Weekly Digest 20 – 26 July 2026 | Doom, Time capsules, & DIY Phones
Welcome back to another edition of PiShop Africa Weekly News(I Know it’s not weekly)! Whether you’re micro-soldering in Johannesburg, printing enclosures in Cape Town, or tweaking Linux kernels in Nairobi, we’ve got a packed roundup of hardware challenges, 3D printing innovations, and DIY project inspiration.
Featured News
DigiKey & Arduino Launch the "Dream Lab Challenge"
Arduino and DigiKey have teamed up to officially launch the Arduino UNO Q Dream Lab Challenge. The contest calls on makers, engineers, and hobbyists worldwide to build next-generation applications powered by the Arduino UNO Q.
Whether you’re building edge AI vision systems, local sensor fusion, or autonomous robotics, this challenge is a great opportunity to put hybrid SBC/MCU hardware to the test. Top entries compete for professional lab equipment packages valued up to ~R83800.
Community Takeaway: If you’ve been looking for an excuse to dive into local machine learning or edge computing, this is your sign to start building!
3D Printing News: Creality Creator Awards & The 2K Buddy
Creality officially kicked off its global Creality Creator Awards 2026 with the theme “Create. Share. Inspire.” Running through October 31, 2026, the awards offer a total prize pool featuring ~R16800 gift cards, new flagship product packages, and exclusive Creator of the Year partnerships. Categories cover everything from functional prints and multi-color (CFS) designs to resin miniatures, laser engraving, and workshop setups.
2K Buddy Automates Two-Part Resin Post-Processing
Over on Fabbaloo, Kerry Stevenson highlighted a handy new Kickstarter project called 2K Buddy. Post-processing 3D prints with two-part epoxy or resin (for waterproofing, food safety, or extra mechanical strength) is usually messy and error-prone. 2K Buddy solves this with onboard tanks and peristaltic pumps that mix two-part resins inside the toolhead on demand, eliminating guesswork, wasted resin, and sticky cleanup.
Our Binge-Watch of the Week: I Built a Hologram by Robert Skinner
Our top watch pick this week goes to maker Robert Skinner for his incredible project walkthrough: I Built a Hologram.
Skinner takes the classic Pepper’s Ghost optical illusion and elevates it into a sleek, motorized desktop gadget. Combining resin 3D printing, compact displays, micro stepper motors, and custom code, he crafts a retractable housing that projects floating 3D visuals on demand. It’s a masterclass in combining fine mechanical design with optics, definitely worth a watch over your tea break! It’s not only this project of his that was fantastically recorded, all of his projects tend to take you on a journey, being super relatable and still yet feeling like only something that he could accomplish!
Making the most Whimsical Linux Theme by diinki
Although I don’t personally Arch Linux, I can see the appeal of it when viewing videos like this one. Watching Diinki slowly put together this fantastic UI and seeing it spring to life was almost a magical experience and I’m quite jealous of anybody that’ll be using this theme in the future, especially considering she links the github repo for the theme in her video description for free!
One of my favourite comments from this video is by @HisVirusness “Pretty sure that’s the desktop theme Leonardo da Vinci used.”
Conclusion
That wraps up this weeks news article, lately it feels like there’s been both a lot of news and very little news but I’ll keep posting the stuff that us at PiShop finds interesting or inspiring and maybe we’ll even base a project off of one of these!
Do you have any noteworthy projects that you’d like to share with the broader community? Let us know! We’d love to hear more about it and maybe even post it. Tag us on social media or send it through, you could be our next featured build!
