The Hackaday Prize Worldwide is coming to New York! Hackaday is adding a hardware-centric twist to the TechCrunch Disrupt in May. They’re kicking off the conference with a weekend hackathon which traditionally has been a software event. This year Hackaday is partnering with TC to make a change. If you’re a software-only sort of person, grabbing a ticket to the event is extremely tough. But those Hackaday community members who want to prove they can make electrons do their bidding still have hope; Hackaday can get you in!
Twenty Hours of Hardware
Show up at 12:30pm on Saturday, May 2nd. By 9:30am the next morning you must have a working piece of hardware having been totally built on-site. Starting at 11am on Sunday you have 60-seconds to show off your build. We’re not kidding around when we say the judging criteria for this hackathon is “Awesomeness”. TC is putting up $5,000 to the winning team. Obviously someone who hangs out around Hackaday should be the winner here so go sign up!
Ticket Registration is a Hack:
TC hackathon tickets are released in shifts and gobbled up immediately, but because you are a friend of Hackaday we’ll can get you in for some epic hardware hacking. Even signing up is a bit of hack but here’s how:
- Follow this link which includes a promo code to get a Hackers – Friends of TC ticket
- Form/Find a team (up to 5 people) in advance through ChallengePost or you may do so onsite. You’ll notice the tags are software-related so put in “other” and add “hardware” and specific tags you can think of.
The Hardware
We’ll be bringing the basics: lots of dev boards, sensor breakout boards, and tools you need to hook them together. We’ll be posting information about the items we are bringing on our Hackaday Prize Worldwide: New York City page. Make sure you check in for updates so that you can familiarize yourself with what we’ll have on-hand. It is highly recommended that you set up any IDE or other dev tools before arriving at the event.
So, uh, I’m going. I’m the guy who’s building this.
https://hackaday.io/project/4716-control-things-with-your-muscles
And I already got my ticket. Anyone else going who’s got their ticket and wants to team up? Only thing I ask is if you’re down with food breaks (do we get any down time to grab some grub in the hub? It’s NYC after all…) If you’re on hackaday, and you’re coming, and want to team up, just shoot me an email…
Oh yeah, and I know they’re providing dev boards, but seriously, I’ve never done something without some extra hardware (opamps, 555 timers, caps, resistors, diodes, etc.) Should we bring some of our own kit with us?
Sweet! I’ll be there too.
You are welcome to bring your own parts, breakout boards, tools, etc. But assembly and coding must be done on site. We’re following the published rules for the Hackathon.
Sounds like a new HackADay challenge [TM], smuggling code into a Hackathon, perhaps a MicroSD card concealed
inside a the base of a solderless breadboard(connected to certain unmarked holes)? Or smuggled inside an old style electrolytic (multi-pin) capacitor? It’s New York after all,… B^)
Hey Mike,
Cool! Can’t wait to meet you and other hackaday staff. Been following Hackaday for four years now. I’ve never done one of these things before. About the closest thing I’ve done to something like this was building a freaking robot in the middle of the Black Rock Desert from scratch in dust storms and stuff. That included coding from scratch! I imagine this can’t possibly anywhere that crazy. Do they provide resistors, caps, and diodes too?
Hi DaveN- I coded at Black Rock City last year in a truck last year LOL. Hope to meet you at the hackathon!
Hi Sophi,
You had a truck?! All I had was this!
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/459700445460451328/Ihj-CWPx.jpeg
A piece of wrap around cardboard… Talk about MadMax programming. Cool beans! See you at the hackathon!
Is RTL coding considered hardware or software in the context of a hardware hack-a-thon? Unless you are building an analog computer or a FSM out of discrete flip-flops and ROMs, just about all “awesomeness” hardware has a soft-coded component.
Oh for certain: most hardware these days involves software. I’m actually a little conflicted about this with a build I started this weekend because I consider the hardware part of it super easy and so most of my time now is just coding.
That being said, writing an app for your smartphone is not a hardware project. Building a sensor and writing a phone app to read from it is a hardware project. Right?
Which is true, but you have to remember, for some things, the microcontroller still has to interact with the real world. With us. With real life. That’s why I want to bring part of my kit. It’s for interfacing with real life. I’ve said many a time, if you stuck me in front of a computer and told me code for the computer, the web, or worse, a dumbass app, my eyes will glaze over, and I’ll head for the exits. But if you stick me in front of a coke machine, I’m all over that $#!t. If this event let’s us interact with real life, as opposed to just some glorified phone/web crap, oh hell yeah this’ll be fun. If not, the hell with it…