Trinket Everyday Carry Contest Drawing #1 Results

December 2, 2014 by Adam Fabio 6 Comments

We just had our first drawing for the Trinket Everyday Carry Contest. Thanks to a little help from random.org, the winner is [Korishev] with his project Trinket Timer!

[Korishev] finds that family life calls for a lot of timed events, from how long the kids spend on their homework to keeping the peace by sharing toys. The plan is to build at least a one timer for each child that they will be able to carry around and use as needed. We hope he gets them in on the build to help sow the seeds of hardware development at a young age.

As the winner of the first drawing [Korishev] will receive this beautiful BLINK(1) MK2 from The Hackaday Store. The USB dongle houses a programmable RGB LED. We wonder if this will also be applied as an additional timer for the household?

If you didn’t win this week, don’t worry, there are still four more chances to win a random drawing! Our next drawing will be on 12/9/2014 at 9pm EST with the Cordwood Puzzle as a prize. To be eligible you need to submit your project as an official entry and publish at least one project log during the week.

The deadline for the main contest is January 2, 2014! There are just over 40 entries right now, and the top 50 will receive custom t-shirts. Of course the three top prizes are the real juicy ones. Let’s get those pocketable projects going!

Trinket Everyday Carry Contest Roundup: Sniffing Trinket And Portable Trollmaster 3000!

December 2, 2014 by Adam Fabio 16 Comments

Hackaday’s Trinket Everyday Carry Contest is heating up. In just one week we’ve already got over 30 entries! Many of the contenders are completely new open source projects based on the Pro Trinket. Our first drawing will be tonight, at 9pm EST. The first giveaway prize is a BLINK(1) MK2 from the Hackaday store. Make sure you have at least one project log and a photo up to be eligible for this week’s giveaway!

We can’t help but mention how awesome some of the entries are. [Georg Krocker] is taking on the problem of indoor air quality – not with a central sensor, but with a personal sensor that goes where you do. Sniffing Trinket is designed to monitor the air around the user. If the air quality drops, it will alert the user to open a window – or get the heck out. [Georg] has a few sensors in mind, but he’s starting with the MQ135 gas sensor and a DHT11 temperature/humidity sensor. If air quality starts to drop, 3 WS2812b LEDs will alert the user that there is a problem. The system can also be connected to a PC with USB for more accurate readings and logging.

[Georg] has an aggressive schedule planned, with a custom “Trinket Shield” PCB being laid out and ordered next week. January 2 is fast approaching, so hurry up and get those boards designed!

[Dr Salica] is taking a more humorous approach to personal space. The Portable Trollmaster 3000 is designed to surround its wearer in a bubble of “I Am Glad, ‘Cause I’m Finally Returning Back Home” aka “The Trololol song” as sung by Eduard Khil. [Dr Salica] plans to pair the Pro Trinket with the popular Sony MMR-70 FM transmitter. The Trinket is capable of playing back short audio clips, so with a bit of I2C magic, [Dr. Salica] will be able to hijack any nearby FM receiver, creating his own personal trollbox.

Do you have an idea for a great wearable or pocketable project? Check out the Trinket Everyday Carry Contest, and get hacking!

Announcing The Trinket Everyday Carry Contest

November 25, 2014 by Adam Fabio 47 Comments

Now that we’ve recovered from our Munich party and the awarding of The Hackaday Prize, we’re ready to announce our latest contest. We’ve been having a lot of fun with our Trinket Pro boards, both the 10th anniversary edition and the new Hackaday.io branded models. While we were soldering, compiling, and downloading, a contest idea took root. Trinket Pro really excels when used in small projects, the kind which would fit in a pocket. To that end we’re holding the Trinket Everyday Carry Contest, a showcase for small, pocketable projects which are useful everyday. ‘Useful everyday’ is a bit of a broad term, and we intended it that way. Tools are useful of course , but so are jewelry pieces. It’s all in the eye of the builder and users. We’re sure our readers will take this and run with it, as they have with our previous contests.

There are some great prizes in store for the entrants, including a brand new Rigol DS1054Z oscilloscope! The top 50 entrants will get custom Trinket Everyday Carry Contest T-shirts. Check out the contest page for a full list.

We know you all love to procrastinate with your entries, so we’re going to be offering a few perks to those who enter early and update often. Each week, we’ll throw all the entrants who have published at least one project log full of details into a drawing for a special prize from The Hackaday Store. To be considered you must officially submit your project which is accomplished through a drop-down list on the left side of your project page.

Remember, the contest isn’t just about winning a scope, a meter, or any of the other prizes. It’s about creating new Open Hardware designs that nearly anyone can build. So grab those soldering irons, load up those copies of the Arduino IDE, AVR-GCC, or WinAVR, and get hacking!

You can view the all of the contest entries in this list.

Build A Better Something During The Deconstruction 2014

October 23, 2014 by Kristina Panos 6 Comments

Couldn’t make it to Detroit for the Red Bull Creation Contest? Its founder, [Jason Naumoff], has a separate event called The Deconstruction and 2014 marks the second year of this lively, worldwide competition.

The Deconstruction is taking place November 14-16th and will be broadcast live online. That’s right, you can participate from anywhere in the world, and your team’s progress will be live streamed from The Omni Commons in Oakland, CA. Registration began October 16th and the friendly competition is absolutely free to enter.

Creativity is the name of this game. The idea is to build something awesome using what you already have access to, including teamwork skills. Ideally, what you build will be a deconstruction of something you’d like to see rethought, though there is no stated topic. There are no age limits, no boundaries, and very few rules. A number of great things came out of last year’s event, more of which you can check out at their site. What are you waiting for? Go show the world how you’d make it better.

Build An Efficient Inverter, Win A Million Dollars

August 10, 2014 by Edward Becker 86 Comments

Little Box Challenge

Google and the IEEE are giving away a million dollar prize to an individual or team, that can build the most efficient and compact DC to AC inverter. The goal is to design and build a 2kW inverter with a power density greater than 50W per cubic inch. To put that in perspective, conventional solar string inverters have power densities around 0.5-3W per cubic Inch, and microinverters around 5W per cubic Inch. So in other words, an order of magnitude more efficient than what we have now.

For the challenge, the inverter needs to convert 450VDC, with a 10 ohm series resistor simulating a solar array, to 240VAC @ 60Hz. Testing will consist of powering various resistive, inductive and capacitive loads ranging from 0-2kVA. The inverter is expected to regulate voltage within 5%, and frequency within 0.05%, while keeping the enclosure below 60 degrees C, and conforming to FCC Part 15 B (Unintentional radiators).

If you and/or your team can figure out the most efficient topology, switching frequency, novel use of high power wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductors, physically reduce the size of the input and output filters, and keep the whole thing running cool. Then get registered before the September 30, 2014 deadline. Inverters need to be functional and the results of this test procedure (PDF warning) sent in before July 22, 2015, then 18 finalists will be chosen to bring their inverters in person to a testing facility in the United States by October 21, 2015. The grand prize winner will be announced sometime in January, 2016

[Thanks for the tip Dmytro]

This Arduino power inverter would need a serious upgrade to enter. And speaking of entering challenges, it’s still not too late to enter our very own Hackaday Prize!

Red Bull Creation Winners: Maker Twins

July 23, 2014 by Mike Szczys No comments

This year’s Red Bull Creation theme “Reinvent the Wheel” was pretty broad, but the Maker Twins managed to incorporate it quite closely with their winning project which was completed in under 72 hours. They took the idea of urban farming and figured out one way to make farmer’s markets more feasible by helping to eliminate waste and spruce up the presentation of the produce.

The project amounts to a Ferris wheel. Instead of passenger compartments there are modular crates which are built with one wooden pallet each. The wheel itself is chain-driven and allows the system to track where each crate is in the rotation. This data is leveraged for a couple of different uses. One lets the customer select their produce on a tablet app and the crate will rotate into position so they may pick the individual items they want. The machine will also take care of automated watering to ensure the produce on display doesn’t get dried out. The icing on the cake is a separate station for washing and cutting the purchased veggies.

Thank you to Maker Twins for contributing some demonstration “b-roll” for use in this video.

Right Now: Your Chance Of Winning A Prize Is 66% Or Better

July 21, 2014 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

thp-unofficial-odds

Everyone who enters The Hackaday Prize is already making a statement that Open Design is important to them. But if doing things on principle isn’t your primary motivation, you do stand a really good chance of winning something. At least at this very moment you do.

We’re giving away 55 really awesome prizes, and “hundreds of other” prizes. Since we just passed 300 entries over the weekend, a bit of quick math shows that right now your chances of winning something are quite good.

Still not enough for you? Consider the top three prizes which offer a cash value of $10k. At this moment each entry has just under a 1 in 100 chance of placing. And a 1 in 300 chance of claiming the trip into space valued at around 250 grand.

Do it because you support Open Hardware, do it because you want to go to space, or just do it because the odds are really really friendly at this point! You now have until the evening of August 20th to document your concept of an open, connected device.