DSO Quad Contest Has A Quartet Of Cash Prizes

October 30, 2012 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

Seeed Studios has launched a contest centered around the DSO Quad. In case you’re unfamiliar with the hardware, the DSO Quad is a low-cost standalone oscilloscope. It’s got four channels, two of which are analog, and includes an ARM Cortex-M3 processor as well as an FPGA. Why are we recapping the hardware with the contest announcement? Because the contest rules state that you are allowed to alter the hardware despite the fact that this is more of a software-focused event.

But what you really should know about are the cash prizes going to the winners. Rank in the top four and you’ll claim $3000, $1500, $800, and $300 in cold hard cash. But even if you don’t take one of the top spots everyone still wins. That’s because all entries are open source and will be found in Seeed’s DSO Quad forums.

If judging people is more your thing Seeed needs some help with that too. They’re looking for qualified judges and application details are includes at the bottom of the contest page.

[Thanks Petteri]

Find A Way To Stop Robocalls To Grab This $50k Prize

October 26, 2012 by Mike Szczys 111 Comments

Here’s a challenge tailored to our community if we’ve ever seen one. You know those delightful unsolicited prerecorded calls you get from time to time? They might be political, but they also come from companies trying to sell you vinyl siding, or promising improvements in your business. Well they’re against the law in many cases, and complaints to the Federal Trade Commission have been piling up. So now the FTC is offering a $50,000 bounty to anyone who can find a way to block the calls.

It’s called the Robocall Challenge and you’ve got until January 17th, 2013 to get your entry submitted. The great thing is, this doesn’t need to be a fully working solution. Your entry may be: “proposed technical solutions or functional solutions and proofs of concept “. Even better, you retain ownership of the solution even if you win. This type of recognition will surely have telco related companies beating a path to your door.

Of course if you do have a solution, we’d love to hear about it too!

[Thanks Filespace via WCPO]

Rewiring A Free Carnival Sign

October 23, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 13 Comments

Late last September, Hackaday along with other hackerspaces including North Street Labs, 1.21 Jigawatts, Maker Twins, made their way to the NYC Maker Faire via the Red Bull Creation contest. The objectives of the contest were simple: build a game in 72 hours, have people vote on it, and join the Red Bull crew in Queens for a carnival-like atmosphere.

When the Maker Faire was over, Red Bull had some leftover props from their Midway at Maker Faire setup, including a few illuminated carnival signs. Without any use for them, they graciously gave Hackaday, North Street, Maker Twins and the Jigawatts the signs to their respective rides.

Now that things have settled down and the rides have returned to their home base, the folks over at North Street decided to improve their sign. At Maker Fair, these signs were illuminated by 50 incandescent bulbs, all wired on the same circuit. [Steve] over at North Street had the awesome idea of adding a persistence of vision aspect to the sign, so work began on wiring every fourth bulb in series.

To drive the light circuits, North Street repurposed the Arduino Relay shield originally used for the lights on the Centrifury, their competitive centrifuge and spinning hell of a game. In the video after the break, you can see the addition of POV lights really brings out the carnival atmosphere. A literally brilliant build, and a wonderful addition to the scariest game ever made.

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2012 Open 7400 Logic Competition

September 6, 2012 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

The Open 7400 Logic Competition is being held again this year. Start thinking about your entries, they’ll need to be finished and submitted by October 31st. As motivation, Digilent has put up two of their Analog Discovery kits as prizes. They can be used as a dual channel oscilloscope, function generator, or 16-channel logic analyzer. Last year was the first time the competition was held. As hype for the event built, more and more prize sponsors signed on and we hope to see the same thing happen this year.

Your entry can be just about anything as long as you show your schematic, explain the project, and use logic. It can be 7400 TTL, 4000 CMOS, discrete gates, or even a CPLD. Last year’s entries spanned a wide range of themes from LED blinkers, to unorthodox 74xx chip hacking, to boards packed full of chips. Good luck and don’t forget to tip us off about your work!

[Thanks Adrian]

Morphield Is A Hot Mess Of Wiring, Also Really Cool

July 26, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 11 Comments

In case you missed MB Labs’ demo of their project for the Red Bull creation contest last Sunday night, the page describing their build is up and is giving us at Hackaday a run for our money.

The Morphield consists of a piece of fabric stretched over a frame, itself hiding 135 solenoid-controlled balloons that move the field instead of playing soccer by moving the ball. These solenoids are controlled by a wiimote, allowing players to manipulate the terrain of the field and hopefully guide a ball into their opponent’s goal.

In addition to creating a worthy competitor to Hackaday’s own Minotaur’s Revenge, MB Labs also released an Arduino library and an API so the Morphield can be repurposed for other games, kinetic art installations, and – we’re hoping – a gigantic, soft version of a pin art display.

When the guts of MB Labs’ Morphield was revealed on the Red Bull Creation live stream, the only words that showed up in the chat window were ‘wow,’ ‘holy crap,’ and ‘amazing.’ We’ve got to agree; the guys put together a really cool game that will also be over once the Creation contest is over.

Spinning-hell Of A Game

July 25, 2012 by Mike Szczys 26 Comments

North Street Labs really brought their ‘A’ game to the build finals for the Red Bull Creation contest. Behold the Centrifury, their spinning hell of a game. You can’t really make it out (because of the spinning) but the game consists of two bucket seats positioned opposite of each other on a merry-go-round type deck. Each player has a button in front of them which must be held down for the rig to start spinning. When you can’t take it any more just release the button and the spinning will stop. But you’ll also have lost the game. Whomever can hold out longer wins.

It’s not surprising to see such a well-polished build. After all, this is the same group that built the violently vibrating game of Simon. This time around most of the work came in the form of engineering and welding. First they had to make sure the design could take the forces this things puts out, then they had to build it. And all within the 72-hour time limit. We’re not sure what’s harder, winning the game or trying not to smile while watching the video after the break.

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