Hackaday Superconference: Rob Ryan Silva On Designing For Developing Environments

June 13, 2019 by Jenny List 2 Comments

Throughout the six years of the Hackaday Prize we have seen a stream of projects tackling all manner of applications and challenges. Many of them have a goal of addressing issues faced by people in developing countries, and this was the topic upon which Rob Ryan Silva spoke at the Hackaday Superconference.

Rob’s perspective is an interesting one: he runs the maker lab at Development Alternatives Incorporated, or DAI, who are best described as a specialist contractor in the international development sector. Thus while many of the Prize entrants are hardware hackers who have become involved in development related projects, he is a development specialist who has made the opposite journey to becoming a hardware hacker.

Join me below for the video of Rob’s talk and a deep dive into it. Also of note, tickets for the 2019 Hackaday Superconference are now available, the Call for Proposals is now open, and of course, the 2019 Hackaday Prize is ready for your entry! Okay, now onto Rob’s talk.

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Perovskites: Not Just For Solar Cells Anymore

June 13, 2019 by Dan Maloney 21 Comments

If you’ve been around long enough, you’ll know there’s a long history of advances in materials science that get blown far out of proportion by both the technical and the popular media. Most of the recent ones seem to center on the chemistry of carbon, particularly graphene and nanotubes. Head back a little in time and superconductors were all the rage, and before that it was advanced ceramics, semiconductors, and synthetic diamonds. There’s always some new miracle material to be breathlessly and endlessly reported on by the media, with hopeful tales of how one or the other will be our salvation from <insert catastrophe du jour here>.

While there’s no denying that each of these materials has led to huge advancements in science, industry, and the quality of life for billions, the development cycle from lab to commercialization is generally a tad slower than the press would have one believe. And so when a new material starts to gain traction in the headlines, as perovskites have recently, we feel like it’s a good opportunity to take a close look, to try to smooth out the ups and downs of the hype curve and manage expectations.

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Blacksmithing For The Uninitiated: Your First Time At The Anvil

June 12, 2019 by Jenny List 27 Comments

For the past few months we’ve been running this series of Blacksmithing For The Uninitiated posts, exploring the art of forge work for a novice. It’s based upon my experience growing up around a working blacksmith’s business and becoming an enthusiastic if somewhat inexpert smith, and so far we’ve spent our time looking at the equipment you might expect to need were you embarking on your own blacksmith work. Having assembled by now a basic forge of our own it’s now time to fire it up and take to the anvil for our first bit of smithing.

Lighting a forge is easy enough. Some people do it with a gas torch, but I break a piece of firewood into sticks using a hammer with the fuller set in the hardy hole on the anvil as an impromptu splitter. Making a small fire by lighting some paper under my pile of sticks placed on the hearth next to the tuyere I start the blower and then pile coke on top of the resulting conflagration. After about ten minutes I will have a satisfying roar and a heap of glowing coals, and as they burn there will be some slag collecting in the bottom of the fire that I will eventually need to rake out. Continue reading “Blacksmithing For The Uninitiated: Your First Time At The Anvil” →

BioSentinel Mission Aims To Put Yeast Into Deep Space

June 11, 2019 by Dan Maloney 19 Comments

It’s a truly exciting time for space enthusiasts. Humanity is finally shaking itself out of the half-century-long doldrums of deep space exploration and planning a return to the Moon and a push to Mars. Yes, exciting things have happened since the glory days of Apollo. We’ve reached out into the outer planets, drilled holes in asteroids, and made tracks across the face of Mars in an improbably durable rover. We’ve built magnificent space telescopes, created a permanent space station to replace a couple of temporary ones, and put an intricate constellation of satellites into service.

Those are all laudable achievements, but not a single living creature has intentionally ~~achieved~~ approached Earth escape velocity since three astronauts and five mice did it aboard Apollo 17 at 3:46 AM on December 7, 1972. Since then, we’ve all been stuck down here at the bottom of Earth’s gravity well, with only a lucky few of us getting a tease of what space travel is really like with low Earth orbit (LEO) missions.

But if NASA has its way, and certain difficulties with launch vehicles can be ironed out, in 2020 Earthlings will once again slip the surly bonds and make a trip to deep space. Of course those Earthlings will just be cultures of yeast carried into orbit around the Sun on a cubesat, but it’s a start, and it’s a good bet that more complex organisms won’t be far behind.

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Windows 10 Goes To Shell

June 10, 2019 by Al Williams 51 Comments

Windows 10 — the operating system people love to hate or hate to love. Even if you’re a Linux die-hard, it is a fair bet that your workplace uses it and that you have friends and family members that need help forcing you to use Windows at least some times. If you prefer a command line — or even just find a place where you have to use the command line, you might find the classic Windows shell a bit anemic. Some of that’s the shell’s fault, but some of it is the Windows console which is — sort of — the terminal program that runs various Windows text-based programs. If you have the creator update channel on Windows 10, though, there have been some recent improvements to the console and the Linux system that will eventually trickle down to the mainstream users.

What’s New?

So what’s new? According to Microsoft, they’ve improved the call interface to make the following things work correctly (along with “many others”):

Core tools: apt, sed, grep, awk, top, tmux, ssh, scp, etc.
Shells: Bash, zsh, fish, etc.
Dev tools: vim, emacs, nano, git, gdb, etc.
Languages & platforms: Node.js & npm, Ruby & Gems, Java & Maven, Python & Pip, C/C++, C# &
.NET Core & Nuget, Go, Rust, Haskell, Elixir/Erlang, etc.
Systems & Services: sshd, Apache, lighttpd, nginx, MySQL, PostgreSQL

The changes to the console are mostly surrounding escape sequences, colors, and mouse support. The API changes included things like allowing certain non-administrative users to create symlinks. We’ve made X Windows work with Windows (using a third-party X server) and Microsoft acknowledges that it has been done. However, they still don’t support it officially.

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Fusion 360 For 3D-Printing Hack Chat

June 10, 2019 by Dan Maloney 17 Comments

Join us on Wednesday 12 June 2019 at noon Pacific for the Fusion 360 for 3D-Printing Hack Chat with Vladimir Mariano!

There’s no way to overstate the importance of the design and manufacturing tools we now all use on a daily basis. What once took a well-equipped machine shop and years of experience to accomplish can now be designed using free software and built using 3D-printers and a host of other CNC tools, all right on the desktop.

The number of doors this manufacturing revolution has opened are uncountable, and through his popular Desktop Makes YouTube channel and other outlets, Vladimir’s mission is to help people navigate through this world and discover their inner maker. He co-founded the Fairfield County Maker’s Guild in Connecticut and founded the CT Robotics Academy. From 3D-printing and design to electronics and programming, Vladimir teaches it all. He’ll join us for the Hack Chat to discuss the desktop manufacturing revolution in general, plus answer your questions on his main tools, Fusion 360 and 3D-printing.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday June 12 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have got you down, we have a handy time zone converter.

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io. You don’t have to wait until Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

We’re Hiring: Come Join Us!

June 7, 2019 by Mike Szczys 33 Comments

You wake up in the morning, and check Hackaday over breakfast. Then it’s off to work or school, where you’ve already had to explain the Jolly Wrencher to your shoulder-surfing colleagues. And then to a hackspace or back to your home lab, stopping by the skull-and-cross-wrenches while commuting, naturally. You don’t bleed red, but rather #F3BF10. It’s time we talked.

The Hackaday writing crew goes to great lengths to cover all that is interesting to engineers and enthusiasts. We find ourselves stretched a bit thin and it’s time to ask for help. Want to lend a hand while making some extra dough to plow back into your projects? We’re looking for contributors to write a few articles per week and keep the Hackaday flame burning.

Contributors are hired as private contractors and paid for each article. You should have the technical expertise to understand the projects you write about, and a passion for the wide range of topics we feature. You’ll have access to the Hackaday Tips Line, and we count on your judgement to help us find the juicy nuggets that you’d want to share with your hacker friends.

If you’re interested, please email our jobs line (jobs at hackaday dot com) and include:

One example post written in the voice of Hackaday. Include a banner image, at least 150 words, the link to the project, and any in-links to related and relevant Hackaday features. We need to know that you can write.
Details about your background (education, employment, interests) that make you a valuable addition to the team. What do you like, and what do you do?
Links to your blog/project posts/etc. that have been published on the Internet, if any.

What are you waiting for? Ladies and Gentlemen, start your applications!