Hackaday Prize Entry: Project Dekoboko 凸凹 Maps Bumpy Roads On A Bike

August 17, 2015 by Richard Baguley 14 Comments

If you live in New England (like me) you know that the roads take a pounding in the winter. Combine this with haphazard maintenance and you get a recipe for biking disaster: bumpy, potholed roads that can send you flying over the handlebars. Project Dekoboko 凸凹 aims to help a little with this, by helping you map and avoid the bumpiest roads and could be a godsend in this area.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize entry from [Benjamin Shih], [Daniel Rojas], and [Maxim Lapis] is a device that clips onto your bike and maps how bumpy the ride is as you pedal around. It does this by measuring the vibration of the bike frame with an accelerometer. Combine this with a GPS log and you get a map of the quality of the roads that helps you plan a smooth ride, or which could help the city figure out which roads need fixing the most.

The project is currently on its third version, built around an Arduino, Adafruit Ultimate GPS Logger shield, and a protoboard that holds the accelerometer (an Analog ADXL345). The team has also set up a first version of their web site, which contains live data from a few trips around Berlin. This does show one of the issues they will need to figure out, though: the GPS data has them widely veering off the road, which means that the data was slightly off, or they were cycling through buildings on the Prinzenstrasse, including a house music club. I’ll assume that it was the GPS being inaccurate and not them stopping for a rave, but they will need to figure out ways to tie this data down to a specific street before they can start really analyzing it. Google Maps does offer a way to do this, but it is not always accurate, especially on city streets. Still, the project has made good progress and could be useful for those who are looking for a smooth ride around town.

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Hackaday Prize Entry Closes But Work Continues

August 17, 2015 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

If you’ve been watching the countdown timer you’ve noticed that it’s run its course. The entry window for the 2015 Hackaday Prize is now closed, but that doesn’t mean you can stop what you’ve been doing. As we begin judging this slate of entries, heed my advice and continue working on your project in earnest because the next judging deadline is right around the corner: September 21st at 1:50pm Pacific Time.

For all entries complete the following:

A second video of no more than 5 minutes including footage of your prototype in action
A total of 8 project logs
A nearly complete components list
A rendering or drawing of the design/look and feel of the project

Early next week we will announce the 100 projects that move on to the next round. We will also announce which of the Best Product entries will be among the 10 finalists. The Best Product competitors have additional benchmarks to meet:

Best Product Entries must complete the following:

A third video between 5-10 minutes in length
A total of 12 project logs
A compete components list and a bill of materials for one unit
Schematics
Design Files

Of course the Hackaday Prize is about building something that matters and documenting it as an Open Hardware project. Thank you for sharing your time and talent in preparing your entry. To recognize your effort this year, we’ll be awarding a commemorative T-shirt to all who complete the entry requirements. More information about claiming that shirt will be sent in the coming weeks.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

Hackaday Prize Entry: Soft Orthotics

August 14, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 7 Comments

Nearly a million people in the US suffer from CP, a neurological disorder that causes spastic motion in the limbs. One of the biggest quality of life factors for CP sufferers is the ability to use their arms, and that means an expensive and clunky orthotic around their elbow. [Matthew] has a better idea: why not make a soft orthotic?

This is not [Matthew]’s first project with soft robotics. He’s the lead scientist at Super Releaser, the company responsible for the completely soft robotic Glaucus atlanticus and other soft pneumatic robots.

This soft, flexible orthotic exoskeleton is designed for sufferers of chronic movement disorders. Traditional orthotics are expensive, difficult to move, and uncomfortable, but by designing this orthotic to be just as strong but a little more forgiving, these devices minimize most of the problems.

The Neucuff is constructed out of extremely simple materials – just some neoprene, a velcro, and a CO2 cartridge. The problem with bringing this to market, as with all medical devices, is FDA requirements and certifications. That makes the Hackaday Prize an excellent opportunity for [Matthew] and the rest of Super Releaser, as well as anyone else trying to navigate regulatory requirements in order to change the world.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

Crazy Good Odds To Win The Hackaday Prize

August 14, 2015 by Sophi Kravitz 9 Comments

I entered the Hackaday Prize in 2014. I entered because Hackaday editor [Brian Benchoff] persuaded me to. I ran into Brian at the HOPE conference in NYC and he told me that there were about only 800 entries to compete against.

I didn’t enter until a day or two before the deadline, which is where we are today. The deadline for this year’s 2015 Hackaday Prize is on Monday. Again there are around 800 entries to compete against.

When I entered the competition last year I never dreamed that I’d be managing the same contest this year. I didn’t know much about contests, and I certainly never thought that the odds of winning anything were very good. It is very easy to talk yourself into thinking that everyone else’s project has a better chance of winning.

So now that I’m working in it, I see all of the entries every day, I talk to all of you daily about your projects (which is an awesome part of my life, thank you!) and I can tell you that everyone else’s project does not have a better chance of winning than yours.

Best Product Has Crazy Good Odds

New to the 2015 Hackaday Prize we added a Best Product category. The Best Product is meant to encourage that small window of opportunity between project prototype and product. We ask that products entered into this category get 3 copies of that product to us before we close entries on Monday. Three copies means that you can duplicate your product, but you still may not yet be in a place where you can turn that into a company.

The crazy thing is that we haven’t received so many entries for this, and the prize for Best Product, besides keeping you in the running for the main Hackaday Prize, is $100,000 and 6 months free rent in the Supplyframe Design Lab. This is a recipe for a successful business start.

The odds are insanely good this time around. For Best Product so far, we’ve got under 100 entries. This means you have a 1 in under 100 chance of winning $100,000. For the main Hackaday Prize, we’ve got under 1000 entries and 5 prizes, so you have a 5 in 1000 chance of winning some portion of $500,000 in cash or prizes.

How do you make sure you’re actually in the running? You complete the requirements! Make your project logs, your cell phone video and your system diagram. You can do this in under a day, so make it happen!

Read the Official Rules Here

Why Enter?

Last year’s Hackaday Prize theme was to “design a connected device” so we upped the bar a little this year. Actually, we upped the bar a lot with a theme of “design a solution to an important problem”. We want you to come up with ideas that have the potential to help a lot of people. We want you to not only think about winning money and trips to space, but to think about others. We gave away stuff — lots of stuff — during the contest to encourage those ideas. I think we all won with that.

We started Hack Chats weekly for the past couple of months and I’ve seen people get job offers, collaborate and start new projects from those chats. So, come to the Hack Chats, get your Prize entries in and use your smarts to effect change!

Your Homework For This Weekend

August 13, 2015 by Mike Szczys 51 Comments

Your homework for this weekend: Build me something and enter it in The Hackaday Prize. I’m not joking.

It’s very rare for me to come out with a big “ask”, but this is it. I need you now. The Hackaday Prize is our STEAM initiative. It very publicly shows that you can have a lot of fun with engineering in your free time. This is a lesson we need to broadcast and to do so, I want to see dozens of entries come together this weekend.

Here’s the gist of it: Choose a problem that is faced by a large number of people. Build something that helps fix it, and document what you did. You need to start a project, publish 4 project logs, a system design diagram, and a video of less than 2 minutes in length. That’s it, and you can easily be done with all of this if you choose to make this weekend a hackathon.

You may win, you may not. But everyone who posts a project is helping to inspire the next generation of great engineers. The next [Forrest Mims] is out there, lets make sure he or she knows how amazing the world of engineering is! Get to work.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

Hackaday Prize Entry: Homebrew Smartwatches

August 12, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 13 Comments

The Pebble Smartwatch has been around for years, and the introduction of the Apple Watch has everyone looking at wrist-mounted computing as the newest gadget consumers can glom onto. There was never any doubt the 2015 Hackaday Prize would have more than a few smartwatches.

[Ramon]’s Zerowatch gets its name from the Arduino Zero, as this watch is based off of and completely compatible with the Arduino Zero. With a 48 MHz ARM Cortex M0+, a three-axis accelrometer, a microSD card slot, and a bright OLED display, this is an extremely capable wrist-mounted computer. As with all wearable electronics, the enclosure makes or breaks the entire device, and [Ramon] has a very slick 3D printed case for this watch.

Connectivity is important for smartwatches, and that’s something [Montassar]’s Open Source Smart Watch doesn’t skimp out on. He’s using an STM32F4 as the main controller and a 1.44″ TFT, and adding the standard Bluetooth module — an HC-05 — to the mix. [Montasar]’s project is also tackling connectivity by working on a few Android apps that connect directly to this phone. He’s using the MIT App Inventor to speed up development for these phone apps, and makes custom smartwatch apps a breeze.

Both are great projects, and thanks to free, open source, and easy to use tool chains, both projects are excellent examples of open hardware development and a great entry to The Hackaday Prize.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

Tonight Is Hacker Chat With The Hackaday Writing Crew

August 12, 2015 by Mike Szczys No comments

Tonight at 6pm PDT (UTC-7) is that last Hacker Chat before the entry deadline for the 2015 Hackaday Prize. Join us to talk about all things hardware. Those who need last-minute advice, or are looking for team members for an epic weekend hackathon to bootstrap your winning entry, this is the place to find it. It’s worth entering something… we’re giving everyone with an entry a limited-edition shirt.. and a well executed idea just might get you to the next round!

Joining [Brian Benchoff], [Adam Fabio], and me for tonight’s festivities are [Richard Baguley], [Kevin Dady] (aka [Osgeld]), [Bil Herd], [Kristina Panos], and [Al Williams]. We run these things a bit like the wild-west. There is just a bit of structure, but mostly anything goes. As far as the structure, add your project to this sheet if you want it to be one of the discussion topics. Other than that, share your knowledge and opinions while being excellent to each other. See you this evening!