Slap Hackaday Logo On Something And Win A Trinket

October 21, 2013 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

It’s no secret that we love to see project demos that pander to Hackaday. This often comes in the form of our page loaded on the screen in build photos, or creative use of our skull and wrenches logo. Now’s your chance to pander for a smidge of loot. [Phillip Torrone] offered up 20 of Adafruit’s new 5v Trinket boards as giveaways, and we can’t say no to getting free stuff in the hands of the readers.

So here’s the deal: Use the Hackaday logo on something. This can be just about anything. The images above show three examples made by Hackaday staff. There’s the logo built brick-by-brick on a Minecraft Survival server, a 3D version printed as a badge, and a somewhat squished version inside of a QR code. We will (seemingly arbitrarily) pick twenty winners from all of the submissions, but here’s a few guidelines to help you rise above:

Preference will be given to the largest (can you put us on the side of a building?) and smallest (electron microscope anyone?) submissions.
To make scaling easier here’s a vector graphic of the Hackaday Logo
Entries that explain what you did and how you accomplished it are more likely to be chosen as winners

This contest is over, thanks to all who sent in their work! ~~Send your submission details to our tips line (don’t forget to say something like [Trinket Contest] in the title!)~~. In order to receive a prize you must include your name, address, and email address (these will only be used by Adafruit to deliver the hardware and notify you when it has shipped). Get your entry in by Friday, November 1st in order to qualify. Obviously Hackaday, SupplyFrame, and Adafruit employees and their families aren’t eligible to win.

Guest Rant: From Bits To Atoms

October 18, 2013 by Quinn Dunki 83 Comments

I’ve been a software developer for quite a while. When you spend long enough inside a particular world, it’s easy to wind up with an ever-narrowing perspective. You start seeing everything from a software point of view. As the saying goes, when your only tool is a hammer, you tend to treat every problem as NP-Complete. Or something. I forget how that goes.

Anyway, the point is, it’s always good to broaden one’s horizons, and solve as many different kinds of problems as possible. To that end, I started to get into hobby electronics recently. The journey has been very enlightening in a number of ways.

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SparkFun Ponders Women In STEM Fields

October 17, 2013 by Mike Szczys 86 Comments

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Tuesday was [Ada Lovelace] day and to recognize it SparkFun posted an article about women in their workforce and the STEM initiative. [Ada Lovelace] is credited with forging a path for women in mathematics and computing. The STEM acronym represents a movement to get more of America’s students into Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics fields in order to keep up with the rest of the developed world. But part of the issue includes drastically increasing the interest of young women in these fields and their access to it. The thing is, I feel the same way about the community at Hackaday.

Obviously some of the biggest names in the hobby electronics and engineering enthusiast industry are women. The name that seems to top lists is always [Limor Fried] who you may know better as [Lady Ada]. She founded Adafruit industries. But there are couple of other notables that stick out in our minds. [Jeri Ellsworth] has been huge name around here forever. Just this week Hackaday was celebrating the Kickstarter for her latest project. [Becky Stern] has had a ton of awesome project featured, mostly in conjunction with her work at Adafruit but her knitting machine hack when she was with MAKE has always stuck out in our minds. And of course, there’s [Quinn Dunki] who has long been building her own 6502 computer from the ground up (Incidentally we’re running a Guest Rant from her at midday on Friday).

What I’m missing is the grass-roots hacks from women. I know they’re out there because I see them at monthly meetings at the local hackerspace. We featured [Caroline’s] bathymetric book, and [Robin]’s collaboration that produced solar powered supercap jewelry. Both are members of Sector67.

So I call for all Hackaday readers to make this a friendly environment for anyone who wants to participate. If you’re a female reader who has been lurking around rather than sending in links to your gnarly hacks please take the plunge and send us a tip! If your female friends have awesome projects, offer to help them document it for a feature. You may not have thought of it, but sharing your projects makes you a role model for young readers.

By trade I’m an orchestra musician — a field that was completely closed off to women until well into the last century. While gender equality hasn’t been reached in all orchestras, the Regional Orchestras I have and do play with, show equal representation of gender throughout. Let’s make the same thing happen with STEM!

HaDuino: Open Your Beer Using Arduino

October 11, 2013 by Mike Szczys 58 Comments

Frankly we’re tired of Arduino having a bad name here at Hackaday. So [Brian Benchoff] came up with a way to make it useful to a wider audience. His creation, which we call the HaDuino, lets you use the Arduino clone to open a tasty bottle of beer.

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Hackaday Hackerspace Henchmen == Free Stuff For You

October 7, 2013 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

Are you a member of your local Hackerspace? Do you want some free stuff? Then you need to become one of the Hackaday Hackerspace Henchmen.

Hackerspaces are amazing places full of smart people pulling off delightful hacks. But often the outside world doesn’t hear about them. When a member completes a project they show it to the other members, quenching the need to share the awesomeness and ridding them of the drive which normally prompts someone to publish a post about it. We want to see what you’ve been up to at your Hackerspace, and making it public will help in sharing ideas between Hackerspaces. Send us the details and we’ll thank you with some swag in return, and with a few special rewards for the most exception hacks. Keep reading for prize details and how this is all going to work.

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New Ads – Please Whitelist Hackaday On Adblock

October 4, 2013 by Mike Szczys 163 Comments

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If you’ve been watching very closely you may have noticed that our ads have changed. If you didn’t know we run ads, I’m asking you to consider whitelisting Hackaday.com in your advertisement blocking browser plugin.

The plan to transition to advertisements which are more targeted for our interests was mentioned back in July, when Hackaday was purchased by SupplyFrame, I say ‘our’ interests because the companies who have signed up so far are ones with which I have personally done business when hacking my own projects. These include the manufacturers: Atmel, Microchip, NXP, and Texas Instruments as well as distributors: Arrow Electronics, Element 14, Mouser, and RS Components. The ads are in the exact same places as they have always been, at the same size, with the core belief that on-page advertising should be entirely unobtrusive. If you find the ads to be otherwise, please do let us know about it (screenshots are helpful!).

Hackaday highlights a steady stream of project features every single day. These are the best engineering-oriented hacks the web has to offer. There is some cost involved in do this, which we cover by including advertisements on our pages. Please don’t block the ads. If you haven’t been blocking, thank you! If you do use an Ad blocker, I certainly understand that you want to get away from ads that automatically play audio, flash annoying colors, or include inappropriate content. Our ads don’t do this. Please throw us a bone by adding our domain to your “whitelist”. This is very simple, and after the break I’ve included the instructions for doing so with Adblock Plus.

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Guest Rant: Ham Radio — Hackers’ Paradise

September 23, 2013 by Mike Szczys 157 Comments

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post written by [Bill Meara]

The suits at Hack-a-Day reached out to SolderSmoke HQ and asked me to send in a few words about why their readers should take a fresh look at ham radio. Here goes:

First, realize that today’s ham radio represents a tremendous opportunity for technical exploration and adventure. How about building a station (and software) that will allow you to communicate by bouncing digital signals off the moon? How about developing a new modulation scheme to send packets not down the fiber optic network, but around the world via the ionosphere, or via ham radio’s fleet of satellites? How about bouncing your packets off the trails left by meteors? This is not your grandfather’s ham radio.

You can meet some amazing people in this hobby: Using a very hacked-together radio station (my antenna was made from scrap lumber and copper refrigerator tubing) I’ve spoken to astronaut hams on space stations. Our “low power, slow signal” group includes a ham named Joe Taylor. Joe is a radio astronomer who won the Nobel Prize for Physics. He’s now putting his software skills to use in the development of below-the-noise receiving systems for ham radio. Join me after the break for more on the topic. Continue reading “Guest Rant: Ham Radio — Hackers’ Paradise” →