Technology

Hardware hacker installs Minecraft server on a cheap smart lightbulb — single 192 MHz RISC-V core with 276KB of RAM, enough to run tiny 90K byte world

Source

Tom's Hardware

Published

Nov 10, 2025

TL;DR

AI Generated

A hardware hacker successfully installed a Minecraft server on a cheap smart lightbulb, showcasing the process in a video. The key component enabling this project was the bulb's BL602 RISC-V microcontroller. The hacker disassembled the bulb, desoldered the microcontroller, and connected it to a USB-to-serial adapter for interfacing. To run the server, a compact implementation called Ucraft was used, with code resources available on GitHub. Despite limitations, such as lacking features of a vanilla server, this project highlights the innovative use of limited resources in tech projects like Minecraft servers on unconventional devices.

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