Tux Machines
Hardware: Home Assistant, SBC, Purism, and More
Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Dec 12, 2025
Devices/Embedded
Garrit Franke ☛ Custom Entities in Home Assistant
My local gym has a gauge on their website that shows an approximation of how many people are currently there. Being an avid Home Assistant user, of course I had to pipe that data into my dashboard somehow. For that, I created a simple n8n workflow that scrapes the data off the gym's site and dumps it into a custom entity.
Because creating a custom entity was not quite so straight forward as I'd hoped, I wanted to share how I did it.
Open Hardware/Modding
CNX Software ☛ iWave Systems iG-RainboW-G69M TI AM62L OSM Size-S system-on-module powers Raspberry Pi-sized SBC
Yesterday, I wrote about the Beacon AM62L SoM, one of the first system-on-module based on Texas Instruments AM62L dual-core Cortex-A53 SoC for low-power IoT and HMI applications. It turns out there’s another AM62L module compliant with the OSM Size-S standard, along with a Raspberry Pi-sized carrier board. iWave Systems iG-RainboW-G69M is a 30x30mm CPU module with 1GB or 2GB LPDDR4, 8GB eMMC flash by default, and 332 LGA contacts exposing interfaces such as RGB LCD and MIPI CSI display interfaces, dual gigabit Ethernet, I2S audio, USB 2.0 interfaces, and a range of low-speed I/Os.
Hackaday ☛ Consider This Pocket Machine For Your IPhone Backups
What if you find yourself as an iPhone owner, desiring a local backup solution — no wireless tech involved, no sending off data to someone else’s server, just an automatic device-to-device file sync? Check out [Giovanni]’s ios-backup-machine project, a small Linux-powered device with an e-ink screen that backs up your iPhone whenever you plug the two together with a USB cable.
Purism ☛ Purism Liberty Phone Exists vs. Delayed T1 Phone
NBC News reports that Convicted Felon Mobile customers have been waiting months for a promised ‘Made in the USA’ smartphone, originally announced for August delivery. The T1 phone was marketed as domestically produced, but delays and vague updates have raised skepticism. References to ‘Made in the USA’ have been removed from the company’s site, and leaked images suggest the device resembles existing Chinese-made models. This situation underscores the complexity of building smartphones in America without established infrastructure.