Bit-banged 10BASE-T Ethernet and Wi-Fi router in Rust on the Pico 2 W
Details
- External ID
- 48400125
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Bit-banged 10BASE-T Ethernet and Wi-Fi router in Rust on the Pico 2 W
- Website domain
- github.com
- Launched
- June 4, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 5
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.12568306010928962
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Description
Software 10BASE-T Ethernet (using PIO to bit-bang TX and RX) and wireless router on the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W. Running cyw43 + an async executor in rust on the RP2350's RISC-V cores. Using cheap and minimal external hardware (just a magjack and ISL3177E RS-485 transceiver). I wanted to see how far I could get with the cheap, MCU-based, Wi-Fi router idea and learn some more about using rust on the RP2350 and RISC-V. Definitely not a good choice for a home router but it could be useful for low-rate IoT traffic.
Enrichment
- Theme
- hardware hacking and device utilities
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Hardware & robotics
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- ethernet and wifi router implementation in rust
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
No Bit-banging physical Ethernet layers via programmable I/O and running an async router stack on bare-metal RISC-V microcontrollers requires deep electrical and low-level firmware engineering.
What it would actually take: The project requires writing RP2350 PIO assembly routines timed to exact nanosecond specs for 10BASE-T Manchester encoding and differential signaling, paired with low-voltage transceivers. The software stack uses embedded Rust (`embassy` framework) implementing raw network drivers, a TCP/IP stack (`smoltcp`), and wireless chip integration (CYW43), demanding deep oscilloscopic debugging and microelectronic knowledge.
Discussion
No comments on this launch.
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 161 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #141 of 162 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 213 days after the earliest competitor.
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- Nomina · hn · 2026-06-28 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- I built a DNS resolver from scratch in Rust · hn · 2026-04-02 · 115 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- Pokémon Emerald Ported to Raspberry Pi Pico 2 · hn · 2026-08-06 · 58 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- An extensible pub/sub messaging server for edge applications · hn · 2026-01-28 · 44 upvotes · similarity 0.42
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
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