We’re really excited to announce that Jeremy Fielding will give a keynote address at Hackaday Remoticon in November! Get your free ticket now!

The projects we in this community choose to tackle often take a lot to see to completion. Parts, tools, expertise, time; all are critical to getting projects from concept to reality. But how deep your parts bin is or how well-equipped your shop may be matters not a whit unless you’ve got the one thing that makes it all go: passion. Passion is what keeps a project rolling ahead paste the inevitable roadblocks and diversions; it’s what keeps us going back to the bench to try something new when we think we’ve tried it all.

The passion to understand, to create, to innovate, is something that Jeremy Fielding clearly has. Anyone who has watched even a few of his YouTube videos knows how much he loves to make things move. His current project is a seven-axis industrial robot arm, and it’s a seriously impressive build that could easily be mistaken for a commercial product. What’s perhaps most impressive about this is that many of the skills needed to pull it off, like welding aluminum and machining, are skills that Jeremy has been teaching himself on the fly. Talk about passion!

For his keynote, Jeremy is going to focus on building hardware that moves. Most of us are reasonably good at putting together projects that flash a few lights or perhaps move a few small steppers or servos. But scaling that up, as Jeremy has done for his robot arm as well as other projects, introduces new challenges: what type of electric motor do I choose? How do I figure out the trade-offs between torque and speed? Do I even want to use electric motors — maybe pneumatics will be better? What are my control options? These questions can be just as daunting to the old hands as they are to beginners, and Jeremy is going to focus on how to handle these and other mechatronic challenges that crop up in our projects.

Aside from the (literal) nuts and bolts of mechanical engineering, there’s another place where Jeremy’s passion shines through: his passion for communicating what he has learned. His presentation style and enthusiasm are infectious, and we’re sure that’s going to come across in his keynote. Jeremy fancies himself a “contraption engineer,” which is both an apt and engaging way to look at what he does. Fellow contraption builders take note — you’re going to want to make sure you don’t miss this one!

Call for Proposals is Still Open!

We’re still on the hunt for great talks about hardware creation, so the Call for Proposals has been extended to October 20. And remember, get your tickets early — knowing how many people to expect really helps us with infrastructure planning so we can give everyone a quality experience.