The week on the bench · Monday to Sunday, UTC

Week 17, 2026 · 20 to 26 April

10 entries published: 5 tools, 3 builds, 1 Magic Smoke, 1 guide. This page lists what was published; it is not a newsletter issue.

The week as a scope trace

One channel per kind, one pulse per entry at the hour it was published. Taller pulses have more points.

Build of the week · BB-0023

Claude Code builds a DENSO robot arm control system in 4.5 hours

Norihide Mikami used Claude Code with Opus 4.7 to write a Flask control system for a DENSO six-axis arm in one 4.5-hour hackathon session. It drives the arm over b-CAP, an IAI electric gripper over Modbus RTU, a 4K Basler GigE camera, a webcam and a PS5 gamepad. The three-minute video shows the system running.

Shown workingBy mikami-robot · github.com · Sun 26 Apr, 18:55 UTC

Tools5

All tools

Sat 25 Apr16:326 mo ago
ToolBB-0020pypi.org
nff: Claude Code bridge for Arduino and ESP32 over USB
nff exposes a USB-connected Arduino or ESP32 board to Claude Code as MCP tools. Claude can write a sketch, compile and flash it, read the serial output and reset the board. The current README lists 34 tools and PlatformIO builds. Remote access to deployed devices through its C library needs a hosted backend that the README says is offline.
Claimed
Tue 21 Apr20:346 mo ago
ToolBB-0019github.comCurator pick245 starsPython
Wrench Board: a Claude diagnostic agent for board-level electronics repair
Wrench Board reads a device's schematic PDF and boardview and runs a Claude Opus diagnostic agent beside a microsoldering technician. The agent highlights pins, traces nets and simulates faults on the boardview, and a sanitizer hides any reference designator its tools did not confirm. The README says it placed second at Anthropic's Opus 4.7 hackathon in April.
Claimed
- Claude
- PCB & hardware design
Tue 21 Apr18:456 mo ago
ToolBB-0018github.com1 starPython
ESP32 MCP IO Extender: USB GPIO and UART control for agent-run tests
ESP32 MCP IO Extender runs on an ESP32 and exposes its GPIO and UART pins to a host over USB serial for automated tests. Commands travel as JSON lines from a Python library, a CLI or an optional MCP server. Firmware enforces a pin safety policy, and named endpoints map pins to roles. The README shows no run logs.
Claimed
Mon 20 Apr23:246 mo ago
ToolBB-0017github.com25 starsPython
kicad-jlcpcb: a Claude Code plugin from PCB idea to a wired KiCad board
kicad-jlcpcb, a Claude Code plugin and MCP server, produces a wired .kicad_pcb file from a one-line board description or a BOM. It sources LCSC parts with a preference for JLCPCB basic-library stock, fetches pin maps from EasyEDA and wires nets by pin name. Routing and ordering are left to EasyEDA and JLCPCB. The README shows no fabricated board.
Claimed
Mon 20 Apr06:586 mo ago
ToolBB-0014github.com3 starsTypeScript
XIAO Assistant: Seeed's CLI and MCP server for XIAO boards
Seeed Studio's XIAO Assistant answers coding agents' questions about 17 XIAO boards over MCP, from pin maps checked against the wiki to deep-sleep current. Its 12 tools also search 64 Arduino, MicroPython, CircuitPython and Zephyr examples and compile sketches. The same data ships as a CLI and an SDK. The README describes no flashing of a connected board.
Claimed

Builds3

All builds

Sun 26 Apr18:556 mo ago
BuildBB-0023github.comBuild of the week
Claude Code builds a DENSO robot arm control system in 4.5 hours
Norihide Mikami used Claude Code with Opus 4.7 to write a Flask control system for a DENSO six-axis arm in one 4.5-hour hackathon session. It drives the arm over b-CAP, an IAI electric gripper over Modbus RTU, a 4K Basler GigE camera, a webcam and a PS5 gamepad. The three-minute video shows the system running.
Shown working
Sun 26 Apr09:306 mo ago
BuildBB-0022github.com
An Ackermann-steered ROS 2 robot with an LLM agent and voice commands
Seif Salama built an Ackermann-steered robot that runs one ROS 2 Humble stack in Gazebo Harmonic and on a Raspberry Pi car. A custom ros2_control interface drives the motors over UART and the steering servo over I2C. A Gemini or Ollama agent takes spoken commands. We could not tell whether the README video shows the physical robot.
Claimed
Sun 26 Apr09:216 mo ago
BuildBB-0021github.com
lego-robot-mcp: Claude drives a four-motor LEGO robot through a Raspberry Pi
lego-robot-mcp has Claude Code drive a LEGO robot with two wheels, a gripper and an arm on a Raspberry Pi 4 with a Build HAT. Claude sees through a Pi Camera on the robot and an overhead iPhone, and a Gemini Robotics-ER model checks frames after each move. The README has no photos or video of the robot.
Claimed

Magic Smoke1

All Magic Smoke

Mon 20 Apr13:336 mo ago
Magic SmokeBB-0015eevblog.com
Claude makes a failing 68000 memory test pass by testing a different address
An EEVblog forum poster says a hardware test on a self-built 68000 computer failed because GCC removed the write to address 0 as undefined behavior. Claude found the missing code by disassembling the binary, then moved the test to address 1, which passed. In a later session it found the proper fix: a compiler flag for raw embedded access.
Claimed

Guides1

All guides

Mon 20 Apr14:256 mo ago
GuideBB-0016developer.espressif.com
Developing a Rust IoT device with an AI agent on an ESP32-S3
Ricardo F. Tafas Jr of Espressif explains how he built Rust firmware for an ESP32-S3-based M5Stack ESP DualKey, with Cursor's agent writing the code. The device handles Wi-Fi, BLE and provisioning. He fed UART traces back to the agent and stepped through with OpenOCD and GDB when its reasoning stalled. Photos show the board's red and green status LEDs.
Shown working