There’s so much more to be discovered when your projects just don’t want to work. Grinding out the bugs, getting past roadblocks, and discovering gotchas is where real hacking know-how comes from. But most people aren’t motivated to document their failures. We want to change that.
We want to roll out a new weekly feature that showcases failure… well documented failure. But we need YOU to give up the goods. Write about your failed experience on your blog, post it to our project forums with [FAIL] in the title, or you can just write everything in an email and send it to us. Which ever way you choose, you’ll need to tip us off that you’d like to make it to the front page (come on, it’s not bragging since it didn’t even work!). If you already know of well documented project fails send in those links too even if they’re not your projects.
Make sure you include at least one descriptive image — snapshots, diagrams, schematics, screencaps, anything that tells the story is fair game. To show you what we’re after here’s a few of our favorite failed projects:
- water damaged kayaking datalogger
- how not to build a robotic lawnmower
- abandoned card shuffling machine
We’d like to point out that all of these projects are interesting ideas that show off missteps along the way. We will not be trashing on your skills as a hacker, but instead celebrating the lessons learned and hearlding the sharing of ideas from otherwise doomed projects.
Well.. I have more than a few failures. Problem is they don’t get documented before I scavenge.Interesting idea though!
I agree. It’s a fantastic idea, but I usually don’t document much of my failures. Maybe now that I know about this, I’ll try to document the point of failure and the bullet-point lessons learned for the next one that blows up in my face?
Done!
Just looked at what you sent in…. perfect!
Coming soon: “Hackaday Top 20 Hilarious EPIC Fails LOL”.
Or a collection of application notes and lessons.
I feel this could go either way but I’m very wary of the former. Dangerousprototypes regularly posts application/manufacturing notes and while occasionally dry they’re usually good reads. However when I see ads for http://failblog.cheezburger.com/fails type things I usually consider them spam. I hope these are screened for educational content.
I envision this as a single fail per week. And of course they’re all pre-screened. We’ll be looking for the best balance of information and epic-fail-ness.
Of course if I run out of awesome then we have to go searching for it and who know’s what we’ll get then ;-)
Feed us your failure!
:-\ Failaday
I resemble that statement…
You mean stuff like plugging in the wrong AC adapter into my $80 [Black Widow] (http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/blackwidow-10-p-613.html) and frying it?
Well, yes… if it’s documented. You mean the right barrel jack at the wrong voltage? Ouch!
Well once I find a replacement Arduino with wireless for the project that I was working on. it will be documented. The Black Widow didn’t smoke but I still am from the dumb mistake, especially since it just happened during the later stages after getting the code to work just right…
I fried an HP-25 calculator (somewhat rare) when I accidentally tried to power it up with 12 volts DC instead of 3 VDC! (sigh!)
I paid 25 cents for it, it would be worth about $75, but now it’s worth about 25 cents!
Or back in the early ’80’s my first computer, (go ahead and laugh) the Timex Sinclair 1000. An article in a fan magazine showed how to attach a “real” keyboard. I followed the directions, but when I attached the keyboard, TS quit working!. Removing the keyboard and re-attaching the membrane keypad didn’t return it to working condition.
(I wonder if the TS 1000 had static discharge protection)
I put a keyboard onto my Timex Sinclair but I didn’t follow a magazine article to do it. I just did it.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Sinclair-Surplus-Keyboard-Graft/
We are not laughing. Because Timex Sinclair can run ed. And ed is the standard text editor. Just look here: http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed.msg.html
I’ve done exactly that, t’was difficult to justify the expence once let alone twice
I did something like that with their pocket oscilloscope… plugged the probes into the frequency generator plug (same size headphone jack) and gave it 12 volts… I don’t think that $100 investment lasted more than a couple days as a result. I told myself if I ever bought another I was going to plug or remove that frequency generator port.
Maybe i should make a page with all the failure pictures from my high voltage noticeboard… I have had some very unexpected mishaps such as carbonizing plastic and disappearing metal due to high voltage creepage and ionization…
High voltage…. noticeboard??
http://hackaday.com/2011/11/10/20-kilovolts-replaces-push-pins-on-this-bulletin-board/
Damn. That is awesome. I also happen to need one :D
Great idea, so long as #1 is the spell/grammer/fact checker here at hackaday…
Looks like the the spelling and grammar checker messed up one your comment as well. The nerve of HAD
Touche, haha…
Does this comment qualify for an entry?
Oh, and there’s another typo in your reply…
Making mistakes is easy.
Now, admitting them AND then learning from them, THAT’s something only a few individuals are capable of.
Who said failures were mistakes? They are simply things that did not work out.
central corporate management usually (sarcasm).
great idea although
I definitely have the market cornered on this one. My personal website was created to document both my successful projects and failures with equal zeal. Hence the name “DigiFAIL”:
http://www.digifail.com/
interesting read there. I love the GC cluster… so insane it is brialliant.
It reminds me of the time I got my first smartphone in 2001. The jornada 968 wince phone. I spent months hacking it to run a kernel… got it booting but never reliably working with a stable initrd. I eventually used it as a read only (no keyboard) serial terminal to the server!
Thanks for the trip down memory lane
Some failed projects could go further: post the design/planning and let the crowd guess where/why it’s going to fail.
Failure? I’m good at that!!!
Where to start?
I guess it a good place would be while I was in Middle School, in the heyday of electronics, 1986…
By the way, i have never had a failed project, i just have a lot of projects that are partially finished for several different reasons… such as waiting for a solution to severe spontaneous combustion or complete rebuild due to bad circuit design…
If you’re not failing at least half of the time you’re just not challenging yourself enough.
Heh, love the idea. Wish I had one to share that meets the criteria. The fails coming to mind, although memorable, could each be summed up in short paragraphs.
I’ve failed plenty of times.
but I also usually fail to write up fails.
Wish I still had my high school pictures. Lets say 8 foot tall Jacobs ladder and a class full of freshman and a 16+ inch arc. You can only imagine :)
“how not to build a robotic lawnmower”
Am I the only one thinking of Tool’s “Vicarious” ?
And as for the dislike (mentioned elsewhere )
of video only postings.
I wonder if they would approve of a category for
“letting the magic smoke out” ;P
Magic smoke. I miss those days.
Good thing they have the Liquid Smoke to replace the Magic Smoke in the part’s Magic Smoke Reservoir.
Just this last May I was preparing for a road trip and wanted to make a fuel-improving hack for my vehicle. I’ve done this before on another vehicle with much success. However, with time running out and a ton of “project ideas” on my wish/work list I thought I would build a spot welder to help me complete my main project and “simplify the build.” So I surgically removed the MOT, bought and cut the wood, assembled everything according to the plans available online and plugged it in to test it.
Expecting magic smoke or a popped circuit breaker, but instead nothing happened….absolutely nothing. Because of the other vehicle preparations I was doing in conjunction with the spot welder and the main project, I overlooked a section of the mains coil that I had inadvertantly severed with a chisel (about 4 wires deep!) So I have a 30 pound paperweight and was unable to enhance my fuel performance for a 2500 mile trip. :( Currently looking for another MOT to extract to complete both projects (sigh!) LOL
You should add the fail tag to the post about the gent making a combustion engine out of parts from the hardware store… Nothing says fail like a combination pipebomb, flamethrower on a wooden base… powered by a grill igniter.
This is what the Mistake Engine is for http://mistakeengine.com/
Damn, and I just threw out my soda can sterling engine that so did not work. *L*
Oh, where to start?
The one I remember the best, is being at the top of a 60 foot antenna tower, trying to remove a mast (pipe), which had been bent by the wind, so it was jammed in the tube at the top of the tower. Couldn’t remove the attached antenna, because it was too high to reach from the highest point I could stand on. So, I had the ground crew hauling on the rope on the gin pole (so hard, they ended up bending the pole), trying to get the mast loose.
Suddenly, the mast broke free. Mast and antenna went shooting up out of the tower, flipped over and were caught by the branches in the trees next to the tower. The tower rocked from side to side, with me at the top.
Time to change the underwear. And never again.