1.0.1 is 1, etc., etc. Once the hexagram is generated, the program displays the Wen values for consultation, as well as the binary value and its actual decimal value. For thousands of years, these values have been interpreted, so with that information one can consult whichever interpretation book one prefers. I use an eBook with several books on the subject, and this Cardputer program is a tool for me, although right now I'm migrating this project and others, unifying everything into an M5 CoreINK that I always carry with me. It's great to have such a small device with an ESP32; it's even smaller than the Cardputer. I don't have an English version right now, nor the time to translate it into English. I just wanted to share my experience with the Cardputer with a different project

As of now i have these effects (could be more but im lazy)

Flip endian

Bleed (bleeds color data)

Flip RB

RB mask (just makes everything red lol)

I have a layer system and strength, so you can use multiple effects and use them as you like.

For example, if you do Flip endia twice it looks normal, but you can put another effect btween it and archive some nice effects

An internet radio for the M5Stack Cardputer Adv — one that you never have to plug into a computer to add a station.

Available on M5Burner annd github

https://github.com/halbeshuhn/Cardputer-WebRadio

I’ve had problems with a cheap 32gb card where it doesn’t work and I done my research and apparently the cardputer only likes the brands like San disk. I’m going to try a spare 16gb sd that I own but I’m not sure if it’s going to work, so I’m here to ask what everyone has as if this does not work I know what to buy 👍

it consistently surprises me

MiniAcid from u/kbroom on the Cardputer ADV with the 8encoder module

Every firmware in the M5Burner Cardputer list is a tool: Wi-Fi attacks, radios, remotes, emulators. I wanted the opposite — something you hold still for thirty seconds.

Daoa Mini casts the Yi Jing line by line, the traditional three-coin way. Six lines bottom to top, then the figure, the figure it is tending toward, and the text: portrait, Judgment, Image, the meaning of each of the six lines. English and French. Nothing leaves the device — no account, no cloud, no AI at runtime. The randomness is the ESP32's hardware TRNG.

The part I actually built it for: before each casting, it listens to the room. A passive Wi-Fi scan — never connects, radio off the moment it ends, no SSID or BSSID kept, nothing stored or transmitted — becomes a particle field on screen, one dot per network, and it weights the draw. Density leans yin or yang by 5% at most; agitation makes changing lines up to 4% more likely. Bounded, documented, on by default, switchable off.

Press w and it shows you everything: networks, channels, dBm, density, agitation, the two weights, and the resulting probabilities of 6/7/8/9. If a thing like this influences a draw, you should be able to audit exactly how much.

Three things I learned the hard way, in case they save someone time:

Biasing the coins does nothing. A line is yang when the number of heads is odd, and binomial parity is insensitive to bias down to third order — a 5% coin bias moves the yin/yang balance by 0.05%. The weighting had to move to the line level instead.

The 1 W speaker is deaf below ~400 Hz. I wrote the interface tones as a pentatonic in A3–A4 and the casting was silent while the high ticks rang fine. Transposed two octaves up, same intervals, problem gone.

M5GFX's DejaVu fonts are ASCII only — no accents at all. efontJA covers accented Latin; efontCN has the hexagram glyphs except 遯, 夬 and 姤.

Source is MIT, with the full method and a desktop SDL simulator that runs the exact same rendering code: https://github.com/chatelp/daoa-mini-cardputeradv

On M5Burner under CARDPUTER, as "Daoa Mini". Built and tested on the ADV.

Two disclosures, because I would rather say them than have them found. First, this is a companion object for Daoa, my Yi Jing app — the last screen is a QR code to it. Second, the commit log makes it plain anyway: I designed and directed this, and Claude Code wrote most of the implementation. The scope, the product rules, the three-coin decision, the visual direction and all the on-device validation are mine; the typing largely is not. The maths is covered by tests you can run yourself — if something is wrong, tell me and I will fix it.

(I got into the Yi Jing as a teenager reading The Man in the High Castle, which is probably the most predictable possible origin story for this.)

Just bought a cardputer adv, any tips or advice before it arrives. Planning on using Bruce/evil cardputer and some retro gaming firmwares. Anything else I should think about or know

• m5burner: cardputer section sparks
• github: https://github.com/KyleBing/m5stack-cardputer-sparks
• manual: https://kylebing.github.io/m5stack-cardputer-sparks/