Recap: Hackaday’s First Live Event

January 27, 2014 by Mike Szczys 47 Comments

Packed house

Last Tuesday was the first time I know of that Hackaday hosted our own live event. There were some less official get-togethers associated with conferences and things like that. But we threw The Gathering to see if readers would rise from their lairs for a chance to interact with one another. We called, you answered, and I had an amazing time. Hackaday packed the place with over four hundred readers, and every conversation I had ended up being a fascinating interaction. Thank you!

[Brian], [Eliot], and [Mike] via [Mike's] phone an color corrected by [Hefto — [Brian], [Eliot], and [Mike] via [Mike’s] phone an color corrected by [Hefto

[Brian Benchoff] and I returned to our snowy homelands the next morning. Surprisingly this was the first time we had met each other despite working closely on Hackaday for the past several years. I also had the pleasure of meeting [Eliot Phillips] and [Jack Buffington] for the first time. I’m sorry I didn’t have more time to hang out with them, but when you’re trying to say hello to several hundred people you’ve just got to keep moving.

Before I get too wordy I better throw the more tag in here. Join me after the jump for a blow-by-blow of what we did, what sticks out in my mind, and where we’re going next.

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Hackaday Retro Edition And Retro Roundup

January 25, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 24 Comments

Retro-Roundup

About a year and a half ago, We launched the Hackaday retro edition, a small off-shoot of the main edition that is written in pure HTML, with no Javascript or any other Web 2.0 cruft. It’s designed so you can load this edition on any computer, from an Apple Newton to a Commodore 64. And people have done just that.

After a long period of neglect, we’re re-launching the retro edition with a new feature: every hour or so, five random Hackaday pages, going all the way back to the very first post will show up on the retro site. Yes, this was a feature we originally planned for the retro site, but now Hackaday has awesome devs working behind the scenes. I mean, they can set up a cron job! It’s amazing!

As always, you’re more than welcome to load our retro site with any vintage hardware, take a picture, and send it in. Odds are, we’ll plaster it up in one of these semi-frequent retro roundup posts.

No retro roundup post would be complete without a few examples of people loading the retro edition on old hardware. You can check a few out after the break.

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Touring Deezmaker, The First Good 3D Printer Store In The World

January 23, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 24 Comments

When we visited the Crash Space hackerspace earlier this week, it came to our attention we were staying mere blocks away from Deezmaker, a 3D printer store in beautiful Pasadena that is home base for the Bukobot and Bukito printers, an awful lot of awesome printed plastic things, and [Rich] a.k.a [whosawhatsis], creator of the RepRap Wallace and all this stuff. Obviously a tour was in order.

Inside Deezmaker is a treasure trove of printed baubles and a fishbowl full of a herringbone planetary gear systems free for the taking. They have printers running all the time, a very nice lab for [whosawhatsis], and enough work space to host a few workshops every week.

In the video below, [Diego], the big cheese of Deezmaker takes us around the shop showing off his wares. [whosawhatsis] also makes an appearance showing off his latest invention, the Bukito printer. It’s a very small and incredibly portable printer that can be powered by batteries. They’re using a 3-cell 5000mAh lipo battery when they take the Bukito camping. I didn’t catch how long the battery lasts, but it’s more than enough to squirt out a few of the gear systems they give away.

Video after the break.

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The Gathering: Huge Success!

January 23, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 21 Comments

In case you haven’t heard, Hackaday put on a little shindig in downtown LA this past Tuesday. It was awesome.

And we had a few very awesome visitors: [Eliot], senior editor of Hackaday for the first five years made a showing, as did former co-editor [Jack Buffington]. Eminent LA-area hackers came out, including [charliex] of Null Space Labs, the guys from Deezmaker, and the long-haired hippie who can be found in a few NASA videos for the Curiosity rover.

Aside from the free drinks and the awesome people, there was some really cool tech on display. The mezzanine of the bar had a laser graffiti rig, and everyone who came received a super collectible NFC card that allowed them to vote on what Hackaday is doing for our next main event (the quadcopter option won but the vote was non-binding so we’ll keep you updated).

On a personal note, this was one of the few times I’ve interacted with Hackaday readers without the use of a keyboard. You guys are awesome. Thanks for coming out, and if you have any pics from the party, post a link to an album in the comments, or share your stories with us on Twitter via #HaDLA, Google+, and/or Facebook.

Pics below. These were taken by [Edward de la Torre]

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Apex Electronics, Your Souce For Oscilloscopes And Drop Tanks

January 21, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 72 Comments

While some of the Hackaday crew is in LA for The Gathering, we decided to make a trip out to Apex Electronics, easily the oldest and largest electronics surplus store on the west coast.

Inside Apex, everything is stacked to the 20-foot ceiling with any electronic component you can imagine. Want a shopping cart full of huge capacitors? Awesome. Tube sockets? Done. Any kind of wire imaginable? That takes up two aisles. Test equipment abounds as well with oscilloscopes, signal analyzers and function generators, multimeters, and even a pair of cockpit voice recorders.

There’s also an outside yard at Apex containing at least two airplanes (one is a Cessna 150 that’s crying out to be made into a flight simulator), yet more test equipment, tons of video equipment, a few aircraft drop tanks, and enough aluminum extrusion to build anything.

If you’re wondering how fair the prices are at Apex, I picked up a grab bag assortment of wire wrap sockets (including a few 64-pin DIPs) that would cost $100 through the usual eBay/Chinese retailers for only $5. [Mike] picked up some stepper motors, proto boards, a pound of standoffs, and a dozen some vintage 7-segment displays for $20. No clue how much the test equipment costs, but from what we’ve seen the prices are low.

We’re not the first EE/Hacker Blog/Vlog to visit Apex. [Dave Jones] made the trek a few years ago and posted an awesome video. Below you’ll find a ton of pictures from our trip.

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The Pioneering Lifestyle In Low Earth Orbit

January 17, 2014 by Ed Van Cise (NASA Flight Director) 91 Comments

The first element of the International Space Station (ISS) launched over fifteen years ago, on November 20, 1998. For more than thirteen years at least two human beings have been continually living off the surface of our planet. Assembly of the Space Station is now complete. It is being utilized by its crews and scientists from around the world to execute its primary mission – scientific investigations that can only be accomplished in the microgravity environment of Low Earth Orbit (LEO). As with any structure, items age, wear out, or break and need to be repaired. What could be rather “simple” repairs on Earth can become much more complex in zero gravity. In some cases, “necessity becomes the mother of invention.”

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Please Release Your Unused Tickets

January 14, 2014 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

The Gathering is next Tuesday and we are starting to get excited about it! There is a waiting list of people who would like a ticket. If you registered for a ticket that you will not be able to to use, please log in and cancel it.

Cancelling your unused ticket will automatically free up a ticket for someone on the waiting list. Cancellation instructions are below. We want to pack the house and making sure no ticket goes unused is important.

Still want to attend? It’s not too late. Add yourself to the waiting list.

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