We think it’s pretty safe to assume that most of the electrical connections our readers are making out there involve solder or solder paste. But we’ve all made a crimp connection or two in our lifetimes. Maybe you’ve squeezed a butt connector here and there, or made an Ethernet cable. Beyond getting the wiring order right in the Ethernet cable, how much did you wonder about what was happening inside the connector?
It may seem like solder is the superior option for making a low-resistance electrical connection. After all, you’re welding metals together with another metal. And this is usually all fine and good for circuit boards with sedentary indoor lives. But if a joint needs to be mechanically stable and survive in potentially harsh environments, you don’t want an alloy holding things together. You want metal to metal contact, and crimping is where it’s at.
“Revision” is probably the Olympics of the demoscene. The world’s best tiny graphics coders assemble, show off their works, and learn new tricks to pack as much awesome into as few bytes as possible or make unheard-of effects on limited hardware. And of course, there’s a competition. Winning this year’s 256-byte (byte!) competition, and then taking the overall crowd favorite award, was [HellMood]’s Memories.
If you watch it in the live-stream from Revision, you’ll hear the crowd going (virtually) wild, and the announcer losing his grip and gasping for words. It’s that amazing. Not only are more effects put into 28 bytes than we thought possible, but there’s a full generative MIDI score to go with it. What?!?
But almost as amazing is [HellMood]’s generous writeup of how he pulled it off. If you’re at all interested in demos, minimal graphics effects, or just plain old sweet hacks, you have your weekend’s reading laid out for you. [HellMood] has all of his references and influences linked in as well. You’re about to go down a very deep rabbit hole.
2019 was a great year for Hackaday. It marked the fifteenth year of the hacker community’s hive-brain, which is essentially forever in Internet Years, and we’re still laser-focused on bringing you the hacks that inspire you to create the hacks that inspire someone else to create the hacks of tomorrow. We’re immensely proud that Hackaday remains a must-read in the worldwide community of folks doing creative things with technology.
The part of Mike’s talk that I enjoyed the most, though, was his look back fifteen years ago to when Hackaday was just born. In the intervening 5,545 days, we’ve written more than 34,718 articles. (So much for “hack-a-day”, he says, doing the math.) We’re nearing our millionth comment. That’s a lot of Hackaday. So it’s fun to ask what has changed over this time, and track it through the memory of a hardware hacker.
Dig the old image styling! Groovy.
Back in 2008, Hackaday was a spry four-year-old, and we were featuring robot hacks where the brains and Internet connectivity were provided by WRT-54G routers, SMS connectivity was provided by hacking into a Nokia 3100, and the battery weighed more than the motors yet only lasted fifteen minutes. Today’s hacks toss in an ESP32, any old cheap SMS module, and an off-the-shelf Li-Ion battery pack and will run for days. Don’t even get me started on 3D printers. Or the ease of writing software for any of these machines. We’ve never lived in better times!
But that doesn’t mean that every project has to be a superconducting supercollider either; it’s equally important to showcase our simpler projects too, to give new people a foothold into the hacking scene. And it’s similarly crucial to show people how you failed, tried, and tried again before declaring victory. If all of our finished projects look like they were conjured out of thin air, it hides all of the learning that went into them, and that’s where a lot of the real gold is buried.
While we add features, media come and go, and the cutting edge becomes less and less distinguishable from magic, one thing remains constant: showing each other what we’re up to, sharing our best tips and tricks, and pushing forward the hacker state of the art. Long live Hackaday!
For many of us, the social distancing procedures being used to help control the spread of COVID-19 have been a challenge. We can’t go to our hackerspaces, major events have been postponed or canceled entirely, and even getting parts has become difficult due to the immense pressure currently being placed on retailers and delivery services. For even the most stoic hacker, these are difficult times.
But you don’t have to go through it alone. We might not be able to meet in person, but that doesn’t mean the exchange of thoughts and ideas has to stop. Hackaday has started up a calendar of events you can use to keep track of virtual classes and hangouts that you can take part in from the comfort of your own home. You don’t even need to wear pants (but you should, just to be safe).
Looking to be more than an idle participant? If you want to teach a class, host a show and tell, or put together a round-table discussion, drop a line to superconference@hackaday.io. Pretty much anything of interest to the hacking and making community is fair game, and who knows when you’ll ever get another chance at a captive audience like this. When you haven’t left the house in a week, there’s not a whole lot you won’t watch online.
It’s easy to see social distancing as an overreaction, but the numbers don’t lie. Things are serious out there, especially in the dense population centers where hacker events generally take place. By staying home and taking part in events virtually, we can do our part to control the spread of this virus and hopefully return things to normal that much sooner.
It’s the news we were all expecting but not looking forward to hearing: this summer’s EMF Camp which was to be held at the end of July in Herefordshire, UK, has been cancelled. This is of course due to the ongoing public health measures surrounding the COVID-19 virus pandemic. With the country on lockdown for the forseeable future, this is a responsible decision for a gathering the size of EMF which hosted around 2,500 attendees in 2018.
Existing ticket holders will be refunded, and will be guaranteed a ticket to the next event in 2022. According to the announcement, EMF is in the red to the tune of at least £25,000 ($29,523) because of non-refundable payments associated with booking the event, something to remember in two years time when faced with the choice of a normal ticket or a supporters ticket.
Work on starting conference badge production has been halted, but development continues apace and will not go to waste as it will form the basis of the 2022 item. This will make them the event badge team with the earliest preparation ever, and from what we saw when we had a brief look at an early prototype last year it should be a badge worth waiting for.
We’re sure all readers will understand the gravity of the situation, and that the EMF team have taken an appropriate response to what is an extraordinary series of events. Organising a hacker camp is a tough job at the best of times, and this must have been particularly hard on them. We thank them for their work on our behalf at previous events and in preparing for this aborted one, and we look forward to the next EMF Camp in 2022.
As you read this, the Open Hardware Summit is taking place, but differently than in previous years. This year, it’s taking place in cyberspace! To what do we owe this futuristic development? Unfortunately, COVID-19, the corona virus.
And just announced yesterday, our own Hackaday Belgrade event is going to be postponed and rescheduled for later this year. It’s truly sad, but we’re still looking forward to seeing you all a little bit later in the summer. If you can’t make the new date, tickets will of course be refunded. We’ll keep you informed when we get a new venue and time.
The best way to slow the spread of a global pandemic, according to the WHO who should know best, is washing your hands and avoiding contact with other people. “Social distancing” is the new catch-phrase, and that means keeping a few meters away from other folks whenever reasonable. And clearly, gathering people from all over the world, packing them into a single auditorium, and spending quality time together doesn’t meet this requirement.
So we’re all probably going to be laying low globally for a little while. On the positive side, this means more time for hacking here in the lab, and I’m excited to be able to watch the online version of the Open Hardware Summit. If you’re working from home, it’s that much easier to keep up to date with Hackaday. Still, I can’t wait to be on the other side of this thing, and it makes me appreciate the various social gatherings that much more.
And of course I have Isaac Newton in my thoughts, who developed the groundwork for his Calculus and laws of gravitation while at home because Cambridge was closed to stop the spread of the Great Plague. Wash your hands!
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Due to uncertainties about the progress of the spread of the novel corona virus, it’s with a sad heart that we announce that we’re postponing the 2020 Hackaday Belgrade conference.
We will be rescheduling for later in the year, but for now we’ll be refunding conference tickets. We received a record number of incredible presenter proposals, and once we’ve rescheduled, we’ll get in touch with everyone who entered a proposal to check up on your availability.
We know how much you were all looking forward to Belgrade in May, and it pains us to have to take this step. When we get more details ironed out, we’ll be sure to let you know! See you all a little bit later in the summer?
It may seem like solder is the superior option for making a low-resistance electrical connection. After all, you’re welding metals together with another metal. And this is usually all fine and good for circuit boards with sedentary indoor lives. But if a joint needs to be mechanically stable and survive in potentially harsh environments, you don’t want an alloy holding things together. You want metal to metal contact, and crimping is where it’s at.
