2017 Hackaday Prize

238 Articles

Hackaday Prize Entry: Programming FPGAs With Themselves

October 23, 2017 by 46 Comments

It’s been a few years since the introduction of the first Open Source toolchain for FPGAs. You would think a free and Open way to program FPGAs would be a boon for hardware development, but so far we’re really not seeing much in the way of a small, cheap, clever device that brings FPGAs to the masses.

We don’t know if [Luke]’s entry to the Hackaday Prize is the killer project that will do it, but it is very neat. He’s designed a tiny FPGA development board using a Lattice iCE40 FPGA that’s able to program itself over USB. It’s small, it’s cheap, it’s easy to use, and there are working examples of FPGA development using this board.

If you’re thinking this tiny little board looks familiar, you’re right. [Luke] has been working on a similar board, the A-Series, but this latest version has a USB port instead of pins for a JTAG adapter. This USB functionality is pretty clever — instead of using a seperate microcontroller, [Luke] is using the FPGA itself to reprogram the user configuration into a Flash chip. Once that’s up and running, the bootloader is removed and doesn’t consume any FPGA resources.

[Luke] is also working on an amazing hobbyist guide to FPGAs that leans heavily on the Open Source toolchain available for these Lattice FPGAs and his board. That’s a huge benefit to the community, and an excellent entry to the Hackaday Prize.

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These Twenty Projects Won $1000 In The Hackaday Prize

October 21, 2017 by 40 Comments

For the last several months, we’ve been hosting the greatest hardware competition on Earth. This is the Hackaday Prize, and we’ve just wrapped up the last of our five hardware challenges. For the Anything Goes challenge in this year’s Hackaday Prize, we’re asking hardware hackers to build the best, the coolest thing. No, it doesn’t matter what it is. We’re looking for technical skill and awesome applications. There are no limits here.

We just wrapped up the Anything Goes challenge last week, and now it’s time to announce the winners. These are the best, the coolest projects the Hackaday Prize has to offer.

The winners of the Anything Goes challenge are, in no particular order:

Anything Goes Hackaday Prize Finalists:

Continue reading “These Twenty Projects Won $1000 In The Hackaday Prize” →

Hackaday Prize Entry: Two Leg Robot

October 20, 2017 by 12 Comments

If you’re working on your own bipedal robot, you don’t have to start from the ground up anymore. [Ted Huntington]’s Two Leg Robot project aims to be an Open Source platform that’ll give any future humanoid-robot builders a leg up.

While we’ve seen quite a few small two-legged walkers, making a pair of legs for something human-sized is a totally different endeavor. [Ted]’s legs are chock-full of sensors, and there’s a lot of software that processes all of the data. That’s full kinematics and sensor info going back and forth from 3D model to hardware. Very cool. And to top it all off, “Two Leg” uses affordable motors and gearing. This is a full-sized bipedal robot platform that you might someday be to afford!

Will walking robots really change the world? Maybe. Will easily available designs for an affordable bipedal platform give hackers of the future a good base to stand on? We hope so! And that’s why this is a great entry for the Hackaday Prize.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Pyrotechnics Sequencer With Wireless Control

October 19, 2017 by 26 Comments

[visualkev]’s friend was putting on his own fireworks show by lighting each one in turn, then running away. It occurred to [visualkev] that his friend wasn’t really enjoying the show himself because he was ducking for cover instead of watching the fun. Plus, it was kind of dangerous. Accordingly, he applied his hacker skills to the challenge by creating a custom fireworks sequencer.

He used a custom PCB from OSH Park with an ATMega328P controlling eight TPIC6C595 8-bit shift registers, which in turn trip the 64 relays connecting to the fireworks. A 5V regulator supplies the project from 5 5AA batteries, and he kept the wires neat with 8-wire ribbon cables.

Starting the sequence is a generic wireless remote — a cheapie from Walmart — allowing [visualkev]’s friend can launch the fireworks with one hand while working the barbecue tongs with the other.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Unlock Your PC The RFID Way

October 18, 2017 by 21 Comments

Sometimes we see projects whose name describes very well what is being achieved, without conveying the extra useful dimension they also deliver. So it is with [Prasanth KS]’s Windows PC Lock/Unlock Using RFID. On the face of it this is a project for unlocking a Windows PC, but when you sit down and read through it you discover a rather useful primer for complete RFID newbies on how to put together an RFID project. Even the target doesn’t do it justice, there is no reason why this couldn’t be used with any other of the popular PC operating systems besides Windows.

The project takes an MRFC-522 RFID module and explains how to interface it to an Arduino. In this case the Arduino in question is an Arduino Pro Micro chosen for its ability to be a USB host. The supplied code behaves as a keyboard, sending the keystroke sequence to the computer required to unlock it. The whole is mounted in what seems to be a 3D printed enclosure, and for ease of use the guts of the RFID tag have been mounted in a ring.

As we said above though, the point of this project stretches beyond a mere PC unlocker. Any straightforward RFID task could use this as a basis, and if USB is not a requirement then it could easily use a more run-of-the-mill Arduino. If you’re an RFID newbie, give it a read.

Plenty of RFID projects have made it here before, such as this door lock. And we’ve had another tag in a ring, too.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Playing With USB Power Delivery

October 17, 2017 by 29 Comments

USB Power Delivery is the technology that’s able to pump 100 Watts down a USB cable. It’s been around for half a decade now, but only in the last few years have devices and power supplies supporting USB PD shown up on the market. This is a really interesting technology, and we can’t wait to see the outcome of people messing around with five amps flowing through a cable they picked up at the dollar store, but where are the DIY solutions to futz around with USB PD?

For his Hackaday Prize entry, [Clayton] is doing just that. He’s built a tiny little power jack for USB PD that has a USB type-C plug on one end and a pair of screw terminals on the other. It’s the USB PD Buddy Sink, and once we find some cheap 100 Watt USB power adapters, this is going to be an invaluable tool.

Getting 100 Watts out of a USB charger is a bit more complex than just soldering a few wires together. The power delivery must be negotiated, and for that [Clayton] is using a simple, cheap STM32F0 ARM microcontroller. Plugging into a USB bus is a bit more complicated, but luckily On Semi has a neat little programmable USB Type-C controller PHY that does all the work. Throw in a few MOSFETS and other ancillary parts, and you have a simple, small 100 Watt power supply that plugs right into your new fancy laptop charger.

The design of the USB PD Buddy Sink is complete, and [Clayton] has a bunch of these on hand. He’s selling them on Tindie, but it’s also a great entry to the Hackaday Prize.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Giving Phones Their Tactile Buttons Back

October 16, 2017 by 10 Comments

In the before-times, we could send text messages without looking at our phones. It was glorious, and something 90s Kids™ wish we could bring to our gigantic glowing rectangles stuck in our pocket. For his Hackaday Prize Entry, [Kyle] is bringing just a little bit of this sightless functionality back to the modern smartphone. He’s building a tactile remote control for smartphones. With this device, you can navigate through icons, push buttons, and even zoom in on maps with real, physical controls.

This keyboard is built around a handful of Cherry MX mechanical key switches for a great tactile feel, and a single capacitive touch strip for zooming in and out on the screen. This is pretty much exactly what you want for real, mechanical buttons for a smartphone — a satisfying click and a zoomy strip. The microcontroller used in this device is the BGM111 Bluetooth LE module from Silicon Labs. It’s an extremely low-power module that is able to read a cap touch strip and a few button inputs. Power is provided by a 2032 coin cell, giving the entire device a low profile form factor (except for the MX switches, but whatever), and more than enough run time.

It should be noted that [Kyle] is building this as a solution to distracted driving. True, looking down to send a quick text while driving is the cause of thousands of deaths. However, while typing out a quick note with a T9 keyboard on your Nokia seems like it’s less dangerous, it’s really not. Doing anything while driving is distracted driving, and there are volumes of studies to back this up. Outside the intended use case, this is a fantastic project that uses a neat little Bluetooth module we don’t see much of, and there are some pretty cool applications of a tiny wireless mechanical keyboard with cap touch we can think of.

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