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Join Hackaday At The Midwest RepRap Festival This Weekend

March 22, 2018 by 7 Comments

What time is it? It’s Midwest RepRap Festival time, and it’s happening this weekend in beautiful Goshen, Indiana. It’s free, it’s open to everyone, and it’s the greatest 3D printer convention on Earth.

What’s so great about MRRF? This is where the latest products in the 3D printing space are launched. A few years ago, E3D announced their dual extrusion head at MRRF. This is where the world first got a look at the Bondtech extruder. This is where E3D announced their Titan extruder, and this is where the world got its first look at the Lulzbot Taz 6. If you want to check out the latest 3D printing gear, this is where you go.

How about showcasing what 3D printing can do? Well, how about 3D printed molds for resin casting? There will be 3D printed droids from Star Wars. Want to learn about bioprinting? Sure thing. How about non-Nerf guns? How many filament changes are too many? This is not the limit.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a RepRap festival without the latest new designs for 3D printers. [Nicholas Seward] usually makes it out to MRRF, and he’ll probably be bringing a few of his weird innovations. There are strange RepRaps built for STEM-driven curriculum. Last year, we saw what is probably the greatest advancement in 3D printing in years. The infinite build volume printer is exactly that — it can print an infinitely long beam in one axis. How about a color mixing, CMYKW filament-based printer?

The Midwest RepRap Festival is the greatest 3D printer convention on the planet, and I’d say one of the top two or three cons I go to every year. It’s a fantastic time that you can’t miss. Join us!

Hackaday’s Irish Excursion Is On 7 April

March 21, 2018 by 7 Comments

Try something a bit out of the ordinary with us on 7 April. Spend a Saturday with Hackaday in Dublin without really knowing what to expect. This is the Unconference format, and we’ve fallen in love with the spontaneity and consistently fascinating talks that come out of it.

We’ve booked a fantastic hall in the Temple Bar district of Dublin, lined up snacks throughout the day and dinner for all who attend, plus there’s an after bar and we’ll buy the first round. All of this is yours if you grab one of the rapidly disappearing free tickets.

What we ask of you is to come prepared to give a 7 minute talk on something you’re really excited about right now. This is low-pressure; the point of an Unconference is to learn about what people are working on right now (not to see a 40 minute talk that was polished over several months). There will not be enough time for absolutely everyone to speak but we’ll get through as many as we can and make sure there’s an interesting mash-up of topics throughout the day.

To break the ice, we have a few “ringers” who we’ve asked to lead off each talk session. Beth ‘pidge’ Flanagan is an embedded and Linux expert who is well-known for her work on OpenEmbedded and Yocto and will talk about “how the sausage is made” specifically surrounding some advance metering infrastructure. Rachel “Konichiwakitty” will be speaking. Rachel was at our London Unconference back in September and we’re excited to hear about the stem cell research she’s been doing as part of her Ph.D. work. James Twomey will be on hand to go into some of the craft of stage magic, and also talk about what we can learn from the battery-free magic of crystal set radios like the “foxhole” radios built during WWII.

DesignSpark LogoThere are already enough people to pack the place and we only have about 20 tickets left, so hurry up and grab yours.

This event is made possible, free of charge to the attendees, with generous support from DesignSpark, the innovation arm of RS Components. DesignSpark is the exclusive sponsor of the Hackaday Dublin Unconference.

Water Level Sensors, Alexa In A Fish, And Modular Synths During World Create Day

March 19, 2018 by 3 Comments

On Saturday we saw a flood of interesting hacks come to life as more than 100 community organized meetups were held for World Create Day. Thank you to all of the organizers who made these events possible, and for everyone who decided to get together and hack.

Students Learning Hardware Design in Islamabad, Pakistan

The students at LearnOBots took on a slew of great projects during World Create Day like a smart medicine dispenser, electronics that control mains appliances, parking sensors, and a waste bin that encourages you to feed it. The group did a wonderful job of showing off their event by publishing several updates with pictures, stories, and video presentations from all the students. Nice work!

Daniyal LED Matrix
Haya and Taha water level sensor

Continue reading “Water Level Sensors, Alexa In A Fish, And Modular Synths During World Create Day” →

A Taste Of Who’s Speaking At Hackaday Belgrade

March 19, 2018 by 1 Comment

We’re busy confirming speakers at the Hackaday Belgrade conference, taking place in Belgrade Serbia on 26 May. Now’s the time to grab a ticket and be part of something special. Here’s a teaser.

Asier Marzo // Build Principles of an Acoustic Levitator
Applications of acoustic levitation in mid-air chemistry, spectroscopy, and tissue engineering.

Vanessa Julia Carpenter // Designing for Meaningfulness in Smart Products
Creating new smart products which focus on value over function, self development, critical reflection, and behaviour change to enable meaningful experiences.

Marcel van Kervinck // Building a TTL Microcomputer without a Microprocessor
Building a small 8-bit homebrew computer out of a few dozen 1970s TTL chips, an oscillator, some RAM, and an EPROM.

Hackaday Belgrade is the hardware community you love gathered together for one exquisite weekend. Get to town Friday for a meetup at the pub, then spend a marathon Saturday enjoying the best talks, badge hacking, workshop, and live music. What we’ve just listed are of course all just the events… the real value of Hackaday Belgrade is the culture and the people that make up this community. Don’t miss it!

More Excitement to Come

Join the Hackaday Belgrade project page to get in on the live chat where we drop early info as it comes along. Also keep your eye on Hackaday, we’ll announce more speakers as we receive final confirmation. Right now we’re reviewing workshop proposals and expect to send out acceptances later this week.

Of course there’s a lot more to get really excited about. For instance, Voja Antonic and Jaromi Sukuba are hard at work on the hardware badge for the conference. It’s alive, and that’s an awful lot of switches!

Brush up on your BASIC language skills and dig that PICkit out of your tool bag. We can’t wait to see the hacks that come together with this one. If you have suggestions for features we should roll into the stock firmware, leave a comment on the badge project page!

Get Together And Hack This Saturday At World Create Day!

March 15, 2018 by 1 Comment

Spend some time with the Hackaday Community in your area this weekend. There are more than 100 community organized meetups happening this Saturday for Hackaday World Create Day. Check the big map for one near you and click the “Join this event” button in the upper right of their events page to let them know you’re coming.

Sticker packs we’ve been sending out to local event organizers.

It’s always a blast to get together with friends new and old to work on a project you’ve been itching to build. Grab something from your work bench and have fun geeking out about it in the company of others. This is a great opportunity to get started on your 2018 Hackaday Prize entry. Brainstorm ideas for a project, get advice on your early build plans, and consider forming a team. Submit what you come up with this Saturday as your entry and improve upon it over the coming weeks.

Can you still sign up to host World Create Day? Of course! Fill out this form and we’ll get you set up right away.

If you simply can’t make it to a live event, you can still take part. Set aside time to hack and show off the stuff you’re working on through social media. We have a Tweetwall set up (great to put up on the projector during group meetups) which shares Tweets with the hashtag #WorldCreateDay.

Don’t Forget to Tell the Story of Your World Create Day

We’re on the lookout for cool stories and interesting hacks from your meetup so that we can feature them here on Hackaday. Last year we featured a number of meetups, like automated gardening in Cyprus and etching Robot PCBs in Osaka. There was also a roundup with baby guitar amps, power racing series, and Wacky Waving costume assembly. It’s truly a worldwide thing, here’s a roundup that spanned India, Austrailia, and the USA.

Take pictures, write about what goes one, and tag everything #WorldCreateDay so we have the info to report on your meetup!

The HackadayPrize2018 is Sponsored by:

Evolution Of The Worlds Oldest Computer Festival

March 7, 2018 by 32 Comments

The Trenton Computer Festival (TCF) doesn’t have the name recognition of big technology conferences like DEF CON or HOPE. It’s not even as well known as smaller more localized conferences like DerbyCon, ShmooCon, or the Hackaday Superconference. In fact, there’s a good chance that most readers have never even heard of TCF. But despite not holding a place in the hacker lexicon, TCF has plenty to boast about. Its played host to technology luminaries from Bill Gates to Richard Stallman, and now in its 43rd year, holds the title as the longest continually running technology festival in the world.

Bill Gates giving the keynote at TCF in 1989

When originally conceived in 1976, the show was devoted to the dawning age of the personal computer, but since then has evolved into a celebration of technology as a whole. When TCF kicks off on March 17th, there won’t be a media blitz or huge corporate sponsorship. There won’t be a simultaneous online stream of the event, and the only badges worn by speakers or attendees will be of the paper variety.

What you will find at TCF is a full schedule of talks given by people who are passionate about technology in its varied forms. These run the gamut from quantum computing to lock picking, from Arduino to Space Shuttle avionics.

At the heart of TCF is co-founder and current Chair Dr Allen Katz. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Dr Katz about the challenges of running a conference of this type, and the secret to keeping relevant in a wildly changing technology landscape.

Continue reading “Evolution Of The Worlds Oldest Computer Festival” →

One Week Left For Hackaday Belgrade Proposals

February 27, 2018 by No comments

Do you have your tickets for Hackaday Belgrade? Our premiere European conference is on 26 May and tickets are on a rapid trajectory to sell out.

Those of you weighing the idea of presenting a talk, you now have less than one week to get your proposal to us. While we have already accepted several exemplary talks, final decisions won’t be made until after the submission deadline passes on Sunday, March 4th.

Mike Harrison showing off his demo work on the 2016 Hackaday Belgrade badge. If you have stories of the demoscene, consider sending in a talk proposal.

What kind of talks are we looking for? We’d love to have a few talks about the demoscene. The conference badge this year is a full-blown retrocomputer, and we’re working on a BASIC for it. If you can push pixels on a Comodore 64, we’d love to hear you talk about it. We’re also suckers for the lesser known stories of tech history (Mike Harrison’s talk on the Eidophor projector tech all but forgotten to history was a delight).

We’re always interested in creative design; think circuit boards that aren’t square and enclosures that go beyond just putting something in a simple box. And of course we’re forever in search of the rare gems that share a glimpse of the research world, like this computing cluster built to get around limited supercomputer time when calculating quantum effect simulations.

These are great talks presented to an audience hungry to share your excitement. Get those proposals in by the end of this weekend!