Darwin Board uses evolutionary algorithm to adapt RC filter circuits in real time
The Darwin Board is an ESP32-based open hardware project that treats 2040 possible RC circuit configurations as genomes and evolves between them to adapt filtering to changing environmental conditions.
Summary
Hardware hacker Saikarthik Ramakrishnan has built the Darwin Board, an adaptive RC filter circuit driven by an ESP32 microcontroller. The board encodes 2040 possible resistor-capacitor combinations as a genome space and uses a simple evolutionary algorithm to mutate between configurations based on current signal or environmental requirements. The project is documented and source-available on GitHub.
How the Darwin Board evolves its circuits
- Built around an ESP32 microcontroller for processing and control
- 2040 discrete RC circuit combinations encoded as a genome search space
- Simple evolutionary algorithm selects and transitions between circuit configurations
- Designed to adapt filtering behavior to changing environmental conditions or unwanted signals
- Full project files and code available on GitHub
Why it matters
The project demonstrates how evolutionary computation techniques can be applied to analog hardware at very low cost, potentially offering a template for adaptive sensors and self-tuning filters in open hardware designs.
Original reference: hackaday.com →