Sci-Fi Contest Prizes Make You Drool Like A Rancor

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It’s been awhile since we hosted a contest, now is the time to up our game. You have a few weeks to come up with the best Sci-Fi themed hack. We’ve amassed a number of prizes well worth fighting for, and the challenge will be won by a combination of clever, collaborative, and open. The booty includes rad (yeah, we said it) tools like Oscilloscopes, Logic Sniffers, Solder Stations, and Dev Boards, as well as themed offerings like classic Sci-Fi films and tchotchkes from our favorite fictional universes.

Yesterday we announced that Hackaday Projects is open for public registration and now we’re taking the new site for a spin. Previous contests like the Trinket and Fubarino versions became unwieldy for the Hackaday crew just because of the sheer volume of entries. The new interface will make it much easier. We also want to test out the collaborative features so one of the requirements for entry is to participate as a team. The winners will be picked based on how well the project is documented, how open (as in software and hardware) it is, how it fits the theme, and on how well the team worked together.

The contest starts right now and ends at 12:00:00am Pacific time (we know a lot of you like to push deadlines) on April 29th, 2014. Head over to the contest page to see all of the details. Let the games begin!

[Official Contest Page]

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61 thoughts on “Sci-Fi Contest Prizes Make You Drool Like A Rancor

      1. Damnation Alley thingie
        or the dune buggy from the Star Trek Next Generation movie
        I think if you do K.I.T.T., you will be REQUIRED to build the 18 wheeler support vehicle with remote controlled rear ramp. B^)

          1. The best RC KITT I’ve seen in terms of looking like the actual car is the Hitari one from 2007, I have 3, one still boxed, one opened, one modded. What does let it down is that it doesn’t have proportional control and the scanner light is terrible. Oh and the built in ‘speech’ sounds like it was digitised on a ZX Spectrum.

            The modded one I bought cheap as it had a dead main circuitboard, so i:

            – Replaced the atrocious 5-LED scanner with my own 8-LED one that does a proper ‘scan’, ie the fading trail.
            – Took out the filler piece of plastic in the extra AA holding slot so now it runs on 5 AA batteries for more speed/wheelspins/drifts.
            – Replaced the terrible steering mechanism with a proper servo.
            – Cut off the H-bridge part of the original circuitboard and built my own electronic speed controller using that and a Picaxe 08M
            – Put in a 2.4ghz proprotional radio receiver.

      1. It was simply “Viper”. I loved that show and I’ve wanted a Viper ever since, I still think it’s one of the coolest looking sports cars out there. Hmm… should I leave it as fond memories from my teens or should I make an effort to find the eps and re-watch as an adult… I have a feeling it doesn’t hold up in the same way as Knight Rider does.

        1. It was actually two series.
          They cancelled it after a year, re-tooled it, and brought it back a year later.

          It’s kind of cheesy, but if you think Knight Rider held up over the years, then you’ll probably be fine.

    1. That part is going to suck for me as well. But the goal of the contest is to test out the collaboration features, so *shrug.*

      My question is can the collaboration be with someone locally, or do they also have to be a member of HackaDay projects?

      1. This can be anyone else on Hackaday Projects. Their geographic location doesn’t matter. If you win one of the prize packages you just need to tell us which team member gets which prize.

        Why don’t you make a page proposing the build you want to undertake and asking for collaborators and then put that page on the The Stack.

          1. @Kevin: Either an MD or PhD in something that begins with ‘psych’ or ‘neuro’

            I’m highly encouraging anyone to try this, if only so I can laugh at someone who wasted tens of thousands of dollars on a doctorate.

    2. This sounds hard especially for hardware project than a software/firmware/FPGA project. It takes a lot more effort to duplicate/sync up what the other person has done if they are near each other(s).

      The only exception is that each of the members are only making completely independent blocks and don’t need the other pieces until the very end. That would need a lot of planning ahead which I would see as a welcome change here.

      1. Have fun mailing the hardware around to nail down software/firmware/hardware bugs that cannot be duplicated if the person doing that part does not know enough of the other member’s work. This has too much overhead and not a whole lot of working in parallel until each member’s work is done.

        Not feasible unless the project only involves buying pre-populated boards such as Arduino + shield(s) and sprinkle a few wires on a breadboard projects and write a few “scripts”.

        1. @tekkieneet – so I guess then all the work that’s coming out of the Mooltipass project is completely faked is it?

          Prime example right there for a distributed team of people, brought together by this community, that are actually achieving something.

  1. Wow. So required collaboration… So that means each member of the team wins his/her own swag? (And am I to assume that swag only comes one to a body for the DID enhanced?)

    Otherwise, the devious might banish the other members to some interdimensional place in order to have the rad swag all to themselves… Lacking the ability to push a coworker in a interdimensional portal, I’d hate to have to cut an oscilloscope in half…

    I say we all join the same team and only make one thing… ; )

    1. In honor of your suggestion, I propose we make an Arduino with a OneShot multivibrator output, (on a quiet night night you can hear the keyboards click “I can do that with a 555!”)

  2. I wanted to figure out a way to make a Trek (TNG or Voyager) communicator badge with the battery and sound all integrated in the badge.

    But I didn’t have the budget to screw with it. I’m sure someone can do it with a miniscule microcontroller.

  3. Oh, how I would love to enter this. There are so many great ideas running through my head. Alas, I am located thousands of km from any friends, collaborators, or people who share both my language and hobby. Collaborating via email could work for software or designing.
    I guess isolated hackeradayers like myself have to rely on that stack that keeps getting mentioned.

  4. Sigh, decides to sit and just watch….hopefully all projects/attempts get some mention. Even the fails that way someone else might discover the errors that led to failure and maybe correct them.

    I say good luck to all who attempt this……..*TeamWork* thing.

  5. For all those wishing they had a partner to cooperate with, I’ll be happy to be the guy who talked to the pretty girl at the next table the whole time while you did all the real work…Though if it’s truly stupendous enough to do a kickstart, I’ll need an office and a brass plaque that says “Irresponsible Parasite” on the door…. ; )

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