The week on the bench · Monday to Sunday, UTC
Week 18, 2026 · 27 April to 3 May
13 entries published: 8 tools, 3 builds, 1 guide, 1 news. 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-0033
Pixel Pets: a father and son build M5Stack virtual pets with Claude-written firmware
Marcel Dütscher and his 10-year-old son built Pixel Pets, virtual pets for three M5Stack boards, with Claude writing the firmware under their direction. The CoreS3 version adds voice control through M5Stack's Module LLM, and pets swap gifts over ESP-NOW. Photos, a 10-second clip and a two-minute reel show the pets running on the devices.
Tools8
All tools5 mo ago
Active-Pro MCP server: Claude Code analyzes a three-FPGA boot capture
Active Firmware Tools connected Claude Code to its Active-Pro logic analyzer and firmware debugger through an MCP server over TCP. In the two-minute video the agent triggers a capture on a custom board with three FPGAs running RISC-V soft cores. It reads firmware trace output alongside RGMII, USB enumeration and SCSI traffic and checks it for errors.
Shown working5 mo ago
wirestudio: an agent-driven design studio from ESPHome YAML to PCB and enclosure
wirestudio generates pin assignments, ESPHome YAML, a KiCad schematic and PCB, a JLCPCB fab bundle and an OpenSCAD enclosure from one design file. It covers ESP32-family boards and the ESP8266. A built-in Claude agent or any MCP client can call its 53 tools, 22 of which reach hardware. The README says those were exercised on a live bench during bring-up.
Claimed5 mo ago
sdr-mcp: an MCP server and web dashboard for RTL-SDR dongles
sdr-mcp connects Claude Desktop or Cursor to an RTL-SDR dongle through a FastMCP server. Tools set frequency and gain, capture IQ samples, compute spectra with peak detection and keep a waterfall; FM audio plays through a GNU Radio demodulator in Docker. A React dashboard has the same controls. The README shows no captures from a dongle.
Claimed5 mo ago
stackchan-mcp: MCP control of M5Stack's StackChan head, camera and touch sensor
stackchan-mcp puts xiaozhi-esp32-based firmware on M5Stack's StackChan kit, a CoreS3 with two neck servos and a camera, and adds a Python gateway for MCP clients. Claude Code or Claude Desktop can move the head, take photos, read the touch sensor and switch the avatar's expression over WebSocket. The README shows no photos of the robot.
Claimed5 mo ago
esp32-ai-loop-mcp-server: an edit, build, flash and observe loop for ESP-IDF
esp32-ai-loop-mcp-server gives Claude Code 11 tools to build an ESP-IDF project, flash it to an ESP32 and read the serial output. The serial monitor runs in a background thread, writes to a log file and releases the port while flashing. The agent searches the log after each change. The README shows an example session but no captured device logs.
Claimed6 mo ago
AIX Skills: 76 agent skills for MCU debugging and embedded integration
AIX Skills collects 76 agent skills for embedded work, from 8051 and Cortex-M debugging to CANopen and cellular AT modems. Each skill gives an agent trigger conditions, a step-by-step workflow and checks, and the repo adds templates for writing new ones. The skills are instructions only, and the README shows no runs on hardware.
Claimed6 mo ago
MCP-AmigaOS4: drive real AmigaOne machines and QEMU guests from an agent
MCP-AmigaOS4 drives AmigaOS 4.1 machines through 138 MCP tools and a daemon on each Amiga, on QEMU guests and real PowerPC hardware alike. Tools edit files, run AmigaDOS commands, take screenshots and install the OS. On an AmigaOne X5000 it reads sensors through the board's MCU and switches power over an FTDI cable. The README says both targets were verified.
Claimed6 mo ago
ESP-IDF Tools MCP server: build and flash ESP32 projects from an agent
Espressif added a stdio MCP server to idf.py in ESP-IDF v6.0 for agents in Cursor, Claude Code and VS Code. Its tools set the chip target, build, flash and clean a project, and read-only resources report build status and connected serial ports. The post, by Marek Fiala, has screenshots of a target change and a build but no flash run.
Claimed
Builds3
All builds5 mo ago
Pixel Pets: a father and son build M5Stack virtual pets with Claude-written firmware
Marcel Dütscher and his 10-year-old son built Pixel Pets, virtual pets for three M5Stack boards, with Claude writing the firmware under their direction. The CoreS3 version adds voice control through M5Stack's Module LLM, and pets swap gifts over ESP-NOW. Photos, a 10-second clip and a two-minute reel show the pets running on the devices.
Shown working5 mo ago
Vibe-coding an I2S FIFO reclocker on an Intel MAX 10 FPGA
Dimdim had Gemini 3.1 Pro write the Verilog for an audio reclocker on a MAX 10 10M08 board. He pasted code from the chat into Quartus. The design passes I2S through a dual-clock FIFO, adds DSD and S/PDIF input and buffers in PSRAM. Gemini, Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Claude Opus 4.7 all failed to make a PRBS-15 test work.
Shown working6 mo ago
Clem Delangue builds a Reachy Mini app with Claude in under an hour
Clem Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face, wrote his first app for the Reachy Mini desktop robot with Claude in under an hour. He published it as a Hugging Face Space that runs on a Reachy Mini or in simulation. The post includes a short video; we could not confirm it shows the physical robot.
Claimed
Guides1
All guides5 mo ago
Building an MCP server that exposes ESP32 UART and I2C to an LLM
Tech-AD-venture's 65-minute video walks through wiring sensors to an ESP32 over I2C and UART and defining a JSON command protocol on the serial link. It then builds a FastAPI-based MCP server so an LLM called through the OpenAI API can read registers and send commands. We have not watched the full video to confirm the hardware segments.
Claimed
News1
All news5 mo ago
Keysight releases an MCP server for instrument control with engineer approval
Keysight has released version 0.1 of its MCP Server for Instrument Control as a Windows executable. The release notes list 18 tools that discover VISA instruments, resolve SCPI commands from each instrument's definition file and run them. An engineer approves a plain-language preview of every command before it reaches hardware. Sessions are logged, and a simulation mode needs no instruments.
Claimed