Since Adafruit released a few dozen hacker skill badges, we’ve been waiting for this tip to come in. [phillip torrone] over at Adafruit posted a requirement sheet put together by a school teacher-blogger friend aimed at high school students wanting to earn their Hackaday skill badge.
The requirement list is heavily influenced by the requirements needed to earn a merit badge in the Boy and Girl scouts – first, do a little research and be able to describe the type of build we usually feature. Then, describe the project to your teacher and directly relate your project to other builds featured on Hackaday. Solid advice, we have to say.
There’s a few solid tips that really help us out; putting up a blog post for your project really helps us out, as does hosting your code on a Git. Videos are always good, and even though I’m partial to Vimeo (these videos just come out looking more professional for some reason), a lot of our commentors prefer YouTube.
About the commentors: the requirement sheet specifically mentions ignoring the flame bait comments, something we’d have to agree with. The comments have gotten better, but the best way for you (yes, all of you) to help is just hit the report button and don’t feed the trolls.
If your post doesn’t make Hackaday, don’t feel bad. Before I started working here, I built a Mellotron and submitted it to the tip line. It didn’t get featured, but I just rolled with the punches. Now I’m waiting for a Raspberry Pi to come in so I can update that build and give it the rollout it deserves. If your build gets skipped, just re-submit a week or so later. We’re a fickle bunch and sometimes projects waste away in the tip line, especially if it’s similar to a recently posted build.
A mellotron?
You could always provide a link, even if no one else is interested. Mellotrons are cool, especially if it isn’t a simulated mellotron.
I know right? I want to see this mellotron too! Good stuff slips through the cracks all the time. That’s why I suggest people to wait a little while and re-submit.
Well, it’s not the tape-based mellotron of yore.
Basically, I made a mellotron cabinet (looks exactly like a mellotron, same size and everything), hacked up a MIDI keyboard, and put a sampler inside the case. No big deal. Looks cool, though.
The sampler was old, so I got sold that off. Hardware MIDI samplers from the late 90s still command a nice price on ebay, apparently. I’ll replace that with a Raspi when mine comes in.
[Insert comically muted trombone playing descending three note scale with drawn out final here.]
I like this “open source version of the boy scouts” since BSA is involved in scandal, and only really is intrested in money anyway.
??? Yeah, alllllll of those cookies they sell must be to blame. Where did that even come from?
if I shout a brand of energy drink, do i get the badge instantly?
only if you do it as part of a competition involving making cool things.
Oh! When I was a scout fortymumble years ago, I’d have died for a hack-a-day merit badge!
So does HAD just randomly chose which tips to read or what?
We read them all. Some of the tips are very entertaining, such as these gems:
If you have a blog Psvr the address you've had to send for me. The owner of this blog is a terrorist and is very rude and impolite people. If you can help mei tried salvia yesterday, befor anyone says anything it's legal no scrip needed and i bought it at a store. so back to what i was saying, i tried it and had an awsome idea, some may not like it others will wonder why they didn't think of it, so here it is, 2:26pm9 PROXMITY ALERT FLAME MINE SYSTEM SET UP WITH NETWORK CONNECTION TO LOCATE INTRUDERS.. IN A SECURE FACALLITYSubject: don't agnore me pleaseMessage: at this website([URL REDACTED]) you can see our university's website so please after 10 days will be our final exam so i need your help to hack this website and get the question if you can do it tell me please and i will send to you the name of subject which i need please try
Between messages of that caliber, there’s also some really, really good builds. To be completely honest some are low-hanging fruit that are easy to write, while a few are just freaking amazing but would take hours to pull together a blog post (these are very rare, btw). What you see on HaD is pretty representative of what we get on the tip line (sans salvia dude and a billion press releases a day).
Didn’t someone have an entry up with a bunch of these? Wasn’t there so much fanfare that people started requesting it to be a feature?
@charles:
We don’t get really good/bad/insane ones with enough frequency to make it a feature.
Man when I saw the skill badge I thought it was awesome but I think the qualifier should be that you get a project posted on HackADay. I need to get on that.
Man this would be great but im not in highschool anymore lol there should be something for adults, like a hackaday version of an arduino (similar to what redbull did) or raspi.
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How do I ‘earn’ my badges?
Same way I ‘earned’ them when I was a scout…
…bought ’em.
Never liked being someones puppet.
I like how you think! Today I think the way to go would be to make your own CNC embroidery machine. Patches? We don’t need your stinking patches!