Author: Mike Szczys

6403 Articles

New Contest: Say Goodbye To 2020

November 10, 2020 by 4 Comments

Every year you find yourself wanting to build an awesome hack to show off on New Year’s Eve, but like all hackers, you procrastinate and it’s a rush job, if it happens at all. But considering the hot mess of a year 2020 has been, let’s all plan ahead and give 2020 the boot by building the things that make us happy.

The Goodbye 2020! contest kicked off this morning: build something that ushers in the new year in a fun and creative way. Maybe it’s a robot that tears off the pages of a daily desk calendar of 2020, shredding one for each of the last 365 minutes of the year. Build a video countdown device that works with any HDMI screen, or a dedicated LED display — perhaps in hat, glasses, or sweater form factor? There’s unlimited room for creativity here, so don’t forget to show us video of it to get the full effect.

Top three finishers will win a $500, $250, or $100 shopping spree from Digi-Key electronics who are sponsoring the Goodbye 2020! contest. Start your project page on Hackaday.io right now and use the “Submit project to…” drop-down box on the left sidebar to enter it into the contest. We’ll be keeping an eye out for awesome entries from now until the end of December.

Today At Remoticon: Sunday Live Events

November 8, 2020 by 2 Comments

Hackaday Remoticon is a worldwide virtual conference happening now!

Public Livestreams (all times are PST, UTC-8):

Hackaday YouTube and Facebook Live:

  • 12:00pm SDR Workshop
  • 2:15pm Hacker’s Guide to Hardware Debugging Workshop

Hackaday Twitch:

  • 11am SMD Challenge: Remoticon Attendees (Heat 2)
  • 1pm SMD Challenge: LayerOne Badge Team
  • 3pm SMD Challenge: Remoticon Attendees (Heat 3)

Hackaday Twitch Two:

  • 12:00pm Design Methodology Workshop
  • 12:45pm 0 to ASIC Workshop
  • 2:45pm IC Reverse Engineering
  • 3:30pm How to Create Guides People Will Actually Use

The BYTE Is The Grand Prize Winner Of The 2020 Hackaday Prize

November 7, 2020 by 13 Comments

The BYTE, an open-source mouth-actuated input device for people with physical challenges has just been named the Grand Prize winner of the 2020 Hackaday Prize. The award for claiming the top place and title of “Best All Around” in this global engineering initiative is $50,000. Five other top winners and four honorable mentions were also named during this evening’s Hackaday Prize Ceremony, held during the Hackaday Remoticon virtual conference.

This year’s Hackaday Prize focused on challenges put forth by four non-profit partners who have first hand knowledge of the problems that need solving as they work to accomplish their missions. These organizations are Conservation X Labs, United Cerebral Palsy Los Angeles, CalEarth, and Field Ready. Join us below for more on the grand prize winner and to see the Best in Category and Honorable Mention winners from each non-profit challenge, as well as the Best Wildcard project.

Over $200,000 in cash prizes have been distributed as part of this year’s initiative where hundreds of hardware hackers, makers, and artists competed to build a better future. Continue reading “The BYTE Is The Grand Prize Winner Of The 2020 Hackaday Prize” →

Today At Remoticon: Saturday Live Events

November 7, 2020 by 1 Comment

Hackaday Remoticon is a worldwide virtual conference happening now!

Public Livestreams (all times are PST, UTC-8):

Hackaday YouTube and Facebook Live:

Hackaday Twitch:

  • 6am SMD Challenge: Badge.team
  • 8:15am Solder Techniques Demonstration
  • 12pm SMD Challenge: Hackaday Writers
  • 2pm SMD Challenge: Remoticon Attendees (Heat 1)
  • 4pm SMD Challenge: Queercon Badge Team

Hackaday Twitch Two:

  • 12:00-2pm Demos
  • 5:30pm World Tour Robot

Hackaday Podcast 092: Orbital Data By Mail, Human Flight On Styrofoam Wings, And Seven Shades Of E-Ink

November 6, 2020 by 4 Comments

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys catch the best hacks you may have missed. This week we look at the new Raspberry Pi 400, use computer vision to get ready for geeky Christmas, and decypher a negative-space calendar. We get an answer to the question of what happens if you scale up a styrofoam airplane to human-size. Facebook is locking down VR headset, will hackers break them free? And take an excellent stroll down memory lane to find out what it was like to be a space-obsessed ham at the dawn of personal computers.

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download (~60 MB)

Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:

Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast 092: Orbital Data By Mail, Human Flight On Styrofoam Wings, And Seven Shades Of E-Ink” →

Today At Remoticon: Bring-a-Hack

November 6, 2020 by No comments

Last Chance Tickets:

General admission tickets for this weekend’s Hackaday Remoticon are only available for two more hours! These are free, but you need to have one to get in on tonight’s Bring-a-hack.

Today’s Live Events:

The Community Bring-a-Hack meetup for all general admission ticket holders begins today at 16:00 PST. Check the ticketing hub page for your link to the event which is being held on Remo.

Live streaming events open to the public will begin on Saturday at 10:00 PST with open remarks and Kipp Bradford’s keynote talk. Workshops and the SMD Challenge will live-stream all day. And Alfred Jones will present his keynote at 18:30 PST followed by the Hackaday Prize Ceremony. Follow our media channels to be notified of all live streams:

Hackaday Podcast 091: Louisville Exploder, Generating Japanese Joinery, Relay Retrocomputer Rally, And Chop The Robopup

October 30, 2020 by 3 Comments

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams dig through the greatest hacks that ought not be missed this week. There’s a wild one that flexes engineering skills instead of muscles to beat the homerun distance record with an explosively charged bat. A more elegant use of those engineering chops is shown in a CNC software tool that produces intricate wood joinery without needing an overly fancy machine to fabricate it. If your flesh and blood pets aren’t keeping up with your interests, there’s a new robot dog on the scene that far outperforms its constituent parts which are 3D-printed and of the Pi and Arduino varieties. And just when you thought you’d seen all the craziest retrocomputers, here’s an electromechanical relay based machine that took six years to build (although there’s so much going on here that it should have taken sixteen).

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download (~60 MB)

Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:

Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast 091: Louisville Exploder, Generating Japanese Joinery, Relay Retrocomputer Rally, And Chop The Robopup” →