New Contest: Data Loggin’

What are we gonna’ do with all this data? Let’s make it something fun! That’s the point of the just-launched Data Loggin’ contest. Do something clever to automatically log a data set and display it in an interesting way. Three winners will each receive a $100 Tindie gift certificate for showing off an awesome project.

One year of baby sleep patterns encoded by @Lagomorpho in a knitted blanket.

Data logging is often an afterthought when working on a project, but the way you collect and store data can have a big effect on the end project. Just ask Tesla who are looking at a multi-thousand-dollar repair process for failing eMMC from too much logging. Oops. Should you log to an SD card? Internet? Stone tablets? (Yes please, we actually really want to see that for this contest.) Make sure to share those details so your project can be a template for others to learn from in the future.

Next, consider Schrodinger’s dataset: if the data is never used does it actually exist? Grab some attention with how you use this data. That automatic donut slicer you built can be used to slice up a tasty pie-chart of the minutes you spent on the elliptical this week. Your energy consumption can be plotted if you connect that OpenCV meter reader up to your favorite cloud service to visualize the data or a NodeRED dashboard if you’d rather keep things local. You could also make some of that data permanent, like this blanket that encoded baby’s sleep patterns in the colors.

You probably already have something harvesting data. Here’s the excuse you need to do something silly (or serious) with that data. Tells us about it by publishing a project page on Hackaday.io and don’t forget to use that “Submit Project To” menu to add it to the Data Loggin’ contest.

24 thoughts on “New Contest: Data Loggin’

  1. I wanted to use a Brother P-Touch label maker for data logging. I just have an idea, but not practical use. Don’t know what and why to log.
    The label maker has a thermo head with thermoelements array and a tape mechanism.
    I am a fan of reusing exiting devices for other purpose.
    Someone take my tip!

        1. I might buy P-touch someday. But right now I have a number of Dyno reels to use up!
          (I’m more inclined to buy a P-Touch, now that I’ve found replacement cartridges can be found for 1/3 the price on the web)

  2. Don’t you laugh at stone and clay tablets. Longevity of records nothing has so far beaten those yet. Surprisingly moderns technology seems to rot in few years and at best in few decades. Very much short of thousands of years survival rate of stone and clay tablets.

    Right now even data archives need regular maintenance and transfer to newer storage medium.

    Will be interesting to see how GitHub’s articvault will hold its own against the accumulation of time.

  3. If I find the time, I’m sure my parts box^H^H^H hoard has all I need to build one.
    (But, why try if it doesn’t justify the purchase of new goodies?)

    Is this contest tied into the Rube Goldberg article?

  4. Cranky geezer mode. Was logging 4 to 64 channels of data (temperatures, pressures, stress, strain, torque, flow rates, rpm, gas detectors, speed, velocity, multi-axis acceleration, acoustics, near and far field strength, blah blah using Z80 and 8051 front ends, analog signal conditioners, where the back ends were headless IBM 5150s and 5160s to stream data to HDDs, which were installed on M1 and M60 tanks, AAVs, LAVs, etc; that is, packaging and mounting were major design efforts This was during the 80s. During the 90s, things got easier with the PC104 SBCs and PCMCIA storage. These days it is a mundane task to pour a scheduler and other stuff into a M4 micro-controller and log to flash. Meh.

    Now get off of my dirt.

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