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First Look At DEF CON 27 Official Badge; Kingpin Is Back!

August 8, 2019 by 15 Comments

The first big surprise Vegas had in store for everyone is that the DEF CON badge is an electronic badge this year. It’s traditionally been the DC practice to alternate years between electronic and non-electronic badges. Last year we had a fantastic electronic badge designed by the ToyMakers, so I had expected something more passive like the vinyl LP badge from a few years ago. What a pleasant surprise to learn otherwise!

Second up on the surprise list is the badge maker himself. The design is a throwback to days of yore as Joe Grand steps up to the plate once again. Veterans know him as Kingpin, and his badge-making legacy runs deep. Let’s jump in and take a look.

Continue reading “First Look At DEF CON 27 Official Badge; Kingpin Is Back!” →

Breakfast At DEF CON This Sunday

August 5, 2019 by 2 Comments

Nurse your hangover with the Hackaday and Tindie crews as we host the 5th Annual Breakfast at DEF CON.

Everyone knows the days at DEF CON are long, and the nights are longer. Whether you’re just rolling out of bed, or walking straight in from the previous night of partying, we want to see you and your hardware show-and-tell projects this Sunday morning at 10:30 AM in Paris Hotel, Las Vegas.

We’re congregating at Le Cafe Ile St. Louis in the front part of Paris. Just walk through the doors coming off of Las Vega Boulevard and it’s in the big open area. A nice touch is that you don’t need to have a DEF CON badge to get in on the Hackaday breakfast.

Regular Breakfast at DEF CON attendees will remember that last year we were squatting in a restaurant space which isn’t open for breakfast. Thankful we’ve secured a location this year and you can score coffee and a pastry on us. We would like to have an idea of how many people to expect so please drop us an RSVP.

Supercon CFP Extended By Two Weeks

August 1, 2019 by 6 Comments

Need a bit more time to submit your talk proposal for the 2019 Hackaday Superconference? Okay, but we can only do this once. You now have until August 16th to submit your proposal.

Supercon is the ultimate hardware conference. Take all the best conversations you’ve had about electronics, firmware development, industrial design, art, music, and culture and pack them into three incredible days in Pasadena. That’s the start of what you’ll find at this event. There is no substitute for experiencing it in person.

What makes this so unique is the people who show up. We are forever on the search of people with clever, compelling, delightful, and bizarre stories about hardware creation… and that means you. Yes, you! Supercon is a great place to give your first-ever conference talk. Package up the details of your recent hardware adventures and send them in as a proposal. The biggest mistake we see people make is assuming nobody wants to hear about what’s going on in their workshop or lab. Long talk or short talk, we want to hear your talk!

Take the plunge, the water is warm the so are the soldering irons which run constantly in the Hacker Village that forms during Supercon. There are still tickets available, but of course, speaker receive our undying gratitude and of course, free admission.

Vintage Computer Festival West Is Almost Here

July 30, 2019 by 13 Comments

If you’ve got an interest in technology, a penchant for that particular shade of yellowed plastic, and happen to be located in the California area, then we’ve got the event for you. The Vintage Computer Festival West is happening this weekend, August 3rd and 4th, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

The Vintage Computer Festival offers a truly unique experience for anyone with a passion for all the silicon that’s come before. Where else could you sit in on a roundtable of early Apple employees discussing the bevy of authentic ultra-rare Apple I computers that will be on display, or get up close and personal with a restored Apollo Guidance Computer? If you really want to dive in on the deep end, Hackaday’s own Bill Herd will be in attendance giving his lecture about the effects of heat and time on the internal components of decades-old pieces of hardware.

Still skeptical? Perhaps you’ll get a kick out of the exhibit that celebrates more than two decades of Quake by hosting a LAN game where the classic game is running on less common platforms like the RS/6000 series or the Sun Ulta. If you’re interested in seeing modern reconstructions of classic technology, there will be plenty of that on display as well. Eric Schlaepfer will be showing off his transistor-scale replica of the iconic 6502 microprocessor, and you won’t want to miss the Cactus in all its rainbow colored toggle switch and blinkenlight glory.

Of course, if you’re in the market for your very own piece of computing history, there’s no better place to be. The consignment area gives showgoers a chance to buy and sell all manners of vintage and unique hardware, harking back to the days where the best way to get your hands on a computer (or the parts to build one) was by attending a dedicated event. Plus, no shipping fees!

Put simply, there really is something for everyone at the Vintage Computer Festival. Even if you weren’t around to experience Apple II or Commodore 64 in their prime, these events are a rare opportunity to learn about the early days of a technology that today we all take for granted. Have you ever wondered how programs were entered into those early computers with nothing more than a bank of toggle switches and an array of LEDs? One of the passionate exhibitors at VCF will be more than happy to walk you through the process.

At the end of the day, preserving this technology and sharing it with future generations is really what it’s all about. Just as in previous years, Hackaday is proud to sponsor the Vintage Computer Festival and further their goal of ensuring this incredible shared heritage isn’t lost.

CampZone 2019 Badge Is Begging To Become A Huge Billboard

July 25, 2019 by 16 Comments

What has 256 full-colour LEDs, everyone’s favorite Lithium battery form factor, wireless connectivity, and hangs around your neck? It’s the CampZone 2019 badge that turns all attendees into a really fun billboard — but can the attendees hack themselves into one massive display?

One of Europe’s larger events for the gaming community,  CampZone is hosted in Netherlands and runs from July 26th to August 5th. It’s a typical large summer camp, and caters for those who intersect gaming and hacking with HackZone, a decent sized hacker camp within a camp. I’ve been fortunate enough to get my hands on a CampZone 2019 badge, dubbed the I-Pane, let’s take a look at what they managed to pack into this electronic conference badge.

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One Week Left For Supercon Talk And Workshop Submissions

July 25, 2019 by No comments

The Hackaday Superconference is the highest density of the coolest hackers anywhere. Other events may be bigger, but we’ll be so bold to say that none are better. If you love Hackaday, and we know you do, you should really come join us in November in Pasadena, CA.

Far and away the best way to participate in a conference is to participate in the conference. This is your chance to give a presentation or a workshop and share your hard-earned knowledge, your crazy hacks, or entertaining tales of hardware heroism with a crowd that gets it. And you get free admission if we pick your talk for the big show.

One of my favorite tales from Supercon was meeting Jennifer Wang at her (and my!) first Supercon. She was a longtime Hackaday reader, and was honestly a little bit awed to meeting all of the great people there in person. By the next Supercon, she was giving a presentation about her IMU-based machine learning Harry Potter wand and inspiring the rest of us with her love of the cool things you can do with sensors and code. It’s one of the most honest and informative talks on machine learning I’ve seen!

You’ve got your story to share too, right? You’ve also got one week to put a proposal for a talk together. You can do this!

See you at Supercon!

BornHack Tease Us With Their Badge

July 17, 2019 by No comments

Every August for the past four years, there has been a summer hacker camp on the Danish island of Bornholm, that may be a relatively new kid on the block but is slowly evolving into one of the summer’s essential stop-offs. This year for the first time they are moving to a larger site in an easier-to-reach part of the country, and in the usual build-up to the event they have released a teaser image of their badge.

Of course, you will want to know a little more about it than the picture can convey, so the BornHack folks were kind enough to give us a few more details. At its heart is a Silicon Labs Happy Gecko EFM32HG322F64G microcontroller, the same 25 MHz ultra-low-power ARM Cortex M0+ part that has featured in the previous BornHack offerings. Power comes from a pair of AA cells, and it sports a 240 x 240 pixel colour IPS display and an SD card holder. Connectivity is via USB and an infra-red interface for badge-to-badge communication, and human interface is via a mini joystick switch. Finally, it has a six-way v1.69bis Shitty Addon connector.

By some standards this is a relatively modest offering, but by using an evolution of their hardware from previous years as well as the same proven Geckoboot bootloader they are far more likely to deliver a satisfactory user experience than had they opted for a more ambitious design. We’ll be attending the camp, so we’ll report on the finished article once we have it.

BornHack will run from the 8th to the 15th of August, on the Danish island of Funen. There are a range of tickets still available, from single day visits to the whole week for 1200 DKK (about €160, or $181). Compared to some other events on our community’s calendar, we think that represents a bargain.