Join Us For The “Holiday With Hackaday And Tindie” Meet-Up

It’s a ritual in workplaces around the world this time of any other year but 2020: the office holiday party. Too much food, perhaps too much alcohol, and garish sweaters that you wouldn’t be caught dead in on any other occasion. Things are, of course, a tad different this year, which is why we’re putting our community’s party online with the Holiday with Hackaday and Tindie meet-up on Tuesday, December 15 at noon Pacific time!

Why should you come to this hangout? Because why not! This is going to be a loose, informal meet-up that will give us all a chance to get to know one another. We’ve got an amazing community here, and just putting faces to names can be really valuable. You’ll be able to connect with old friends and perhaps make new ones. It’s your chance to reach out and find someone to collaborate with, or perhaps just find an answer to a thorny problem you’ve been stuck on. Be sure to bring your latest projects to show off, and maybe even consider giving everyone a virtual tour of your shop. Ugly sweaters are optional, of course, and we don’t judge.

The Holiday with Hackaday and Tindie meet-up is being held on Remo. Those of you who joined the Friday night Bring-a-Hack session at Remoticon this year will no doubt remember the platform, which we got a lot of good feedback on. You’ll want to check browser compatibility ahead of time and reserve your spot, so head over to Remo and make it so. If you need help with timezone conversions, we’ve got you covered on that too.

We’re looking forward to seeing everyone at the Holiday with Hackaday and Tindie meet-up!

Reuleaux Coaster

What’s better than a cool build? A cool build with valuable advice! Add a few flashy pictures and you have [Martin Raynsford]’s Reuleaux triangle coasters blog post. [Martin Raynsford] wanted to share his advice about the importance of using jigs and we’re sold. He was able to make 100 coasters in a single day and if he’s like us, after number ten, the work gets a little hurried and that is when mistakes are made.

Jig is a broad term when it comes to tooling but essentially, it holds your part in place while you work on it. In this case, a jig was made to hold the coaster pieces while they were glued together. [Martin Raynsford] didn’t need any registration marks on the wood so even the back is clean. If you look closely, the coaster is two parts, the frame and the triangle. Each part is three layers and they cannot separated once the glue dries. If any part doesn’t line up properly, the whole coaster is scrap wood.

This robot arm engraved 400 coasters in a day but maybe you would prefer if you simply had your beer delivered to your new coasters.

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It’s Back! Hackaday Meetup At Bay Area Maker Faire

If you’re in the Bay Area this weekend, the only place to be on Saturday night is O’Neill’s Irish Pub in San Mateo. Hackaday is once again hosting a meetup after Maker Faire closes for the evening, and you don’t want to miss it. Please RSVP now.

This is the fourth year of our BAMF meetup and we’re continually amazed at the turnout — we pack ’em in and it’s not just because the first round of drinks is on us. This is the mixer for everyone who is passionate about hardware. You’ll find your Internet heroes on hand (think YouTube and electronics podcasts), those going through the grinder of startups exhibiting at the faire, engineers for the giant silicon valley firms, plus all of the hackers who spend their time in basements, garages, and taking over the kitchen table to break something open and make it their own. And of course the Hackaday crew will be on hand, you’ll find [Mike], [Jasmine], [Shulie], [Rich], [Jordan], and [Gerrit] losing our voices as the conversation carries on late into the evening.

The photo at the top of the page is from the 2016 Meetup. This photo is from the 2015 Meetup. Now’s your chance to be the face of the party in next year’s announcement!

Our profoundly awesome sister site, Tindie, is also putting out the call to all hardware artisans (they call themselves Tindarians) to turn out for the meetup. If you’ve never heard of Tindie you’re missing out. And if you’ve never sold your creations there, this meetup is a perfect chance to meet some of the people who do. They’re not just purveyors of bleeding edge hardware, they’re the ones who dream it up and make it happen. You should join their ranks!

We love hackers from all walks of life. But unfortunately, because of the venue for this event, we must limit this to those who are 21 years of age and older. If you can’t get into this event, come find us at the Hackaday/Tindie booth at the Faire.

Other than that, we love to see smiling faces, blinking or moving hardware, and the coolest T-shirt you have in your dresser. Come hang out with Hackaday. You’ll have a most excellent evening if you do. See you Saturday!

Inside The Supplyframe Design Lab On Opening Night

Last week the Supplyframe Design Lab in Pasadena opened it’s doors, welcoming in the community to explore the newly rebuilt interior which is now filled with high-end prototyping and fabrication tools and bristling with work areas to suit any need. I had a chance to pull a few people aside during the opening night party to talk about how the Design Lab came about and what we can expect coming out of the space in the near future.

Opening night was heavily attended. I recognized many faces, but the majority of those exploring the building were new acquaintances for me. This is likely due to a strong connection the Design Lab is building with the students, faculty, and graduates of the ArtCenter College of Design. Located just down the road, it is one of the top design schools in the world.

Continue reading “Inside The Supplyframe Design Lab On Opening Night”

Surviving The Hackaday Prize Party

What a week it has been. I’m in Munich, Germany along with [Brian], [Jasmine], [Ben], [Alek], and the rest of the crew who helped plan and guide the 2014 Hackaday Prize. If you somehow missed it, we announce the rank order of the finalists. It was SatNOGS that claimed the Grand Prize, congratulations!

We have a ton of content headed your way, but to be honest there’s going to be a bit of “recovery lag” before that hits the front page. We spent the entire day at Technikum in the Munich Kalturfabrik. It was originally some sort of factory complex (having to do with potato processing) which has since been turned into co-working spaces, restaurants, and performing arts venues. We felt right at home in the post-industrial, brightly muraled maze of buildings.

The official activities started with the Embedded Hardware Workshops which were packed! The previously assured “robust” WiFi immediately, and repeatedly, went down. Fortunately hackers being hackers everyone pooled their local copies onto one SD card and passed it around. We’ve segregated that piece of hardware in an evidence bag for future testing.

We pushed back the closing of the workshops by about 40 minutes since everyone was having fun. This marginally outraged the company who was handling furniture and food as we weren’t following the plan. They were pleasant enough about the issue but for me it was an interesting peek at the difference in cultures. During the switch we had lightning talks which I found both enthusiastic and interesting. We then moved to the major presentations of the night. [Jeroen Domburg] aka [Sprite_TM] gave a stunning presentation about reverse engineering the ridiculously overpowered microcontroller on a special lighted keyboard. We’ll surely have a standalone post about it. We then closed with a recap of The Hackaday Prize and the naming of the winners. That too will have its own feature.

DSC_0095After handing over the trophy, and taking a few photos the writers all rushed to the downstairs “backstage” area. I had previously written the announcement post and we spent some time getting the word out, first to all the finalists, then to the sites that are close friends, and finally started pushing the news on social media. All work and no play? Forget about it. The party was raging and the food and drinks were fantastic. They were, however, far outshined by the conversations with interesting people to be found at every turn. I spoke with people who had driven in just for the event from France, Austria, and of course all over Germany.

The venue was packed up starting around Midnight. You know it’s a great time when the crowd hangs out in the cold for another 40 minutes afterward. The point of the story? Any chance you have to spend time with the great people who make up the Hackaday community is a chance to jump at. Where to next?

Hackaday’s Most Excellent Munich Adventure

Bags are packed… it’s insane the amount of random electronics I carry with me on a trip. But who doesn’t want to do some prototyping on the plane?

In case you haven’t heard, the Hackaday Crew is headed to Munich. The coming week is Electronica. We’ll be prowling “the world’s leading trade show for electronic components” looking for the jewels of interest to the hacking community. Watch our Twitter feed for updates on those adventures.

But of course, Thursday the 13th is all about Hackaday Munich. The place will be packed! During the afternoon we feature hands-on hacking of embedded systems. The hardware we’re supplying is already spoken for. But you should bring along your own dev boards to hack on, or just come to watch the fun.

Get a ticket to The Hackaday Prize party. This includes a talk by [Sprite_TM], the announcement of the Grand Prize winner for the 2014 Hackaday Prize, followed by a party with music by [DJ Muallen]. Nobody should miss this event so please help get the word out. See you there!

Hackaday Munich: DJ Muallem, Workshop Info, And More

DJ Muallem

btn-get_ticketsIf you don’t have your ticket to the Hackaday Prize Party at Hackaday Munich you better scramble for one. We are excited to announce that [muallem] is the DJ for the event. He is the driving force behind the music at the Bob Beaman Club in Munich and is sure to deliver a set to remember. Don’t take our word for it, we’ve been cranking his Soundcloud channel for a couple of days now and it’s hard to wait the two weeks left before the party starts.

Workshop details whether you have a ticket or not

For those able to show up during the afternoon we have started to post details about the workshops. One point of confusion has been the All-day tickets versus the Workshop tickets. Here’s a rundown:

  • Workshop tickets were limited based on the hardware we are able to bring to the event with us.
  • All day tickets are welcome to participate in the workshops if you bring your own hardware to hack. Of course you are also welcome to come and watch, visit, or work on a completely separate hardware hack of your own!

If you have a ticket you’ll want to check out the details about getting a head start (by pre-loading embedded development software and learning a bit about the challenges). If you don’t have a workshop ticket we’re recommending hardware you can bring in order to participate.

So far we’ve posted about the Roboto and Moog workshops but will add details about Reverse Engineering and Computer Vision workshops soon!

The Hackaday Prize: Space Trip or Cash?

There has been a brewing debate about whether the winner of The Hackaday Prize (who will be revealed live at Hackaday Munich) will take the Trip to Space or grab the $196,418 in cash. Tell us which what you would do and why.