Hackaday’s London Meetup Was A Corker

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Upstairs at the Marquis Cornwallis pub in central London, around 75 Hackadayers convened, ate well, drank well, and were generally merry. Nearly everyone in attendance brought a hack with them, which meant that there was a lot to see in addition to all that socializing to be done.

I spoke with a huge number of people who all said the same thing: that it was fantastic to put faces to the names of the writers, hackers, and other readers. As a writer, I finally got to meet in person some of the people who’ve produced some of my favorite hacks, in addition to most that were totally new to me. I can’t say how often I heard “Oh you’re the person behind that project. I loved that one.” A real sense of the Hackaday community was on display.

One of the most Hackaday moments occurred when [Pyrofer] showed me his fiber-optic cable checker. I had just been reading the comments posted to a similar project, and he mentioned that he had built a similar device a few years ago. Now here he was, 24 hours later, showing it to me with a beer in his other hand. It was a great-looking project with removable laser units and a sweet little OLED display. It also featured wireless charging for the battery, because wireless charging is cool.

Someone (say hello in the comments!) brought a super-quick prototype from work with him. To get the job done, he needed a six-layer PCB, but no PCB houses could turn those around in time for his deadline. The solution? Split the design up into a two-layer and four-layer design which they could handle quickly, and populate the middle sections with a surface-mount connector for the shared signals. The connector solves the alignment problems, as well as the obvious inability to solder inside the PCB sandwich. Very clever, and a hack that I’ll have to try out to beef up my home-etched designs.

And so it went. The entire evening was full of gems like this, punctuated by cask ale refills and delicious shrimp and mini-burgers. If you were there, let us know what your favorite moments were in the comments. If you weren’t, enjoy the photo gallery, and look out for when we’re in your neighborhood.

[mikeselectricstuff]’s electric stuff
[Adil Malik]’s fancy power meters
Stickers!
Guidance computer? Analog IMU?
[Ken Boak] and his MyStorm FPGA Board
Debugging by Phonelight
[mikeselectricstuff] amazes
Bar shot
[Mitxela]’s LED earring/pendant
[securelyfitz] keeps state and logic separate
[Dave], who reversed the IM-Me screen
[Fluffyyy]’s Bear and Directional Headphones
Robots!
[Spencer Owen] and RC 2014
The Crew: Jenny, Elliot, Mike, and Pedro

DesignSpark, brought to you by RS, our exclusive sponsor for this event.
DesignSpark is the exclusive sponsor of the Hackaday UK Unconference.

15 thoughts on “Hackaday’s London Meetup Was A Corker”

  2. Hi, Thanks for the great evening. It was amazing to meet so many like minded people who have produced without fail a raft of amazing projects. Every single one a gem. A great atmosphere and friendly all round so thanks to every single person there, it was great meeting you all.

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    2. I went – the first hardware/tech event I’ve ever been to and it was amazing. Start banging on at the hackaday staff now until they put more UK events in the diary. The benches were full and the atmosphere was very positive. Jenny’s write up does it justice but it’s a sisyphean task to communicate the stimulating details and human touch that came with every talk. Very inspiring to attend and I hope they run another one soon, perhaps in another part of the country.

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