Best of Raspberry Pi — October 2025

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    Article
    Avatar of ieeespectrumIEEE Spectrum·27w

    Wi-Fi Signal Tracks Heartbeat Without Wearables

    Researchers at UC Santa Cruz developed Pulse-Fi, a system that uses ambient Wi-Fi signals to monitor heart rate without wearables or cameras. The AI-powered approach runs on affordable devices like Raspberry Pi or ESP32 microcontrollers, filtering signal amplitude changes caused by heartbeats. Testing with over 100 participants showed less than 1.5 beats-per-minute error rate across various postures and distances up to 10 feet. The team is now working on multi-user support and exploring applications for sleep apnea and breathing rate monitoring.

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    Article
    Avatar of googleossGoogle Open Source Blog·24w

    Building the future with Blockly at Raspberry Pi Foundation

    Blockly, Google's open source drag-and-drop programming library, is transitioning to the Raspberry Pi Foundation's stewardship on November 10, 2025. Created at Google in 2011, Blockly has become a standard for visual programming used by platforms like Scratch, MakeCode, and LEGO Education. The move aligns with the Raspberry Pi Foundation's education-focused mission and aims to ensure Blockly's long-term stability and continued innovation. Blockly will remain free and open source, with no changes required for existing projects.

  3. 3
    Article
    Avatar of hnHacker News·25w

    Distro – Dosbian 3.0

    Dosbian 3.0 is a specialized Linux distribution for Raspberry Pi that boots directly into DOSBox, enabling users to run DOS software, Windows 3.1/95/98, and retro PC games. The latest version adds support for Raspberry Pi 5/500, updates DOSBox Staging to 0.82 with MMX instruction support, and is built on the Bookworm OS. Users can create virtual floppy disks and hard drives, mount media through a GUI utility, and run games via LaunchBox or ScummVM. The distribution contains no copyrighted material and requires users to install their own operating systems and software.

  4. 4
    Article
    Avatar of jeffgeerlingJeff Geerling·27w

    How much radiation can a Pi handle in space?

    Mark Rober's team tested Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 and Google Pixel 7 Pro radiation tolerance for their SatGus CubeSat mission. Using cyclotron testing at UC Davis and gamma testing at University of Maryland, they found the CM4 experienced single-event upsets every 39.3 Rads at 50 Rads/minute and survived until 57.8 kRads with permanent failure. The Pixel 7 Pro died around 9.2 kRads at high dosage. A 5mm aluminum enclosure provides shielding for the mission's expected 1-year lifespan in Low Earth Orbit. Standard Raspberry Pis work in space when not in critical flight paths, with watchdog timers handling radiation-induced reboots.

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    Article
    Avatar of hnHacker News·26w

    More random home lab things I've recently learned

    A collection of homelab lessons learned covering NVMe SSD installation on Raspberry Pi 5, ARM64 Proxmox deployment challenges including OOM kills and BIOS configuration, Proxmox Backup Server deadlock issues when ZFS volumes fill completely, and various tools including CyberPower UPS management software, Davis CalDAV server, and Mealie recipe manager. Includes practical solutions like using kpartx for VM disk mounting, fixing PBS storage deadlocks by removing ZFS snapshots, and configuring kernel page size for ARM virtualization.

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