Hackaday Design Challenge – Yes, A Contest!


So, you guys want to show off your skills? We’re giving you the chance. [If you don’t like it, blame Limor – she came up with the original idea]

The Challenge:
Design our next give-away: a business card sized PC Board. We’re not telling you what to make the circuit do, just make it something handy for hacking. Me, I think a PIC programmer/proto board would be handy.

The board must have:

  • The Hackaday logo
  • business card dimensions (90mm x 55mm)
  • reasonably easy to construct
  • A useful circuit (programmer, interface, whatever.)
  • Assembly instructions
  • Parts list

Through hole components are a good idea (Of course, if you can do it with SMD cheaper, and keep it easy to build… Surprise us) Maybe we could surface mount the CPU before we give them away, or we might put together parts kits, but it depends on the winning design(s).

You can put whatever circuit you like on it. PIC
programmer, JTAG interface, flux capacitor… but it has to work!

We want to have a board house make these up for us, so we’ll need the design in a format we can work with. We suggest EAGLE. It’s free and runs on just about everything. (But it limits you to two layers – which should be plenty)


Some hints to help you get the winning design:
Bonus for extra functionality
Clever incorporation of our logo
Completeness – include solder mask, drill info, everything we need to make the board.

The Prizes:
Fabienne is putting up her black 2gb iPod nano engraved with “hackaday.com” “one fresh hack each day” –
It’s been used a bit, and opened up a few times so it’s got some scratches, but hasn’t been modded… yet.

We’ll send you some of the boards of course. I’ve got more good stuff in the works, and I’ll announce more prizes as we get them confirmed.

Submissions: When you’ve got your design ready, Put it online and let us know about it on the tip line. (Or send in a tip and we’ll tell you where to email it if you don’t have anywhere to host it.)

The Deadline: December 25th. Plenty of time to get your design cranked out. Everyone needs a winter break, but We’ll try to have a winner chosen within a week or two of the deadline.

XBox HD-DVD-ROM On Mac And PC


HD-DVD drives are getting closer, but aren’t terribly easy to come buy – yet. [Dan] over at uneasy silence let us know that he cracked open an XBox 360 HD DVD Drive and plugged it into a windows box and a mac. With a light application of some drivers, they got the drive working pretty easily – the snag? You’ll need a mini-ata adapter if you want to mount it internally. (And there’s apparently no HD-DVD software support for mac… yet.)

[you can just use it as a USB drive.]

Podcast 7

Here’s podcast 7. This is a short review of the last week or so’s favorite hacks. Audacity crashed out after my first recording, so I used Garageband this time – the bonus: you get each hacks images along with the audio. The rss feed is here.

[Yes, I started to recover the files, but it was easier to re-record]

Make A Badass CNC Mill


Ben Heck and I got into converting a mill to be a CNC machine during our podcast interview. Today I found a pair of great write ups at balbots on modding the Harbor Freight mini mill that I mentioned. Part 1 get into all the details of converting the mill to use stepper motors, and adding a cooling system. Part 2 covers upgrading to DC servo motors and replacing the gears with a belt drive system.