Hackaday Prize Needs You: Build For Citizen Scientists

May 30, 2016 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

Humanity is better when we work together. Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to Citizen Scientists — the concept that scientific advancement isn’t reserved to the trained professionals, but benefits when a larger population of thinkers collaborates with the community of trained researchers. This is the goal of the Citizen Scientist challenge round for the Hackaday Prize. Let’s build something that enables citizens to be scientists.

We’ll divide $20,000 evenly between twenty projects that target Citizen Scientists. Enter now and build your prototype by July 11th for your chance to win. Even better, if you are selected as one of those 20 finalists you’ll compete for the top prizes, $150k and a residency at the Supplyframe Design Lab in Pasadena. Second through fifth place finishers will get $25k, $10k, $10k, and $5k.

You love design challenges and this one has powerful potential. We’ve seen builds like this in the finals during previous years of the Hackaday Prize. In 2014, RamanPi was recognized as the 5th place winner. The project seeks to reduce the expense of acquiring a Raman Spectrometer which is used for analyzing chemical substances. The design used parametric models for the optic jigs used by the machine. The idea is that a university could buy their own optics, adjust the models for the properties of those lenses and mirrors, then 3D print the parts to build the apparatus.

Also a winner in 2014, the Open Science Tricorder was recognized as the fourth place finisher. Based on the form factor and functionality of the iconic Star Trek technology, the Open Science Tricorder combines three or more sensor technologies with a user interface. It provides a hands-on experience for students learning about the properties of the world around them, and a handheld sensor suite to anyone interested in undertaking their own research projects.

The Citizen Scientist challenge round begins right now. Get started on your build today and show us what you can do to solve a technology problem with your prototyping skills. Good luck!

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Raspberry Pi Zeros And Drones

May 29, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 8 Comments

How do you get eyeballs on a blog post? Put Raspberry Pi Zero in the headline. How do you get even more eyeballs? Put the word drone in there too. Lucky for us, there’s one very special project in the Hackaday Prize that combines both. It’s the Pi0drone from [Victor], and it’s exactly what it looks like: a flying Raspberry Pi Zero.

[Victor] has been working on the PXFmini, a ‘shield’ or ‘hat’ for the Raspberry Pi that integrates a barometer, IMU, and a few PWM outputs into a very small form factor that is just a shade larger than the Raspberry Pi Zero itself. It comes with standard connector ports for UART and I2C to attach GPS and on screen display for FPV flying.

Of course, there are dozens of flight controllers for drones and quads out there, but very few are running Linux, and even fewer platforms are as well supported as the Raspberry Pi. To leverage this, [Victor] is running Dronecode on the Pi for mission planning, real autopilot, and everything else that turns a remote controlled quadcopter into a proper drone. It works, and it’s flying, and you can check out the video proof below.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: An Interface For The Headless Linux System

May 28, 2016 by Moritz Walter 17 Comments

Connecting a headless Raspberry Pi to a wireless network can be quite a paradoxical situation. To connect it to the network, you need to open an SSH connection to configure the wireless port. But to do so, you need a network connection in the first place. Of course, you can still get command-line access using a USB-to-UART adapter or the Pi’s ethernet port – if present – but [Arsenijs] worked out a much more convenient solution for his Hackaday Prize entry: The pyLCI Linux Control Interface.

His solution is a software framework written in Python that uses a character display and buttons to make a simple hardware interface. This allows you to configure all important aspects of a Raspberry Pi – or any other Linux SBC – from a tidily organized click-and-scroll menu. [Arsenijs] implemented a whole bunch of useful tools: There’s a network tool to scan and connect to WiFi networks. A systemctl tool that lets you manage the services running on the system, which is especially helpful when you need to restart a stuck service. A partition tool helps with viewing and unmounting mass storage devices. He’s even planning to add a filesystem browser.

With his Open Source project, [Arsenjs] aims to shorten the development time for embedded projects by taking out the efforts of implementing the basic interface functions from scratch. Indeed, there are countless scenarios, where a basic display interface can be of great value. Given the great project documentation and the fact that this can work with virtually any Arduino or Raspberry Pi LCD-pushbutton-hat or shield, we’re sure this is going to be used a lot. Enjoy the video!

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Adding HDMI To Small Displays

May 27, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 16 Comments

LCDs come in a lot of sizes, and there’s a lot written about pushing pixel data out to larger displays. Smaller LCDs, like the 4, 5 and 7 inch variety, aren’t used much, because no one seems to know how to drive the things. For [Joe]’s Hackaday Prize Entry, he’s creating an open source interface for tiny LCDs, making it easy and cheap to add one to everything with an HDMI port.

[Joe]’s Open LCD Interface comes on two boards, with the first providing connections to an LCD, all the power circuitry required, and a bunch of pads to break out every IO line. The second part of the puzzle is a decoder that takes HDMI signals and drives a small LCD.

HDMI decoders are nothing new to the world of hobby electronics – there are multiple projects that give the BeagleBoard a display through HDMI. Even Adafruit sells one of these converters. [Joe]’s board has another trick up its sleeve, though: it can give any microcontroller a high-resolution display, too.

There’s another module that connects to [Joe]’s breakout board that turns the LCD into an SPI display. This means any microcontroller can drive a high-resolution display. It’s fast, too: in the video below, [Joe]’s SPI display can push pixels at least as fast as any other microcontroller-based display we’ve seen.

It’s a great project, and a by opening up the doors to millions of cheap LCDs on eBay and Alibaba, [Joe] has a great entry for the Hackaday Prize on his hands.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Open-Source Myoelectric Hand Prosthesis

May 26, 2016 by Moritz Walter 9 Comments

Hands can grab things, build things, communicate, and we control them intuitively with nothing more than a thought. To those who miss a hand, a prosthesis can be a life-changing tool for carrying out daily tasks. We are delighted to see that [Alvaro Villoslada] joined the Hackaday Prize with his contribution to advanced prosthesis technology: Dextra, the open-source myoelectric hand prosthesis.

Dextra is an advanced robotic hand, with 4 independently actuated fingers and a thumb with an additional degree of freedom. Because Dextra is designed as a self-contained unit, all actuators had to be embedded into the hand. [Alvaro] achieved the necessary level of miniaturization with five tiny winches, driven by micro gear motors. Each of them pulls a tendon that actuates the corresponding finger. Magnetic encoders on the motor shafts provide position feedback to a Teensy 3.1, which orchestrates all the fingers. The rotational axis of the thumb is actuated by a small RC servo.

In addition to the robotic hand, [Alvaro] is developing his own electromyographic (EMG) interface, the Mumai, which allows a user to control a robotic prosthesis through tiny muscle contractions in the residual limb. Just like Dextra, Mumai is open-source. It consists of a pair of skin electrodes and an acquisition board. The electrodes are attached to the muscle, and the acquisition board translates the electrical activity of the muscle into an analog voltage. This raw EMG signal is then sampled and analyzed by a microcontroller, such as the ESP8266. The microcontroller then determines the intent of the user based on pattern recognition. Eventually this control data is used to control a robotic prosthesis, such as the Dextra. The current progress of both projects is impressive. You can check out a video of Dextra below.

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This Is Your Epic Weekend To Hack Together Anything

May 26, 2016 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

Wow how the time flies. It seems like only couple of weeks ago we were unveiling the film we shot at Salton Sea to launch this, our third global hacking initiative called The Hackaday Prize. What we want is to see you use those skills of yours to Build Something that Matters. Come up with a way to solve a technology problem and score yourself some sweet prizes. This weekend, anything goes.

The current challenge is called Anything Goes and the deadline to enter your project is Monday at 7am PDT. You need to show off a prototype of your idea, and have at least four (4) build logs about your work on your project page. Use the menu in the left sidebar of your project page to enter it in the Hackaday Prize (or in the Anything Goes round if you entered it during the first challenge).

Are you confused about what is happening here? Let’s hit the high points:

Every five weeks we start a new Challenge Round which is basically a whole new contest. You can enter now — it’s not too late. If you entered previously you may enter again.
From each challenge round we will select twenty projects to move on to the final round, and award them each $1,000 for their achievement.
When all five rounds are complete, those hundred final projects will be viewed by our expert judges who will pick five winners who get the big cash prizes: $150k, $25k, $10k, $10k, and $5k. The Grand Prize winner will also be offered a residency at the Supplyframe Design Lab in Pasadena, CA.
The moral of the story is: build something awesome because that’s what you do. But this weekend, make it something that helps people and you just might be one of the twenty moving on for a shot at a much larger purse.

It’s true, we have a lot of projects in the running for this year’s prize; right about 700 entries at the time of writing. But, like I said above, each Challenge is a new contest. We are just about to hit 300 entries for Anything Goes. Twenty will be finalists, which means your entry has about a 1 in 15 chance at this point. Make this weekend your personal hackathon — build it, document it, and don’t forget to submit it.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Robotic Prosthetic Leg Is Open Source And 3D-Printable

May 25, 2016 by Moritz Walter 19 Comments

We’ve been 3D-printing parts for self-replicating machines before, but we’ve been working on the wrong machines. Software and robotics engineer [David Sanchez Falero] is about to set it right with his Hackaday Prize entry, a 3D-printable, open source, robotic prosthetic leg for humans.

[David] could not find a suitable, 3D-printable and customizable prosthetic leg out there, and given the high price of commercial ones he started his own prosthesis project named Drakkar. The “bones” of his design are made of M8 steel threaded rods, which help to keep the cost low, but are also highly available all over the world. The knee is actively bent by a DC-motor and, according to the source code, a potentiometer reads back the position of the knee to a PID loop.

While working on his first prototype, [David] quickly found that replicating the shape and complex mechanics of a human foot would be too fragile when replicated from 3D-printed parts. Instead, he looked at how goat hooves managed to adapt to uneven terrain with only two larger toes. All results and learnings then went into a second version, which now also adapts to the user’s height. The design, which has been done entirely in FreeCAD, indeed looks promising and might one day compete with the high-priced commercial prosthesis.