# Darwin Board uses evolutionary algorithm to adapt RC filter circuits in real time

> **Key takeaway:** 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.

**Published:** 2026-10-18T11:00:33+00:00 
**Source:** Hackaday Hardware 
**Category:** open-hardware 
**Canonical URL:** https://fosswire.org/news/darwin-board-uses-evolutionary-algorithm-to-adapt-rc-filter-.html 

## 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.