Ask Hackaday: Where Are The Flying Cars?

June 10, 2016 by Mike Szczys 73 Comments

I could have sworn that we have asked this one before, but perhaps I’m thinking of our discussion of nuclear aircraft. In my mind the two share a similar fate: it just isn’t going to happen. But, that doesn’t mean flying cars can’t happen. Let me make my case, and then we want to know what you think.

[Steve] sent in a link to a Bloomberg article on Larry Page’s suspected investment in personal flying cars. It’s exciting to hear about test flights from a startup called Zee.Aero with 150 people on staff and a seemingly unlimited budget to develop such a fantastic toy. Surely ~~Bruce Wayne~~ Mr. Page is onto something and tiny 2-person vehicles will be whizzing up and down the airspace above your street at any moment now? Realistically though, I don’t believe it. They definitely will build a small fleet of such vehicles and they will work. But you, my friend, will never own one.
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Power Glove Takes Over Quadcopter Controls

June 6, 2016 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

Gerrit and I were scoping out the Intel booth at Bay Area Maker Faire and we ran into Nolan Moore who was showing of his work to mash together a Nintendo Power Glove with an AR Drone quadcopter. Not only did it work, but the booth had a netted cage which Nolan had all to himself to show off his work. Check the video clip below for that.

The control scheme is pretty sweet, hold your hand flat (palm toward the ground) to hover, make a fist and tilt it in any direction to affect pitch and roll, point a finger up or down to affect altitude, and point straight and twist your hand for yaw control. We were talking with Nolan about these controls it sounded sketchy, but the demo proves it’s quite responsive.

The guts of the Power Glove have been completely removed (that’s a fun project log to browse through too!) and two new boards designed and fabbed to replace them. He started off in Eagle but ended up switching to KiCAD before sending the designs out for fabrication. I really enjoy the footprints he made to use the stock buttons from the wrist portion of the glove.

A Teensy LC pulls everything together, reading from an IMU on the board installed over the back of the hand, as well as from the flex sensors to measure what your fingers are up to. It parses these gestures and passes appropriate commands to an ESP8266 module. The AR Drone 2.0 is WiFi controlled, letting the ESP8266 act as the controller.

1575 Bottles Of Beer On The (LED) Wall

June 3, 2016 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

Say hello to my little friend, lovingly named Flaschen Taschen by the members of Noisebridge in San Francisco. It is a testament to their determination to ~~drink Corona beer~~ get more members involved in building big displays each year for the Bay Area Maker Faire. I pulled aside a couple of the builders for an interview despite their very busy booth. When you have a huge full-color display standing nine feet tall and ten feet wide it’s no surprise the booth was packed with people.

Check out the video and then join me after the break for more specifics on how they pulled this off.

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Exquisite LED Handbag In The Wild

May 31, 2016 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

There is a lot of spectacle on display at Maker Faire. But to be honest, what I love seeing the most are well-executed builds pulled off by passionate hackers. Such is the case with [Debra Ansell]. She wasn’t exhibiting, just taking in all the sights like I was. But her bag was much better than my drab grey camera-equipment filled backpack; she build a handbag with an LED matrix and did it so well you will scratch your head trying to figure out if she bought it that way or not.

Gerrit and I walked right up and asked if she’d show it to us. We weren’t the only ones either. [Debra’s] bag started drawing a crowd as she pulled out her cellphone and sent “Hackaday” to the 10×15 matrix over Bluetooth. Check out our video interview below.

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Hackaday Prize Needs You: Build For Citizen Scientists

May 30, 2016 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

Humanity is better when we work together. Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to Citizen Scientists — the concept that scientific advancement isn’t reserved to the trained professionals, but benefits when a larger population of thinkers collaborates with the community of trained researchers. This is the goal of the Citizen Scientist challenge round for the Hackaday Prize. Let’s build something that enables citizens to be scientists.

We’ll divide $20,000 evenly between twenty projects that target Citizen Scientists. Enter now and build your prototype by July 11th for your chance to win. Even better, if you are selected as one of those 20 finalists you’ll compete for the top prizes, $150k and a residency at the Supplyframe Design Lab in Pasadena. Second through fifth place finishers will get $25k, $10k, $10k, and $5k.

You love design challenges and this one has powerful potential. We’ve seen builds like this in the finals during previous years of the Hackaday Prize. In 2014, RamanPi was recognized as the 5th place winner. The project seeks to reduce the expense of acquiring a Raman Spectrometer which is used for analyzing chemical substances. The design used parametric models for the optic jigs used by the machine. The idea is that a university could buy their own optics, adjust the models for the properties of those lenses and mirrors, then 3D print the parts to build the apparatus.

Also a winner in 2014, the Open Science Tricorder was recognized as the fourth place finisher. Based on the form factor and functionality of the iconic Star Trek technology, the Open Science Tricorder combines three or more sensor technologies with a user interface. It provides a hands-on experience for students learning about the properties of the world around them, and a handheld sensor suite to anyone interested in undertaking their own research projects.

The Citizen Scientist challenge round begins right now. Get started on your build today and show us what you can do to solve a technology problem with your prototyping skills. Good luck!

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Federico Musto Of Arduino SRL Shows Off New ARM-based Arduino Boards

May 27, 2016 by Mike Szczys 61 Comments

I caught up with Federico Musto, President and CEO of Arduino SRL, at the 2016 Bay Area Maker Faire. Their company is showing off several new boards being prepared for release as early as next month. In partnership with Nordic Semi and ST Microelectronics they have put together some very powerful offerings which we discuss in the video below.

The new boards are called Arduino Primo, Arduino Core, Arduino Alicepad, and Arduino Otto.

The first up is the Primo, a board built to adhere to the UNO form factor. This one is packing an interesting punch. The main micro is not an Atmel chip, but a Nordic nRF52832 ARM Cortex-M4F chip. Besides being a significantly fast CPU with floating-point support, the Nordic IC also has built-in Bluetooth LE and NFC capabilities, and the board has a PCB antenna built in.

On an UNO this is where the silicon would end. But on the Primo you get two more controllers: an ESP8266 and an STM32F103. The former is obvious, it brings WiFi to the party (including over-the-air programming). The STM32 chip is there to provide peripheral control and debugging. Debugging is an interesting development and is hard to come by in the Arduino-sphere. This will use the OpenOCD standard, with platformio.org as the recommended GUI.

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This Is Your Epic Weekend To Hack Together Anything

May 26, 2016 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

Wow how the time flies. It seems like only couple of weeks ago we were unveiling the film we shot at Salton Sea to launch this, our third global hacking initiative called The Hackaday Prize. What we want is to see you use those skills of yours to Build Something that Matters. Come up with a way to solve a technology problem and score yourself some sweet prizes. This weekend, anything goes.

The current challenge is called Anything Goes and the deadline to enter your project is Monday at 7am PDT. You need to show off a prototype of your idea, and have at least four (4) build logs about your work on your project page. Use the menu in the left sidebar of your project page to enter it in the Hackaday Prize (or in the Anything Goes round if you entered it during the first challenge).

Are you confused about what is happening here? Let’s hit the high points:

Every five weeks we start a new Challenge Round which is basically a whole new contest. You can enter now — it’s not too late. If you entered previously you may enter again.
From each challenge round we will select twenty projects to move on to the final round, and award them each $1,000 for their achievement.
When all five rounds are complete, those hundred final projects will be viewed by our expert judges who will pick five winners who get the big cash prizes: $150k, $25k, $10k, $10k, and $5k. The Grand Prize winner will also be offered a residency at the Supplyframe Design Lab in Pasadena, CA.
The moral of the story is: build something awesome because that’s what you do. But this weekend, make it something that helps people and you just might be one of the twenty moving on for a shot at a much larger purse.

It’s true, we have a lot of projects in the running for this year’s prize; right about 700 entries at the time of writing. But, like I said above, each Challenge is a new contest. We are just about to hit 300 entries for Anything Goes. Twenty will be finalists, which means your entry has about a 1 in 15 chance at this point. Make this weekend your personal hackathon — build it, document it, and don’t forget to submit it.

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