This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Assignments Editor Kristina Panos convened in a secret location to say what we will about the choicest hacks of the past week. We kick things off by discussing the brand new Cyberdeck contest, which is the first of it’s type, but certainly won’t be the last. In other contest news, we recently announced the winners of the Hack it Back Challenge of the Hackaday Prize, which ran the gamut from bodysnatching builds to rad resto-mods and resto-recreations.
Taking top honors in wow factor this week is [Stuff Made Here]’s jigsaw puzzle-solving robot. This monster can currently tackle small laser-cut puzzles, but is destined to solve an all-white 5000-piece nightmare once all the engineering pieces have come together.
Then we took a field trip to Zip Tie City, where the plastic’s green ♻ and the wiring’s pretty, admired volcano nuts from afar, and briefly considered the idea of a 3D printer with a heating zone of programmable length.
Finally, we take a look at a creatively destructive robot that’s akin to a useless machine, bloviate about books you should read, and dance around the topic of learning by playing.
Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Episode 181 Show Notes:
News:
- Load Your Icebreakers, The 2022 Cyberdeck Contest Starts Now
- 2022 Hackaday Prize: Congratulations To The Winners Of The Hack It Back Challenge
What’s that Sound?
- If you know what that sound was, you should fill out the form here to win a t-shirt!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
- Solar Plane Might Be Able To Last Through The Night
- Jigsaw Puzzles Are Defeated
- Student Competition Badge Bears Custom Silicon
- Welcome To Ziptie City
- Want Faster Extrusion But Don’t Have A Volcano? Nuts!
- Converting An 80s Typewriter Into A Linux Terminal
Quick Hacks:
- Elliot’s Picks:
- Kristina’s Picks:
The media box on this post has episode 180 but the direct download link has episode 181.
Mine shows 181 on both. Hoping it’s cleared itself up by now… Sorry for the late response.
The talking about custom silicon for a competition badge reminded me about the student competition in Germany I took part in 14 year ago, wherein students grade 9-13 could design a chip with HDL simulations and an FPGA board. As a trophy they handed out a framed 300mm waver, and three designs would even be actually fabricated so they got a packaged chip to take home.
Apparently the competition is still being held, but for the current round I can’t find any references that they are still offering tape-outs as a price, which I thought made the whole thing that much more exciting.
https://www.invent-a-chip.de/
That’s awesome.
On that subject: Matt Venn’s ASIC course. https://www.zerotoasiccourse.com He’s gotten six batches of chips made for folks.
He has submitted a workshop proposal to Supercon. Just saying.