Maker Faire NY: Developing For The Final Frontier

September 28, 2018 by Tom Nardi 6 Comments

The cost of getting a piece of hardware into space is now cheaper than ever, thanks in no small part to the rapid progress that’s been made by commercial launch providers such as SpaceX. In the near future, as more low-cost providers come online, it should get even cheaper. Within a few years, we could be seeing per kilogram costs to low Earth orbit that are 1/10th what they were on the Space Shuttle. To be sure, this is a very exciting time to be in the business of designing and building spacecraft.

But no matter how cheap launches to orbit get, it’ll never be cheaper than simply emailing some source code up to the International Space Station (ISS). With that in mind, there are several programs which offer students the closest thing to booking passage on a Falcon 9: the chance to develop software that can be run aboard the Station. At the 2018 World Maker Faire in New York we got a chance to get up close and personal with functional replicas of the hardware that’s already on orbit, known in space parlance as “ground units”.

On display was a replica of one of the SPHERES free-flying satellites that have been on the ISS since 2006. They are roughly the size of a soccer ball and utilize CO2 thrusters and ultrasonic sensors to move around inside of the Station. Designed by MIT as a way to study spaceflight techniques such as docking and navigation without the expense and risk of using a full scale vehicle, the SPHERES satellites are perhaps the only operational spacecraft to have never been exposed to space itself.

Expansion port for additional hardware.

MIT now runs the annual “Zero Robotics” competition, which tasks middle and high school students with solving a specific challenge using the SPHERES satellites. Competitors run their programs on simulators until the finals, which are conducted using the real hardware on the ISS and live-streamed to schools.

We also saw hardware from “Quest for Space”, which is a company offering curricula for elementary through high school students which include not only the ground units, but training and technical support when and if the school decides to send the code to the matching hardware on the Station. For an additional fee, they will even work with the school to design, launch, and recover a custom hardware experiment.

Their standard hardware is based on off-the-shelf platforms such as Arduino and LEGO Mindstorms EV3, which makes for an easy transition for school’s existing STEM programs. The current hardware in orbit is setup for experiments dealing with heat absorption, humidity, and convection, but “Quest for Space” notes they change out the hardware every two years to provide different experiment opportunities.

Projects such as these, along with previous efforts such as the ArduSat, offer a unique way for the masses to connect with space in ways which would have been unthinkable before the turn of the 21st century. It’s still up for debate if anyone reading Hackaday in 2018 will personally get a chance to slip Earth’s surly bonds, but at least you can rest easy knowing your software bugs can hitch a ride off the planet.

Kipp Bradford On The Importance Of Boring Projects, Medical Tech, And Sci Fi Novels

September 27, 2018 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

If someone suggests you spend time working on boring projects, would you take that advice? In this case, I think Kipp Bradford is spot on. We sat down together at the Hackaday Superconference last fall and talked about medical device engineering, the infrastructure in your home, applying Sci-Fi to engineering, and yes, we spoke about boring projects.

Kipp presented a talk on Devices for Controlling Climates at Supercon last year. It could be argued that this is one of those boring topics, but very quickly you begin to grasp how vitally important it is. Think about how many buildings on your street have a heating or cooling system in them. Now zoom out in your mind several times to neighborhood, city, state, and country level. How much impact will a small leap forward have when multiplied up?

The next Hackaday Superconference is just around the corner. Before you join us below for the interview with Kipp, make sure you grab your 2018 Hackaday Superconference ticket to be there for great talks like Kipp’s!

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The New, Improved Open Hardware Certification Program

September 27, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 4 Comments

Today at the Open Hardware Summit at MIT, OSHWA, the Open Source Hardware Association has announced a huge revision to the Open Hardware certification process. The goal here is to design a better platform for creating Open Hardware.

While all hardware already certified as Open Hardware will remain Open Hardware, this revamp of the ‘hub’ of the certification process is greatly improved. There’s a new website. There are learning modules telling everyone what it means to be Open Source hardware. There are community examples — real-life walk-throughs of projects that have already been created. There’s a streamlined certification process, and an improved listing of Open Hardware projects.

But Why A Certification Program?

While Open Source in the world of software is easily defined, it is effectively a hack of copyright law; all software is closed by default, and an Open Source software license is merely that; a license for anyone to use it, with the various restrictions and philosophical battles. Hardware, on the other hand, is big-O Open by default. The code used to program an FPGA is covered by copyright, but the circuit itself isn’t. The firmware on your Arduino project is covered by Open Source software licenses, but the physical implementation of your Fritzing picture isn’t.

In the absence of a legal framework to truly make an Open Hardware license work, the only other option is a certification program. The current Open Source Hardware certification program launched in 2016, and has since seen hundreds of projects certified from dozens of countries. It is, by any measure, a remarkable success. The people who make hardware are certifying that their work complies with community-set standards, and all of these projects are registered.

The New, Improved Interface for the Certification Program

While the core of the Open Hardware Certification program hasn’t changed, the user interface — the ‘killer app’ of a directory of Open Hardware projects — has. According to the press release put out by OSHWA ahead of the announcement, “The revamped website consolidates a broad range of information about open source hardware onto a single site. To maximize comprehension for people pursuing certification for their own hardware, important documentation and licensing concepts are illustrated with specific existing examples from the registry. An improved directory and search function makes it easy to find hardware that matches a broad range of criteria.”

Compared to last week’s version of OSHWA’s website, this is a huge improvement. Now, you can easily find information about what it means to make Open Hardware. The complete directory of Open Hardware projects isn’t just a spreadsheet on a webpage anymore, you can actually search for projects now. This is a huge improvement to the Open Hardware certification program, and we can’t wait to see how this new platform will be used.

You can check out the rest of the Open Hardware Summit over on the livestream.

The Exquisite Badges Of Open Hardware Summit

September 27, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 6 Comments

The past few years have been all about electronic conference badges and this year is no different. Right now, we’re setting up at the Open Hardware Summit at MIT, and this year’s badge is nothing short of extraordinary. It’s a WiFi and Bluetooth-enabled e-paper badge, individually programmed for every attendee. The 2018 Open Hardware Summit badge is a work of art, and it was all created over on hackaday.io.

This board is based on the ESP trINKet designed by [Mike Rankin] with additional hardware design from [Alex Camilo]. The badge is based around the ESP32-wroom-32 module with a 2.13 inch e-paper display with a resolution of 250 x 122 pixels. To this, the badge adds an I2C accelerometer and support for add-ons. There’s also pads for an SD card holder — a soldering challenge, if you will — and few additional pads for bits and bobs.

But a badge is nothing without software, and that’s where this really gets good. The ESP32 module is a powerhouse, capable of emulating NES games or serving as a file server. Here, the stock configuration of the badge is rather simplistic: you can start a WiFi AP, log onto a web page, and change the name displayed on the badge. You can also start an FTP server, which is where things get really fun. Drop an application on that FTP server, and you can run Micro Python.

The badge is great, but the programming jig is awesome

The boards were made through OSH Park, and Screaming Circuits took care of the assembly. Anyone who has ever built a badge will tell you it isn’t the assembly that gets you — it’s the programming and provisioning. This is especially true since the Open Hardware Summit badge is distributed with the attendee’s names already preloaded. That’s a few hundred badges, all with unique firmware. This is a nightmare by any definition.

However, there’s always a good solution to a problem, and [Drew] from OSH Park showed me the best programming jig I’ve ever seen during the Summit pre-game at Artisan’s Asylum.

What you’re looking at is a 3D printed box loaded up with a touch-screen display, a Raspberry Pi Zero W, and a few pogo pins. This Raspberry Pi does all the heavy lifting by connecting to the Internet, pulling down the current version of the firmware, and loading that firmware onto the badge. There are a few more options thanks to the touch-screen interface, including provisioning all the badges with the names of the attendees — this can be done by reading a list of attendees and uploading the next one to the badge in the jig. All of this is wrapped up with a nice laser-cut cover that securely holds each badge exactly where it needs to be for the pogo pins to make contact.

This is, without question, the best programming jig I’ve seen. Any badge makers out there should take note: this is how you program a few hundred badges. The badge, itself, is great and just as this post is published there will be hundreds of eager hackers futzing about with this remarkable piece of hardware. If you want to check out the current progress of the badge hacking, check out the updates on Twitter

Giant Connect Four Pits You Against The Computer

September 26, 2018 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

You can build a Connect Four solver in software, but it won’t be all that much fun. Now apply that same automation to a 15-foot-tall plywood version of the classic board game and you’ve just created a smile-making-machine for everyone within eyesight. Behold the Mono-Purpose Automated Robot Versed In Connnect4 (Marvin) which Ben and Jonathan dreamed up on their way home from Maker Faire last year, and made into their exhibit this year.

The game board

The scoreboard

On the physical side of things they got really creative in lifting the discs and sorting them into the column chosen by the software brain of the game. A chain travels along one side with fingers every few feet. The fingers travel along the channel, lifting the discs. Those fingers are a couple of bolts, with some metal filler, all epoxied into one solid unit.

Zoom in and you can see the solenoids controlling the disc drop

The chain for lifting discs

Arduino, router, and power supply

At the top of the disc elevator, and at the top position of each column in the gaming board, there are IR reflectance sensors which send feedback to the Arduino that drives the hardware. This proved a major issue during setup the day before the Faire. The reflectance sensors are just blasting out IR and not using a carrier signal. In direct sunlight, the detector was in a constant state of being tripped. After some trial and error, the logic for the sensors was flipped to detect the absence of sunlight by placing black plastic behind that top row of the board and putting duct tape over the IR emittors.

Detail of the disc elevator

This thing was a huge build to transport from Philly

There’s a router and laptop rolled into the system. The Arduino makes an HTTP request to software on the laptop. In addition to determining where the next move should be made, the laptop is connected to a large screen which shows the current state of the gaming board. This is a head-to-head, human versus machine game. The human player drops their discs from the top of the board using a paint roller that hooks into a hole at the center of the disc. This way the player’s disc passes by the sensors, triggering the machine’s next move.

It’s a clever build and due to the sheer size it’s pretty awesome they were able to get it to the Faire from Philadelphia. Don’t miss the video after the break that shows off the fun and excitement of this gaming giant.

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Maker Faire NY: Where Robots Come Out To Play

September 25, 2018 by Tom Nardi 2 Comments

There was an unbelievable amount of stuff on display at the 2018 World Maker Faire in New York. Seriously, an unreal amount of fantastically cool creations from all corners of the hacker and maker world: from purely artistic creations to the sort of cutting edge hardware that won’t even be on the rest of the world’s radar for a year or so, and everything in between. If you’ve got a creative bone in your body, this is the place for you.

But if there was one type of creation that stood out amongst all others, a general “theme” of Maker Faire if you will, it was robotics. Little robots, big robots, flying robots, battling robots, even musical robots. Robots to delight children of all ages, and robots to stalk the darkest corners of their nightmares. There were robots for all occasions. Probably not overly surprising for an event that has a big red robot as its mascot, but still.

There were far too many robots to cover them all, but the following is a collection of a few of the more interesting robotic creations we saw on display at the event. If you’re the creator of one of the robots we didn’t get a chance to get up close and personal with in our whirlwind tour through the Flushing Meadows Corona Park, we only ask that you please don’t send it here to exact your revenge. We’re very sorry. (Just kidding, if you have a robot to show off drop a link in the comments!)

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Join Hackaday And Tindie This Thursday At Open Hardware Summit

September 25, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 2 Comments

This weekend Hackaday and Tindie will be trekking out to beautiful Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the greatest congregation of Open Source hardware enthusiasts on the planet. This is the Open Hardware Summit. It’s every year, most of the time in different places, and this year it’s back in the hallowed halls of MIT. Somebody put a car on the roof before we do.

The schedule for this year’s Open Hardware Summit is stuffed to the gills with interesting presentations sure to satiate every hardware nerd. We’ve got talks on Open Source Software Defined Radio, and the people behind the Hackaday Prize entry Programmable Air will be there talking about controlling soft robotics.

Really, though, this is an extravaganza filled with the people who make things, and here you’re not going to find a better crew. At every Open Hardware Summit we’ve attended, you can’t turn your head without locking eyes with someone with an interesting story of hardware heroics to tell.

This is, without a doubt, the greatest gathering of the people behind all your favorite hardware designs. The greats of 3D printing will be there, we’re going to get an update on the now two-year-old Open Hardware Certification program (hint: great success!), and there’s an awesome badge, as always. There will be some extra-special Hackaday swag in the goodie bags, sure to be a collectable. We’re going to be there with boots on the ground, but it’s still not too late to get tickets if you’re in the Boston area.