Welcome Back, Supercon!

November 12, 2022 by Elliot Williams 7 Comments

The last two Novembers, Hackaday’s annual gathering was held in remote mode: Remoticon instead of Supercon. While still recovering from jetlag, I’m reflecting on the pros and cons of live versus virtual events. And wondering how we can combine the virtues of both for next year. Come brainstorm with me!

The blatantly obvious pros of having a live Supercon is the ease of talking to everyone who is there, trading code tips, life experience, and must-see projects. In person, you can physically trade badge add-ons in real time, without waiting for customs to clear the packages. Simply hanging out has a real charm to it, and doing so over shared tacos is even better. Spontaneous collaborations were easy and natural. And finally, while you can watch someone electrocute a twinkie with a neon sign transformer on YouTube, you can’t smell the ozone.

Against this, all of the expensive travel, the aforementioned jetlag for some, and the real-world limitations that only so many people can fit in a given physical space at once.

The best part of Remoticon was hearing from people who wouldn’t have been able to make it to an in-person con, whether it’s because it’s of geography or money. Since everything is online, there’s no missing out, and anyone can freely dip in to one talk or another. The online chat channels were better attended during Remoticon as well – perhaps because they were the only game in town – but that was a more global community.

There’s probably nothing that can be done about the tacos, but what could we do about incorporating the benefits of Remoticon? We did stream one stage live, and we had two chat channels open for commentary the whole time. If you took part remotely in Supercon, let us know how it went, and if you have any suggestions to improve our remote experience for next time. Because in the end, we want Hackaday to be as inclusive and as global as the hacker community itself.

Banner Photo by Poyu Chen.

Supercon Sunday: Check The Live Stream

November 6, 2022 by Elliot Williams 1 Comment

Supercon is entering the final phase: it’s Sunday! But it’s not over yet: there is a phenomenal lineup of talks today, starting at 9:30 AM PST, and we’re streaming the main stage live from the very beginning until the badge-hacking awards ceremony at 5:30 pm. And if you’d like to join in the conversation, head over to the Hack Chat or the Discord.

We kicked off Friday with a full day of badge hacking, workshops, food, drink, and music. What used to be a late-afternoon pre-registration has grown into the early morning hours, and gave people a great opportunity to catch up after two years of remote mode.

Saturday was full-on Supercon, and the talks were phenomenal. We recorded interviews, took tons of photos, and of course recorded the talks given on the DesignLab stage, and we’ll be getting those out to you over the next weeks. (It’s a lot.)

In addition to all the talks, we announced the winners of the 2022 Hackaday Prize! It was a big year for small-scale energy generation and recycling, and all of the winning projects were clever, well tested, and easily replicable. Check them out.

So now that you’re all caught up, settle in for a jam-packed Sunday. See you in the livestream if not in real life!

Hackaday Prize 2022: Meet The Winners Of This Year’s Competition

November 5, 2022 by Tom Nardi 9 Comments

This year, the 2022 Hackaday Prize challenged hackers and makers in the open source community to develop projects which evoked the concepts of Sustainability, Resiliency, and Circularity — ideas which perhaps have never been more important. As humanity works to become better stewards to the only planet they can call home, everything we build (or rebuild) should reflect our desire to preserve our world for future generations.

Today, we’re excited to announce the projects that our panel of expert judges believe best exemplified this year’s theme and took home their share of the $50,000 USD in prize money.

Continue reading “Hackaday Prize 2022: Meet The Winners Of This Year’s Competition” →

Supercon Is On! Join Us!

November 5, 2022 by Elliot Williams 4 Comments

Supercon is in high gear, after a full day of badge hacking that went well into the midnight hour. Now it’s time for the talks!

If you’re not here in person, you can still get in on the talks by following the 2022 Hackaday Supercon Livestream, which will be covering all the LACM stage action. We have a great lineup of speakers starting off with a keynote by Joe [Kingpin] Grand at 10:00 AM PDT and ending with the 2022 Hackaday Prize Awards at 7:00 PM — come see who won live!

Of course, talks are only one component of Supercon. The secret sauce has always been the people at the con. If you’re not joining us, we still need you to take part. There is a conference chat on Hackaday.io and on the Hackaday Discord server and all are welcome. Pop in and visit with people at the con, and others around the globe who wish they could have made it in person.

Make sure you’re on the live stream Saturday evening to watch as the Grand Prize is presented on stage during the Hackaday Prize Ceremony. Pop into the chat and ask for updates on badge hacking, the SMD Soldering Challenge, and all of the other shenanigans that make Supercon super.

Hackaday Supercon: Back At Last!

October 29, 2022 by Elliot Williams 7 Comments

I’m unashamed to admit that I’ve really missed in-person hacker conferences over the last two and a half years. And while we’re not out of the water yet, COVID-wise, things are controlled and controllable enough that we felt we could safely hold our smallish, halfway out in the back-alley conference safely. It’s going to be so nice to see all the familiar faces, and meet the first-time Superconnisti as well. Welcome! You’re going to have fun.

For health, money, or other reasons, a lot of people who would like to go still can’t, and that bums me out. Of course there’s no substitute for being there live, but we’re trying our best to spread the Supercon love to everyone out there. If the two years of Remoticon were different, I’m not willing to say they were worse. It was awesome to be able to share live talks on some fantastic hacky topics, typing amongst ourselves instead of chatting in person, and it spanned the globe. There were no borders.

We’re still working on our remote plans – yes, a week before the con – because I don’t think things can ever fully go back to the before-times. That said, we will be streaming the main stage live as always, and you can pretend it’s Remoticon all over again by hanging out in our Discord, or over at the Supercon Hack Chat.

So to those of you attending, it’ll be great to see you in person. The rest of you out there – join us virtually. We’ve been working on this for the last five months now, and next week, it’s go time!

2022 Hackaday Supercon: Joe [Kingpin] Grand Keynote And Workshops Galore

October 25, 2022 by Elliot Williams 5 Comments

It’s our great pleasure to announce that Joe [Kingpin] Grand is going to be our keynote speaker at the 2022 Supercon!

If you don’t know Joe, he’s a hacker’s hacker. He’s behind the earliest DEFCON electronic badges, to which we can trace our modern #badgelife creative culture. He was at the l0pht when it became the most publicly visible hackerspace in the USA, at the dawn of what we now think of as cybersecurity. And moreover, he’s a tireless teacher of the art of hardware hacking.

Joe’s talk at DEFCON 22 about reverse engineering PCBs on a hacker budget is on our top-10 must watch playlist, and his JTAGulator debug-port enumeration device has been present at the start of countless hacking sessions. But again, it’s his enthusiasm for creating, his inspiring “what if I poke at this thing this way?” attitude, and overwhelming hacker spirit that make Joe a long-overdue speaker at Supercon! Continue reading “2022 Hackaday Supercon: Joe [Kingpin] Grand Keynote And Workshops Galore” →

ERRF 22: Baby Belt Promises Infinite Z For Under $200

October 23, 2022 by Tom Nardi 20 Comments

Hackaday has been reporting on belt printers for around a decade now, since MakerBot released (and then quickly pulled) an automated build platform for their very first Cupcake printer. Turns out that not only has the concept been difficult to pull off from a technical perspective, but a murky patent situation made it tricky for anyone who wanted to bring their own versions to market. For a long time they seemed like the fusion reactors of desktop 3D printing — a technology that remains perennially just outside of our grasp.

But finally, things have changed. The software has matured, and there are now several commercial belt printers on the market. The trick now, as it once was for traditional desktop 3D printing, is to bring the costs down. Enter the Baby Belt, created by [Rob Mink]. This open-source belt printer relies on light-duty components and a largely 3D printed structure to get the price point down, though some will find its diminutive dimensions a bit too limiting…even if one of its axes is technically infinite.

If you’ve already got a printer and filament to burn, [Rob] is selling the part kit for just $130 USD. But even if you opt for the full ready-to-build kit, it will only set you back $180. Considering even the cheapest belt printers on the market now have a sticker price of more than $500, that’s an impressive accomplishment.

Of course, it’s hard to compare the Baby Belt with anything else on the market. For one thing, save for a few metal rods, its frame is made almost entirely from 3D-printed parts. Rather than the NEMA 17 stepper motors that are standard on even the cheapest of traditional desktop 3D printers, this little fellow is running on the dinky 28BYJ-48 steppers that you’d expect to find in a cheap toy. Then again, considering the printer only offers 85 x 86 mm in the X and Y axis, the structure and motors don’t exactly need to be top of the line.

What really sets this machine apart is the belt — while we’ve seen other makers go all out with their belt material, [Rob] has come up with an impressively low-tech solution. It’s a simple stack-up of construction paper, carpet tape, and fabric that you could probably put together with what you’ve got laying around the house right now.

Between that outer cloth layer and the printed frame, the Baby Belt offers a lot of room for customization, something which was on clear display at the 2022 East Coast RepRap Festival. The machines dotted several tables on the show floor, and you could tell their builders had a lot of fun making each one their own

Continue reading “ERRF 22: Baby Belt Promises Infinite Z For Under $200” →