Causing Trouble At RedBull Creation 2013

June 17, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 26 Comments

Skullduggery systems (a first time participant) came up with an extremely ambitious idea for their instrument. It was to be a jug, that would have a changing pitch based on water being pumped in and out. Ultimately, they ran into a few issues that meant that the effect wasn’t quite what they were looking for. They shouldn’t feel too bad, a bunch of teams didn’t succeed in making things the first year they participated.

What their instrument did do, however, I found simply delightful. The jug sounded just like feedback from the sound system. The contest was happening during a big music festival called the NorthSide festival. There was a stage and a huge crowd most of the time. They were testing their jug and we noticed that the band on stage (with a full crowd at the time), had stopped playing and was checking all their equipment. The sound guys were running around like crazy. They thought they were getting feedback.

We held off for a while and decided we would wait till sound checks to mess with them. While we wanted to cause trouble, we didn’t want to ruin the show for an entire crowd. As you can see in the video, the sound is very much like feedback. They would begin to play, then stop to track down this mysterious feedback. We even tricked [Tyler] the announcer that was talking over our local sound system in the Redbull tent (by accident, I assure you).

The Secret Projects At The RedBull Creation Challenge

June 15, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 15 Comments

You’ve all already seen that there are 6 teams making some kind of a musical instrument. However, there are two more projects that have materialized out of nowhere and are looking like a lot of fun.

In the shop, there are “Shop Monitors”, artists and hackers who are here to help the teams get stuff built. There are also the judges. Since all of us have some experience and craving for making things, you can imagine that no one is just twiddling their thumbs.

[Greg] the lead judge has taken this opportunity to play with the plasma cutter and various metal working tools and is making a voting system so that the public can walk up and hit a button to vote on their favorite. Yup, those are easy buttons you see there. This thing is shaping up to be pretty nice looking thanks to that cutting machine and [Greg’s] hard work.

[JoeJoe], the guy who built the turbull incabulator is building “piss bot”, an inside joke turning to reality. Pissbot will literally just freak out and urinate all over. Don’t ask why, ask why not.

the back of pissbot’s head

pissbot’s body

the voting system logo

nice grinding work

that was easy

the logo

pissbot’s face

pissbot’s vibration system in progress

working on the fancy plasma cutter

RedBull Creation Update: Fantastic Videos From The Welder Company!

June 14, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 13 Comments

As I’ve been wandering around today, I saw a couple people filming all day. They were crawling on their bellies, climbing things, and doing interviews. It isn’t that surprising till I found out they’re from Lincoln Electric, the company that supplied the plasma cutter and the welders.

Continue reading “RedBull Creation Update: Fantastic Videos From The Welder Company!” →

Hackaday At The Redbull Creation Challenge: The Teams Begin To Build

June 14, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 6 Comments

After a long day sitting around airports watching one flight after another get cancelled due to the storm in New York, I finally made it. Unfortunately I missed the entire first day, but luckily RedBull put out a recap of Day1. They also have a live feed if you want to check in.

I got a chance to run around this morning and check everything out. The 6 teams are already in the heat of competition, rushing to get their musical instrument built before the time runs out.

I apologize ahead of time for the noise. I don’t have a better microphone for this environment. I’ll do my best to try to pull them into a quieter area if I’m going to talk to them in the future. Also I can now see that the footage is over exposed. I’ll fix that, though you can see the gallery of pictures turned out well.

Continue reading “Hackaday At The Redbull Creation Challenge: The Teams Begin To Build” →

Heading To New York To Judge The RedBull Creation Contest!

June 13, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 7 Comments

We had a ridiculous amount of fun last year in the RedBull Creation Contest. This year, however, we’re not participating as competitors, we’re judging! I will be there representing Hackaday as a judge as well as getting behind the scenes coverage. Sometimes the best stuff gets missed when all you get is the highlight reel.

The format this year is returning to what it was in 2011. The 6 teams will meet in New York this weekend to compete in a 72 hour build off. I can’t wait to see what they’re going to come up with. You can see what each team did to get into this stage in the video above.

I’ll be recording video during the event so you can follow along. I’ll try really hard to give a real view of what an amazing event like this is like. I imagine it will be a whirlwind of activity, so I’ll do my best to capture it.

RedBull Creation Contest Entries Revealed!

May 8, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 19 Comments

The Redbull Creation contest is underway and the entries into the first stage have been submitted. As a judge, it is my duty to watch every single one of these and cast my vote on who should continue to round two. I won’t be sharing my vote with you, but I thought you might enjoy watching the entries yourself! Remember that the rules for this round were simply “build something amazing using this box full of cool stuff we sent you.”.

I have to say that the entrants really kicked things up a notch this year. These projects are so amazing that choosing 3 to be the “most awesome” is proving quite difficult. I’d also like to take yet another opportunity to mention that we think that this is such a wonderful method of promotion. RedBull could be making sappy commercials about polar bears drinking their beverage, but instead, they are encouraging people to make AWESOME things(yes, they have commercials too). Other companies should take note, like Oreo did!

You can view all the entries here.

Uzebox Coding Challenge

February 28, 2013 by Eric Evenchick 9 Comments

The 2013 Uzebox Coding Challenge is currently underway. This competition runs until June 1st, with registration open until April 1st. The Uzebox is an open source, 8 bit game console that uses only two chips: an ATmega644 microcontroller and a AD725 RGB to NTSC converter. We’ve featured it a few times in the past.

The competition rules are pretty loose: build a game or a useful piece of software that runs on the Uzebox, and fits in 61 kB. Entries will be judged on game play, originality, graphics, sound, completeness, and technical prowess. There’s prizes for the top six entries, including a few Uzeboxes and cash.

If you don’t have an Uzebox, check out the Uzem emulator. This lets you emulate the Uzebox hardware on Windows, Mac, or Linux. The emulator also has an internal GDB debug server to help with development. The low cost console can be built for about $30, and a number of kits are available.

Thanks to [Ben] for sending this in.