World’s First RP2040 QWERTY Computer

May 28, 2021 by Chris Lott 21 Comments

Independent hardware developer [bobricius] is at it again, making what he claims is the world’s first Pico RP2040 QWERTY + IPS development kit — the PICOmputer. This is a palm-sized computer of sorts. It integrates a keyboard made from tactile push button switches, a TFT IPS display, and a RP2040 Pico computer module. At 100 x 65 mm size, it is slightly bigger than your typical ISO-7810-ID-1-sized credit card, and slightly smaller than an A7 piece of paper.

One of [Bobricius]’s goals for this project was to minimize the number of external components, thus maximizing the use of the RP2040’s internal features. And if you peruse the schematic posted on his GitHub repository, you can agree he’s met this goal for sure. There’s a filter capacitor for the optional LoRa module, and two MOSFETs and three resistors to drive a speaker and the TFT backlight. Aside from connectors, the switches, and the submodules themselves, that’s all of the external circuitry.

The arrangement of two USB connectors, type C for power and micro-USB for data, is an interesting aspect of the connector / module placement. He plans to add an Ethernet module in the future, and issue some more revisions to fix small errors and to make the front panel fit more sizes of displays. We wonder if a battery module add-on is in the works, as well.

If you recognize [bobricius], that’s because his previous ARMACHAT handheld LoRa messenger project was among the Hackaday Prize Community Vote (Bootstrap) winners last year. We think tiny keyboards may be an obsession for him — indeed, he freely admits to being blinded by his own enthusiasm. Check out his mini (Pi)QWERTY USB keyboard from 2018, for example. Thanks to [Itay] for bringing this project to our attention via the Hackaday tip line.

Continue reading “World’s First RP2040 QWERTY Computer” →

Persistent Displays With UV Light

May 24, 2021 by Jenny List 52 Comments

This year’s Hackaday Prize has “Rethink Displays” as one of its first theme, and [Tucker Shannon] has given us his best shot on that subject with a set of impressive displays that “write” on glow-in-the-dark material using ultra-violet light. These materials glow for a while after UV illumination, so moving a light source like a UV LED over the surface draws glowing text or simple graphics which can be readily consumed.

One of the examples this a clock we were first smitten with back in 2018. It is a rather attractive 3D-printed affair with those servos mounted below the screen that moves a UV LED through a pair of linkages. Other offerings that play on the same UV stylus medium include a laser on an az-el mount controlled by a Raspberry Pi Zero. It’s a neat idea very effectively done, and we can see it has a lot of potential.

But the most impressively advanced so far is the model shown in the image at the top of the article and the demo video at the bottom. A loop of phosphorescent material is the display surface itself. This one moves that loop with two rollers to make up the X axis, and moves the UV source up and down for the Y axis. As with all of these designs, whatever is written will soon fade, leaving the surface ready for the next bit of information.

Interested in this project and think you could do a display of your own? The Hackaday Prize 2021 is live, and we’d love to see you enter it!

Continue reading “Persistent Displays With UV Light” →

2021 Hackaday Prize Hack Chat; Join Us Live On Wednesday

May 18, 2021 by Dan Maloney 1 Comment

Join us on Wednesday, May 19 at noon Pacific for the 2021 Hackaday Prize Hack Chat with Majenta Strongheart!

At this point last year, we probably all felt like we’d been put through a wringer, and that things would get back to normal any day now. Little did we know how much more was in store for us, and how many more challenges would be heaped on our plates. Everything that we thought would be temporary seems to be more or less permanent now, and we’ve all had to adapt to the new facts of life as best we can.

But we’re hackers, and adapting to new situations more often than not means making the world fit our vision. And that’s why the 2021 Hackaday Prize has adopted the theme of “Rethink, Refresh, Rebuild.” We want you to rethink and refresh familiar concepts across the hardware universe, and create the kind of innovation this community is famous for.

The 2021 Hackaday Prize will have it all. As in previous years, the Prize will have several specific challenges, where we set you to work on a creative problem. There will also be mentoring sessions available, $500 cash prizes for 50 finalists along the way, with $25,000 and a Supplyframe Design Lab residency awarded to the Grand Prize winner.

We know you’re going to want to step up to the challenge, so to help get you started, Majenta Strongheart, Head of Design and Partnerships at Supplyframe, will drop by the Hack Chat with all the details on the 2021 Hackaday Prize. Come prepared to pick her brain on how the Prize is going to work this year, find out about the mentoring opportunities, and learn everything there is to know about this year’s competition. It’s the Greatest Hardware Design Challenge on Earth, so make sure you get in on the action.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, May 19 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, 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.
Continue reading “2021 Hackaday Prize Hack Chat; Join Us Live On Wednesday” →

2021 Hackaday Prize: Rethink, Refresh, And Rebuild

May 18, 2021 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

The 2021 Hackaday Prize begins right now. Tap into your creativity and build your piece of a better future on the topics of supportive technology, everyday robotics, imaginative displays, and work-from-home innovations.

Now in its eighth year, the Hackaday Prize is a global engineering initiative that seeks out new and interesting uses of electronics and other technologies with an eye toward open source/open hardware and a goal of getting your creations out into the world.

The grand prize winner will receive $25,000 and a residency at the Supplyframe Design Lab. In addition to top prizes for the second through fifth place winners, 50 finalists will each receive a $500 prize. But you don’t need to win the Hackaday Prize to take something away. This is your calling: spend time working on those abstract ideas and figuring out how they will fit into life tomorrow, next month, or next decade. Whether it changes peoples’ lives or just brings a smile to a few faces, every interesting step forward is an example where people had ideas so crazy they actually worked. Let’s get in on that!

There are five categories to target with your builds. If you have an idea kicking around, you can probably enter it this year.

Continue reading “2021 Hackaday Prize: Rethink, Refresh, And Rebuild” →

A UV Curing Wand For Everyone

December 6, 2020 by Matthew Carlson 12 Comments

The average person’s experience with an ultraviolet (UV) wand is getting a cavity at the dentist. However, anyone with a resin-based 3d printer knows how important a UV curing system is. Often times some spots on a print need a little bit of extra UV to firm up. [Mile] has set out to create an open-source UV curing wand named Photon that is cost-effective and easy to build.

What’s interesting here is that there are dozens if not hundreds of UV curing systems ranging from $5 LED flashlights to larger industrial flood systems. [Mile] dives right in and shows the trade-offs that those cheaper modules are making as well as what the commercial systems are doing that he isn’t. [Mile’s] Photon wand tries to be energy efficient with more irradiated power while staying at a lower cost. This is done by carefully selecting the CSP LEDs instead of traditional wire-bonded and making sure the light source is properly focused and cooled. From the clean PCB and slick case, it is quite clear that [Mile] has gone the extra step to make this production-friendly. Since there are two industry-standard wavelengths that resins cure at (364nm and 405nm), the LED modules in Photon are user-replaceable.

What we love about this project is looking past what is readily available and diving deep. First understanding the drawbacks and limitations of what is there, then setting a goal and pushing through to something different. This isn’t the first UV curing tool we’ve seen recently, so it seems there is a clear need for something better that’s what is out there today.

Continue reading “A UV Curing Wand For Everyone” →

The BYTE Is The Grand Prize Winner Of The 2020 Hackaday Prize

November 7, 2020 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

The BYTE, an open-source mouth-actuated input device for people with physical challenges has just been named the Grand Prize winner of the 2020 Hackaday Prize. The award for claiming the top place and title of “Best All Around” in this global engineering initiative is $50,000. Five other top winners and four honorable mentions were also named during this evening’s Hackaday Prize Ceremony, held during the Hackaday Remoticon virtual conference.

This year’s Hackaday Prize focused on challenges put forth by four non-profit partners who have first hand knowledge of the problems that need solving as they work to accomplish their missions. These organizations are Conservation X Labs, United Cerebral Palsy Los Angeles, CalEarth, and Field Ready. Join us below for more on the grand prize winner and to see the Best in Category and Honorable Mention winners from each non-profit challenge, as well as the Best Wildcard project.

Over $200,000 in cash prizes have been distributed as part of this year’s initiative where hundreds of hardware hackers, makers, and artists competed to build a better future. Continue reading “The BYTE Is The Grand Prize Winner Of The 2020 Hackaday Prize” →

The Ground Beneath Your Feet: SuperAdobe Construction

October 27, 2020 by Bryan Cockfield 25 Comments

Homes in different parts of the world used to look different from each other out of necessity, built to optimize for the challenges and benefits of local climate. When residential climate control systems became commonplace that changed. Where a home in tropical south Florida once required very different building methods (and materials) compared to a home in the cold mountains of New England, essentially identical construction methods are now used for single-family homes in any climate. The result is inefficient and virtually indistinguishable housing from coast to coast, regardless of climate. As regions throughout the world are facing increasingly dire housing shortages, the race is on to find solutions that are economical and available to us right now.

The mission of CalEarth, one of the non-profits that Hackaday has teamed up with for this year’s Hackaday Prize, is to address that housing shortage by building energy-efficient homes out of materials already available in the areas that they will be built. CalEarth specializes in building adobe, or earth, homes that have a large thermal mass and an inexpensive bill of materials. Not only does this save on heating and cooling costs, but transportation costs for materials can be reduced as well. Some downside to this method of construction are increased labor costs and the necessity of geometric precision of the construction method, both of which are tackled in this two-month design challenge.

Continue reading “The Ground Beneath Your Feet: SuperAdobe Construction” →