Work · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Roons – Mechanical Computer Kit
I built a mechanical computer kit: https://whomtech.com/show-hn tl;dr: it's a cellular automaton on a "loom" of alternating bars, using contoured tiles to guide marbles through logic gates. It's not just "Turing complete, job done"; I've tried to make it actually practical. Devices are compact, e.g. you can fit a binary adder into a 3cm square. It took me nearly two years and dozens of different approaches. There's a sequence of interactive tutorials to try out, demo videos, and a janky simulator. I've also sent out a few prototype kits and have some more ready to go. Please…
Roons is a mechanical computer kit built around a cellular automaton system where marbles flow through contoured tiles to perform logic operations on a loom of alternating bars. Users can construct compact computing… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1IM
2018 · bitbucket.org · its alternatives →
- 2
The Recovery Kit 2 is another cyberdeck that for me is part computer, part backup device, and part functional movie prop. It's been fun to build, and the HN community has been great with ideas- especially around hosting and getting me off Squarespace. I hope you all enjoy!
2024 · doscher.com · its alternatives →
- 3II
2019 · ericu.github.io · its alternatives →
- 4
SWE-Kit▲568Build your own Devin like software engineering agent
2024 · swekit.dev · its alternatives →
- 5
Build an autonomous industrial vehicle in sim
2022 · polymathrobotics.com · its alternatives →
- 6
A few months ago, I was inspired by this post on Reddit, titled: Food items should have QR codes that instruct the microwave exactly what to do. Like high for 2 minutes, let stand 1 minute, medium 1 minutes.. I thought this was a pretty cool idea, and that it
2013 · madebynathan.com · its alternatives →
- 7
I bet you didn't knew you can use modelling clay (as opposed to 3d printing) to make nice devices by hand :)
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 8
Raccoon AI▲277Hey HN, I'm Shubh, Co-Founder of Raccoon AI. Raccoon AI is like having something between Claude Code and Cursor in the web. The agent has its own computer with a terminal, browser, and internet, and it is built with the right balance of collaboration and autonomy. You can talk to it mid-task, send it more files while it's still running, or just let it go and come back to a finished result. It's the kind of product where you open it to try one thing and end up spending two hours because you keep thinking of more things to throw at it. The thing that most people get excited about is that…
Mar 2026 · raccoonai.tech · its alternatives →
- 9
This is a little toy project of mine that lets you simulate digital logic graphs. It was inspired by Minecraft's Redstone and the Piet esolang. It's got some serious drawbacks-- you write circuits as PNGs and simulate them with a Python interface. It's slow to run and slow to experiment with. And it is certainly difficult to use for people with any kind of color blindness. But despite that, I hope this can still be a fun toy!
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 10
Bringing the power of modern AI to millions of devices
2019 · nvidia.com · its alternatives →
- 11
Thimble.io provides that balance and goes a step further by introducing a more personal and flexible approach to keep kids engaged: live and on-demand classes.
2016 · thimble.io · its alternatives →
- 12
EasyCircuit▲178Hardware prototyping, as simple as vibe-coding
Jul 2026 · easycircuit.app · its alternatives →
- 13
Sowbot is an open-hardware agricultural robot designed to close the "prototype gap" that kills most agri-robotics startups and research projects — the 18+ months spent on drivers, networking, safety watchdogs, and UI before you can even start on the thing you actually care about. The hardware is built around a stackable 10×10cm compute module with two ARM Cortex-A55 SBCs — one for ROS 2 navigation/EKF localisation, one dedicated to vision/YOLO inference — connected via a single ethernet cable. Centimetre-level positioning via dual RTK GNSS, CAN bus for field comms, and real-time…
Feb 2026 · sowbot.co.uk · its alternatives →
- 14
A site for sharing electronics projects.
2018 · kitspace.org · its alternatives →
- 15
How to Make a CHIP Robot. In this tutorial we walk you through how to build and make a C.H.I.P. robot with the $9 Computer.
2016 · dexterindustries.com · its alternatives →
- 16
I figured I needed to work on my coding skills before building the next groundbreaking AI app, so I started working on this free tool site. Its basically just an aggregation of various commonly used calculators and unit convertors. Link: https://www.calcverse.live Tech Stack: Next, React, Typescript, shadcn UI, Tailwind CSS Would greatly appreciate your feedback on the UI/UX and accessibilty. I struggled the most with navigation. I've added a search box, a sidebar, breadcrumbs and pages with grids of cards leading to the respective calculator or unit convertor, but not sure if…
2025 · calcverse.live · its alternatives →
- 17
- 18
Ready-to-use AI robot kits for real research
2025 · trossenrobotics.com · its alternatives →
- 19MP
Hey, we’re Axel and Vignesh, cofounders of Innate (https://www.innate.bot/). We just launched MARS, a general-purpose robot with an open onboard agentic OS built on top of ROS2. Overview: https://youtu.be/GEOMYDXv6pE Control demo: https://youtu.be/_Cw5fGa8i3s Videos of autonomous use-cases: https://docs.innate.bot/welcome/mars-example-use-cases Quickstart: https://docs.innate.bot/welcome/mars-quick-start. Our last thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42451707 When we started we felt…
2025 · its alternatives →
- 20
Cloud logging + visualization tools for robotic development
2020 · its alternatives →
- 21
2014 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 22
A cyberdeck featuring a QAZ keyboard and Banana Pi M2 Zero - g1sbi/qaz-cyberdeck
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 23
The GoPiGo3 is a Raspberry Pi Robot Car kit that is easy to build and program with Scratch, Python, Blockly, and other programming languages..
2013 · dexterindustries.com · its alternatives →
- 24
The developer-first platform to build AI-powered apps
2025 · console.secton.org · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →