Superconference Talk Deadline Extended One Week

August 15, 2017 by Mike Szczys No comments

Our Call for Proposals for the Hackaday Superconference was scheduled to close yesterday. We are extending that deadline by one week so get your proposal for a talk or a workshop in now.

We want to leave no stone unturned and are intimately familiar with the procrastination habits of busy hackers like you. Now there is no excuse. Put together your pitch now and send it our way. This is the ultimate hardware conference and we’re topics covering Engineering Heroics (how you managed to pull it together to get across the finish line), Prototyping, Research (building custom rigs for University/private industry/giggles), Product Development, Full-Stack Fabrication, and anything else you think fits the vibe of Hackaday.

Accepted talks receive free admission and access to speaker events. There are travel stipends available for exemplary proposals. We also record talks for publication after the Superconference so this is a chance to be famous on Hackaday.

It’s likely that you have an interesting story to tell. Time to get up there and tell it!

The Hackaday SuperConference is November 11-12, 2017 in Pasadena California. There are still tickets available but what remains will sell out quickly when the slate of speakers in announced. Don’t miss out, grab your ticket now.

Swedish Rocket Knives

August 15, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 20 Comments

There are trends in YouTube videos among various video producers. A few weeks ago, it was all about fidget spinners until some niche tech blog ran that meme into the ground. Before that, the theme was red-hot knives cutting through stuff. The setup was simple; just heat a knife up with a blowtorch, cut through a tomato or golf ball, hit stop on the high-speed camera, and collect that sweet, sweet YouTube money.

[David] from RCExplorer.se isn’t like most YouTube stars. He actually knows what he’s doing. When the latest trend of rocket-propelled knives hit the tubes, he knew he could blow this out of the water. He succeeded with a fantastic rocket-propelled machete able to slice through watermelons and fling itself into the woods behind [David]’s house.

Unlike most of the other YouTube stars trying their hand at rocket-powered slicers, [David] is doing this one right. He’s using hobby rocket motors, yes, but they’re reloadable. [David] crafted an engine casing complete with a proper nozzle machined out of stainless for this build. The rocket sled itself is an aluminum bracket bolted to a piece of carbon fiber plate that travels down a rail with the help of four skateboard wheels. A machete is then bolted to the plate, which is propelled down the track a bit faster than 200 km/h.

When it comes to rocket-propelled knives, the word ‘professional’ really doesn’t come into play. This, however, is an amazing piece of craftsmanship that you can check out in the videos below.

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Product Development And Avoiding Stock Problems

August 15, 2017 by Bob Baddeley 39 Comments

You’ve spent months developing your product, your Kickstarter just finished successfully, and now you’re ready to order all the parts. Unfortunately, your main component, an ATmega328P, is out of stock everywhere with a manufacturer lead time of 16 weeks. Now what?

When manufacturing things in large volumes, acquiring enough stock at the right time can be tricky. There can be seasonal shortages with companies trying to get products manufactured and available for Christmas. There can be natural disasters like floods of hard drive factories, or politically-related availability problems like tantalum for capacitors, or maybe new markets open up that increase demand or a new product sucks up all the available supply. The result is all the same; you have a harder time getting what you need. Fortunately, there are some ways to avoid this problem, or at least mitigate it.

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Get Your Eclipse Glasses Emblazoned With Hackaday

August 15, 2017 by Mike Szczys 60 Comments

We’re getting ready to stare at the Sun for a few hours when a total solar eclipse is visible across the United States on August 21st. You could protect your eyes with some welding goggles, but why not wear a pair of Hackaday eclipse glasses instead?

UPDATE: And They’re Gone. We had a huge response to this with over 200 event pages made in just a few hours (and more coming since then; thank you, you’re awesome!). We had 500 glasses to give away and are sending them out in envelopes of 4. We would still love it if you made an event page but unfortunately we’ve run out of glasses to send out.

Let us know where you’ll be watching the eclipse and ~~we’ll mail you some custom-printed Hackaday eclipse glasses~~ (sorry, they’re all gone). Head over to the Eclipse Meetups page, click the “Host a Meetup” button and tell us where you’ll be. We’ll add you to the map and contact you for the shipping address and the number of glasses you’ll need.

Whether you want others to join you or not is your choice, but we want to see a map full of pins where the Hackaday community is taking part in this momentous event.

As you can see, there are already a number of meetups watch the partial eclipse and that’s fine with us. No matter where you are, if you can see the eclipse we’re ready to send you some glasses. Hurry up though, they need to arrive before Monday!

Print A Flexible Keypad

August 15, 2017 by Al Williams 8 Comments

[Micah Elizabeth Scott] needed a custom USB keyboard that wrapped around a post. She couldn’t find exactly what she wanted so she designed and printed it using flexible Nijaflex filament. You can see the design process and the result in the video below.

The electronics rely on a Teensy, which can emulate a USB keyboard easily. The keys themselves use the old resistor divider trick to allow one analog input on the Teensy to read multiple buttons. This was handy, but also minimized the wiring on the flexible PCB.

The board itself used Pyralux that was milled instead of etched. Most of the PCB artwork was done in KiCAD, other than the outline which was done in a more conventional CAD program.

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Clever Battery Holder Hack Makes Brilliant Earrings

August 15, 2017 by Donald Papp 6 Comments

A ‘googly eye’ with hole for LED leads on one side, slot for coin cell on the other. Black disk for pupil removed.

We love seeing a thing get used effectively for other than its intended purpose, and this DIY LED Earrings project is a great example. [IdunnGoddess] liked the idea of making light-up LED earrings powered by a small coin cell, but an enclosure and power connection for the battery were sticking points. The solution? A googly eye after a few minor modifications turned out to be perfect.

A googly eye resembles a thin, flat, hollow plastic bulb. Choose one that’s just a bit bigger than the coin cell, and cut a slot in one end and a small hole in the other. The LED leads go into the hole, and the coin cell slides into the slot. The result? A lightweight battery holder for an attached LED, and as a bonus the hacked googly eye is a clean and super smooth surface that can easily be painted or decorated to make it part of the design. The video embedded below demonstrates the process and showcases a few sample designs.

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