Agent
OpenAI's coding agent, in the terminal, the editor and the cloud, used to write and test firmware and hardware tooling.
The most active tools first.
17 d ago
HeyPCB's MCP server connects Claude Code, Codex or Cursor to its hosted KiCad board-design service. An agent can ask HeyPCB to build the whole board with build_board, or add parts and connections itself and call check_board until each finding is fixed. A local npm package adds KiCad project upload and Gerber export. The vendor README shows no fabricated board.
24 d ago
TraceMaker routes and places KiCad 9 and 10 boards and judges the result with KiCad's own design-rule check. Two agent skills prepare a board and sign off a route, and an experimental session mode exposes the router over MCP. The README reports 72.5% of PCBench tier B boards routed with no added KiCad errors, against 50% for Freerouting.
2 mo ago
OpenBaud connects Codex to local serial devices through an MCP server and plugin, with every write audited. It identifies ports from USB metadata, checks framing and checksums, and asks for acknowledgment before dangerous commands. Each byte goes to a capture that replays without hardware. The demo GIF and 46-second video show it on an ESP32-S3.
25 d ago
AgentFace32 shows what coding agents such as Claude Code and Codex are doing on an ESP32 board with a small screen. Agent hooks send JSON events over the local network, and the device draws a face, a status line, a task timer and alerts. The README's video shows it following a live Codex session on an M5Stack Basic.
35 d ago
debug-devices connects coding agents such as Claude Code and Codex to a repair bench through an MCP server. The agent drives an Android phone camera with zoom and torch, reads a multimeter through a webcam and a vision model, and finds parts, nets and test points in the board's boardview file. The README's clip shows the monitor page only.
38 d ago
EmbeddedCI's BenchPod plugins connect Claude Code and Codex to a BenchPod, the company's hardware-in-the-loop tester wired to the board under test. One MCP server has tools to flash over SWD, power-cycle and capture the boot log, emulate I2C sensors, capture logic and analog signals and talk CAN. The vendor README lists the tools but shows no runs.
Ranked by points weighed against age. New entries with early votes rise.
21 d ago
Anup Ray reverse-engineered a Nokia 110 4G's firmware with OpenAI Codex and rewrote its Calculator app as an agent chat app. It sends messages to DeepSeek over the phone's SIM data and can check the battery, toggle the torch, place calls and set alarms. It loads into RAM from a computer, so a restart removes it.
8 d ago
CNX Software reported on 21 October that Espressif sells ESP-Mosaico, a modular ESP32-S31 kit with a square touchscreen, for $59 on its own store. Espressif's Vibe Coding guide has a coding agent such as Codex build apps from the esp-mosaico-vibe workspace and install them over USB. An on-board agent, ESP-Claw, answers chat requests.
10 d ago
GoFly says an AI agent designed a six-layer STM32F405 flight controller in EasyEDA Pro through easyeda-agent, then ordered it from JLCPCB with SMT assembly. The post says the agent then flashed the board over USB and ran basic function tests. The design keeps only the MCU, gyroscope and accelerometer, and testing stayed on the desk.
15 d ago
Artificial Analysis launched AA-Robotics v0.1, a benchmark in which language models in coding-agent harnesses control a Hiwonder NexArm robot arm. Models in Codex, Claude Code and Antigravity write code for 8 zero-shot tabletop tasks, watching through 4 cameras. GPT-6 Astra led with 69.4 and Claude Opus 5.5 scored 48.8. Models took about 30 minutes a task; people averaged 20 seconds.
22 d ago
Silicon Labs opened a public beta of its Simplicity AI SDK on 22 September, connecting AI coding assistants to its SDKs, tools and hardware. RFID Journal reports that GitHub Copilot and Codex are validated and that support starts with Bluetooth LE. A Hardware Intent Agent that drafts projects from board schematics is due in alpha in January 2027.
5 mo ago
Wired's Will Knight connected OpenClaw and Codex to a LeRobot SO-101 arm with a camera. Codex configured the connections, helped calibrate the joints and wrote a script that grips a red ball the camera sees. OpenClaw then guided training of a control model, checking its error rate after each run. The article's clips show the arm at work.
45 d ago
Tech-AD-venture's 23-minute video walks through using AI agents in VS Code for STM32 firmware, contrasting autocomplete with task-based agents. Tools covered include GitHub Copilot, Claude, Codex and PlatformIO. An STM32 RTOS example runs from requirement to review. Its description lists MCP hardware access as a possibility; we could not confirm on-board debugging in the video.
2 mo ago
Niclas Vestlund's VibePulse shows Claude Code and Codex usage and agent activity on a Waveshare ESP32-S3 AMOLED panel. A full-screen alert appears when an agent waits for input, and a tap answers supported prompts. A Python service runs on macOS or Windows; cloud relays are off by default. The README links a YouTube Short of the panels on his desk.
2 mo ago
co-arm is a 3D-printed four-joint camera arm built from ST3215 serial-bus servos, an ESP32 servo HAT and a Raspberry Pi 4. Codex previews each move before running it, then reads the joints and camera to check the result. The author says Codex has moved the physical arm; demo media is not published yet. The software is source-available for noncommercial use.
2 mo ago
Steve from IQ Workshop ran Hermes Agent on a 1 GB Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Plus, using OpenAI's Codex model and Telegram for chat. He asked it to write and upload a countdown blink sketch to an ESP32 on his workbench. The first upload failed; the agent diagnosed the error, retried and saved the fix to its memory.
2 mo ago
Flux added a public MCP server to its PCB design tool in its summer update. External agents such as Claude, Cursor and Codex can query a board's live context and drive design changes. The post gives firmware headers generated from actual pin assignments and net names as one use. The update also adds a lower-cost chat mode.
2 mo ago
Espressif published a four-hour workshop on using AI coding agents in Cursor or VS Code for ESP-IDF v6.0.2 work on an ESP32-C5-DevKitC. Six assignments cover agent setup with the Espressif documentation MCP server, spec-driven prompts, token use and debugging. An optional exercise decodes LED frames from a Saleae Logic 2 capture. We found no captures or photos.
3 mo ago
code-chan runs on a Stack-chan robot with an M5Stack CoreS3 and shows whether Claude Code or Codex is ready, working or waiting for permission. The user approves or rejects a prompt on its touchscreen. A local Node.js bridge sends hook events over USB serial, and the firmware checks each message before acting. README photos show three states.
3 mo ago
StackChan Remote MCP connects Codex to an M5Stack CoreS3 StackChan robot through a FastMCP server and an MQTT broker on a VPS. Codex switches the robot's expression, gets camera photos back as MCP images and reads screen and head-pad touches from an unread queue. The README reports an end-to-end test on a CoreS3 but shows no photos or logs.
5 mo ago
A software engineer had Codex with GPT-5.5 write most of wfb-link, a Rust stack that drives an ALFA AWUS036ACH Wi-Fi adapter from macOS userspace. Claude Opus 4.7 helped at times. The stack initializes the RTL8812AU and sends and receives WFB-NG frames, with a Raspberry Pi 5 at the far end. The Show HN post says the alpha took two weeks.
5 mo ago
Craig Hollabaugh had Codex identify a blank LilyGo T-Display S3, install the toolchain and write a display test in an unedited session. When the screen stayed dark, the agent found the panel is an ST7789 on an 8-bit parallel bus and rewrote its driver. It then built an LVGL 9.2 speedometer and tachometer dashboard, on camera throughout.
