Author: Caleb Kraft

1567 Articles

Southwest Tour: Quelab In Albuquerque New Mexico

August 7, 2012 by 11 Comments

Our travels brought us to Quelab in Albuquerque New Mexico for the 2nd stop on our southwest tour. [Adric] agreed to give us a tour of this really cool space and a few other folks were there working on various projects. There were several things I really enjoyed that will hopefully be gracing our pages soon with full writeups.

The Quelab hackerspace has a small machine shop area as well as a few collaborative spaces. They occasionally hold events where you can come and learn different skills as well. While I was there, I saw some cool high altitude balloon projects, a teletype playing Zork, and a 3d printer spitting out some custom Quelab tokens.

The group seemed to be very a really cool bunch. Everyone was enthusiastic about their projects and their space. They even tried to feed us (but the timing just wasn’t right). If you ever make it by, be sure to go play with the phosphorescent wall in their bathroom. Easily one of my favorite simple projects.

Southwest Tour: OhmSpace In Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

August 6, 2012 by 12 Comments

OhmSpace in Oklahoma City is the very first stop on our southwest tour.

When we arrived it was around 2 in the afternoon and the temperature outside was nearly 110 degrees. It was HOT. [Stan] met up with us to give us a tour of the space.  As you can see, the facility is huge. While at first glance it may appear somewhat disheveled, there is order to the madness. There is a nice community work area set up in the middle as well as several different stations throughout. Since the facility is almost just one giant room, storage is out in the open giving the illusion of a mess. We were there in the early afternoon, so there wasn’t anyone around working on anything, but you can see projects in various states of progress throughout the tour.

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Edison’s Cradle Is A Bright Idea

August 6, 2012 by 45 Comments

This interesting take on Newton’s Cradle is called “Asobi” and was created by [Yasutoki Kariya]. However, [Johnny] at Spoon and Tamago dubbed it “Edison’s Cradle”, which we think is a great name.

As you can make out in the video, it isn’t really a Newton’s Cradle. There is a solenoid pushing the bulbs at the end out at the correct time, but that’s fine. The overall result is quite brilliant. Unfortunately, we don’t know much about the setup. Anyone have more information? Anyone want to take a stab at making “Tesla’s cradle”?

[via Make]

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Adafruit’s Custom Rasp Pi Distro Eases Some Pain

August 3, 2012 by 22 Comments

Many of you have still not yet received your Raspberry Pi. When you do, you’ll find that there is work to be done in the operating system to get things working as you might want them to.  The wonderful folks over at Adafruit have tackled this by releasing their own distribution of Linux for the Raspberry Pi.

Based on the shipped distribution “Wheezy”, Adafruit’s distribution “Occidentalis v0.1. Rubus occidentalis” or “the Black Raspberry” now includes the following:

 

Never Miss A Roadside Photo-op With An Easy Camera Hack.

August 1, 2012 by 31 Comments

When you’re driving for days on the highway, you see some interesting things. If you’re like me, you usually don’t have the time to get your camera out and snap a picture. Especially if it is just a goofy looking car, or an interesting tree or something. This hack will make it really easy to get pictures of sights on the highway by allowing you to snap a picture at the press of a button.

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Hackaday Has Won 1st Place In The RedBull Creation Contest!

August 1, 2012 by 55 Comments

The people have spoken. Hackaday has won the Redbull creation challenge by popular vote.  Despite a few bumpy spots in the voting process, our project, the Minotaur’s Revenge (gameplay footage around the 2min mark in the video), got the most votes from the public winning us $5000 for our hackerspace and a trip to the World MakerFaire in New York.

Thanks to everyone who was able to actually vote, and we totally understand about those who didn’t.

Book Review: The Dangers Of Computer Hacking

July 29, 2012 by 30 Comments

Years and years ago, someone gave me this book as a gift. [John Knittel], a co-author thought I might find it amusing. The book, titled The Dangers of Computer Hacking, is a grade school level breakdown of, well, computer hacking and the dangers thereof. At the time, I thought it was rather fun and amusing. Since then, it has sat on my shelf without much action.

Last weekend, however, my 8 year old son was building perfectly spaced shapes for his slinky (new plastic slinkies suck) and found this book. I snatched it up and read through it real quick. The realization came to me that though this is somewhat tongue-in-cheek(check the topics on the back cover), this book is actually a fantastic reference for the un-initiated.

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