This morning it is my pleasure to announce five more confirmed speakers for the Hackaday SuperConference. The ultimate hardware conference takes place in just a few weeks: November 5th and 6th in Pasadena, California.
Continue reading “5 More SuperCon Speakers You Don’t Want To Miss”
Part of the job of a Hackaday writer involves seeking out new stories to write for your delectation and edification. Our tips line provides a fruitful fount of interesting things to write about, but we’d miss so much if we restricted ourselves to only writing up stories from that source. Each of us writers will therefore have a list of favourite places to keep an eye on and catch new stuff as it appears. News sites, blogs, videos, forums, that kind of thing. In my case I hope I’m not giving away too much to my colleagues when I say I keep an eye on the activities of as many hackspaces as I can.
So aside from picking up the occasional gem for these pages there is something else I gain that is of great personal interest as a director of my local hackspace. I see how a lot of other spaces approach the web, and can couple it to my behind-the-scenes view of doing the same thing here in our space. Along the way due to both experiences I’ve begun to despair slightly at the way our movement approaches the dissemination of information, the web, and software in general. So here follows a highly personal treatise on the subject that probably skirts the edge of outright ranting but within which I hope you’ll see parallels in your own spaces.
Before continuing it’s worth for a moment considering why a hackspace needs a public website. What is its purpose, who are its audience, and what information does it need to have?
Continue reading “Hackspace Websites And The Great Software Trap”
Hard as it is to imagine, lie detectors have been sold as children’s toys for a number of years. A simple battery-operated device clipped to your fingers and would show the conductivity of your skin. The concept — which is probably not very reliable — observers that lying causes you to imperceptibly sweat which causes a sudden increase in your skin’s conductivity. These cheap toys would have a meter and you’d note the meter deflection to determine if the subject was lying.
You can debate the amusement value of interrogating your friends, perhaps, but they were pretty common and still exist (including some that shock you if they detect you are lying). Seventeen-year-old [BuildIt] has his own modern take on this classic device using — what else? — an Arduino. You can see a video of the device below.
We’re not actually sure that it’s a good idea at all, but it’s got a heck of a lot of style; [Morgan]’s barbecue grill is turbocharged. Literally.
Keeping with the automotive theme, a serve-motor-driven throttle from a Ford Mustang serves as a (naturally-aspirated) air intake, and a Honda Civic manifold delivers it to the grill. But when he really needs to turn up the heat, a 360 watt fan can force-feed the fire.
Continue reading “Here’s The Turbocharged BBQ Grill You’ve Been Waiting For”
We’ve only just begun to see the proliferation of smart kitchen gadgets. Dumb crock pots with the intelligence of a bimetallic strip, are being replaced by smart sous vide controllers. The next obvious step is barbecue. For his Hackaday Prize entry, [armin] is building a smart, eight-channel BBQ controller for real barbecue, with smoke and fans, vents and metal boxes.
This BBQ controller has been in the works for years now, starting with a thread in a German barbeque forum. The original build featured an original Raspberry Pi, and could relay temperatures from inside a slab of meat to anywhere with range of a WiFi network.
For his Hackaday Prize entry, [armin] is working on a vastly improved version. The new version supports eight temperature probes, temperature logging and plotting, a webcam, setting alarms, a web interface, 433MHz radio, and PWM and fan control. Yes, if you’re very, very clever you can use this project to build a barbeque that will cycle a fan, and open and close a damper while monitoring the temperature of a brisket and email you when it’s done. It’s the Internet of Meat, and it’s the most glorious thing we’ve seen yet.
When every month brings out a fresh console blockbuster game that breaks new boundaries of cinematic immersion in its gameplay, it’s easy to forget that sometimes the simplest of game interfaces can be rewarding.
“Hele Norges Knapp” (“All of Norway’s Button”), is a good example. As you might expect, it’s a button, a large arcade-style one, and the gameplay is simple. Press the button as many times as you can in 30 seconds. It’s a project from Norwegian Creations, and it was produced as a promotion that toured the country for one of Norway’s debit card payment systems.
The blog post and video is frustratingly light on hardware or software details, and their is nothing about it in their GitHub presence. But they tell us that at its heart is a Teensy 3.2 with an audio board, driving the big 7-segment displays for the scoreboard and the WS2801 LED lighting.
The button itself is Adafruit’s 100mm Massive Arcade Button, and given that it was pressed over a million times by eager Norwegians it would seem this project has proved its robustness.
The video below the break has details of construction and of the game in action, and there is another far more corporate promotional video on Facebook featuring a host of Bright Young People honing their button action in a sun-kissed Norway that looks almost tropical. The game itself does look as though it could be an amusing diversion in the same vein as those fairground strength tests.
Arcade cabinets are a lot of fun, and something most of us would probably like in our homes. Unfortunately, space and decor constraints often make them impractical. Or, at least, that’s what our significant others tell us. Surely there must be a workaround, right?
Right! In this case, the workaround [sid981] came up with was to build a RetroPie arcade into a fancy looking wine barrel. The electronics are pretty much what you’d expect for a RetroPie system, and the screen is set into the top of the barrel. Control is handled by a wireless controller that can be tucked away when it’s not in use, and a glass top simultaneously protects the screen and lets guests use the barrel as a bar table.
Continue reading “Classing Up A RetroPie Arcade With A Wine Barrel”
