contests

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2012 Open 7400 Logic Competition

September 6, 2012 by 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 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 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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The Live Streaming 72 Hour Build-off Begins Tonight!

July 19, 2012 by 2 Comments

Tonight at 6pm pst, the people at RedBull will be announcing the theme for the 72 hour build-off. We’ve cleaned our space, set up the cameras, and tried to get a good night’s sleep.  We’re all ready to kick some ass and would love it if you would join in to watch and even chat with us during the build. You should be able to watch all of the teams at the red bull contest web site. Though you can also just tune in to us at the link below, or on the sidebar.

During some of our team meetings we decided that watching a live stream of us hunched over some device for 72 hours would be extremely boring. To help remedy this, we have been contacting people all week to arrange proper amusement. We have graffiti artists, dancers, and some other miscellaneous things(possibly fire breathers?) in the works to help break the monotony. You’ll see a board labelled “EVENTS” in the bottom left of our stream. This should help keep you notified when the next bit of amusement shall arrive.

If you want to just watch the teams individually, there’s a list of each of our channels after the break.

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Make A Game For A Retro Console, Win Prizes

July 17, 2012 by 2 Comments

For all you old-school console hackers out there, there’s a homebrew coding competition being held by NeoTeam for all the retro (and not so retro) consoles of yesteryear. If you’ve ever programmed for the NES, GBA, PC Engine, N64, or even the Dreamcast, now’s your chance to write a game or app and hopefully win a small prize and a great deal of street cred.

Last year, the Neo Coding Competition saw some very cool entries such as [smealum]’s amazing work in bringing Minecraft to the Nintendo DS ([smealum]’s non-forum DScraft page is here). DScraft won [smealum] a cool $500 USD, but the bragging rights for bringing Minecraft to the DS are far more valuable than any monetary reward.

There are two categories for the competition, an app division and a game division. All the retro platforms are open for development in this contest, so if you want to write something for your Master System, NES, 32X, or Saturn, you better get started: the contest ends August 20th.

Red Bull Dispenser Includes Smokey Presentation And Rejects Inferior Drinks

July 13, 2012 by 21 Comments

The Eugene Maker Space’s entry in the Red Bull Creation contest dispenses cans in a mysterious fog through an iris opening. But it’s also capable of disposing of the Red Bull cans… and only those cans. If you try to put a different soda in it will violently reject it!

First off we must applaud the Eugene Makers for their prolific documentation of the project. There’s a day or two worth of fun reading/watching on that page so make sure you save the bookmark (and learn from their example!). Inside the mysterious waist-high enclosure there’s a hopper to store the energy-drink reservoir. As a can is dispensed its barcode is scanned to ensure this is an approved beverage. At this point the can is elevated through an iris in the case of the enclosure, al0ng with a theatrically timed puff of fog. The parts of the iris were printed on paper and used to cut out wooden pieces using a scroll saw. The fog blast is from an inverted duster can with a 3d printed nozzle that helps make it Bullduino controlled.

When done with your beverage the can can be placed back in the opening, where it is again scanned before going into the recycling bin. But as you can see in the clip after the break, trying to sneak a soda can into the machine will launch the empty right back at you!

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