The Gathering: Huge Success!

January 23, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 21 Comments

In case you haven’t heard, Hackaday put on a little shindig in downtown LA this past Tuesday. It was awesome.

And we had a few very awesome visitors: [Eliot], senior editor of Hackaday for the first five years made a showing, as did former co-editor [Jack Buffington]. Eminent LA-area hackers came out, including [charliex] of Null Space Labs, the guys from Deezmaker, and the long-haired hippie who can be found in a few NASA videos for the Curiosity rover.

Aside from the free drinks and the awesome people, there was some really cool tech on display. The mezzanine of the bar had a laser graffiti rig, and everyone who came received a super collectible NFC card that allowed them to vote on what Hackaday is doing for our next main event (the quadcopter option won but the vote was non-binding so we’ll keep you updated).

On a personal note, this was one of the few times I’ve interacted with Hackaday readers without the use of a keyboard. You guys are awesome. Thanks for coming out, and if you have any pics from the party, post a link to an album in the comments, or share your stories with us on Twitter via #HaDLA, Google+, and/or Facebook.

Pics below. These were taken by [Edward de la Torre]

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Please Release Your Unused Tickets

January 14, 2014 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

The Gathering is next Tuesday and we are starting to get excited about it! There is a waiting list of people who would like a ticket. If you registered for a ticket that you will not be able to to use, please log in and cancel it.

Cancelling your unused ticket will automatically free up a ticket for someone on the waiting list. Cancellation instructions are below. We want to pack the house and making sure no ticket goes unused is important.

Still want to attend? It’s not too late. Add yourself to the waiting list.

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Hackaday: The Gathering

January 6, 2014 by Mike Szczys 83 Comments

1/21/14 – Downtown LA
Come one, come all to a party with [Brian], me, and the Hackaday readers who live in the Los Angeles area. Tickets are free, as is the beer, food, t-shirts, stickers, and other swag which you won’t find out about unless you show up in person.

This is the first official live Hackaday meetup and is open to all ages. During the summer we talked about making Hackaday a virtual hackerspace, and this event is one part of that initiative. We’ll let you in on some stuff we’ve been planning, but in return I expect you to tell us your thoughts on how the Hackaday community can get bigger and better. We’re also using the attendance at this event to judge if we should host more live events (possibly in other cities too). So if you’re in LA get your ticket now and make sure your friends do the same!

UPDATE 3: Get your name on the waiting list… Continue reading “Hackaday: The Gathering” →

Automatic Beer Pourer Was Hacked Together From A Bit Of Everything

February 25, 2013 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

beer-conveyor

This thing is really remarkable. It’s a beer draft system that automatically fills and distributes to your party guests. The approach is something of an industrial revolution for parties. A hopper feeds cups to the tap; once filled they are whisked off to thirsty guests using a conveyor belt system.

Many of the parts come from a washing machine that the team scrapped for the build — most notably the motor which drives the belt. But pretty much every part of it is salvaged. For instance, the conveyor belt that transports the full glasses was made from gluing sections of bicycle inner tubes together. To help ease the transfer of a cup from the filling station onto that belt a series of very long cable ties were attached to a pole. The tails from those ties act as a brush to stabilize the cup as an arm pushes it onto the conveyor. The best way to see all of this is to watch the entire clip embedded after the jump.

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LED Ice Cubes Prevent Alcohol Induced Blackouts

January 9, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 121 Comments

cube

On November 23rd last year, [Dhairya] attended a little shindig at MIT. Three drinks into the night, he blacked out and woke up in the hospital the next day. It was an alcohol-induced blackout, and like all parties at MIT, there’s an ingenious solution to [Dhairya]’s problem.

[Dhairya] came up with an alcohol-aware ice cube made of a coin cell battery, an ATtiny microcontroller, and an IR transceiver are molded into an edible gelatin ice cube. The microcontroller counts the number of sips per drink, and after one glass of adult beverage changes the color of the flashing LED from green to yellow. After two drinks the LED changes from yellow to red, signaling [Dhairya] to slow down.

If [Dhairya] feels the night is too young and keeps on drinking, the IR transmitter signals to his cell phone to send a text to a friend telling them to go take [Dhairya] home.

Less than three weeks after waking up in the hospital, [Dhairya] tested out his glowing ice cubes at another party. Everything performed wonderfully, even if he admits his creation is a little crude. A neat piece of work, and we can’t wait to see an update to this project.

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Birthday Badges Teach Kids How To Solder

November 12, 2012 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

[Ian Lee, Sr] wanted to have an educational activity at his younger son’s birthday party. These were uncharted waters for him as he doesn’t remember education taking place at his own early birthday parties. But he came up with a great idea, with was to teach soldering using interactive badges which each guest could assemble themselves. He needed about twenty, so he tried to keep the BOM as small as possible. But that didn’t mean skimping on features.

You can see the black LED-type package on the left of the assembled badge above. This is an IR receiver whose counterpart transmitter is on the right side of the board. When two of these get within 6-8″ of each other the start talking back and forth. There is no microcontroller involved, instead the system relies on a multivibrator design. One of the red LEDs at the corner of the ‘smile’ is always blinking. When it is off, the IR transmitter is powered. This is picked up by another badge’s receiver, which lights the second ‘smile’ LED. You can see this happen in the short clip after the break.

Although there are relatively few components that went into this, it would take the kids a long time to put them together as they’re just learning. [Ian] and his eldest son soldered on all of the components except for the resistors beforehand.

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How To Build A Foam Machine For Your Next Party

September 28, 2012 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

Your neighbors are going to love you if you start filling up the back yard with foam at your next party. It’s an easy enough build, but depending on your ability to source the major components it could cost a pretty penny to use it at your next rager.

[Species287] used a big fan and water pump which he already had on hand. All together that saved him about $200 (he’s pricing in Australian Dollars but they’re almost even right now with USD). The soap solution is super cheap, just a bottle of dish washing liquid mixed to the correct proportions with water, but you’ll need a way to apply it to the fan. Some irrigation supplies connected to the fan grate with zip ties did the trick. The pump is submerged in the bubble liquid, causing it to spray from the nozzles near the fan. But this won’t actually create bubbles. The last piece is a bag-shaped hunk of shade cloth from the garden store. Each pore of the cloth acts as a bubble ring. The cloth gets sprayed with soap by the sprinklers and the air from the fan then blows the bubbles.

There’s no video of this project so if you want to see it in action this other diy foam cannon will have to do.