Just A Taste Of The Talks At Supercon

October 1, 2018 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

The Hackaday Superconference is taking on a life of its own. Speaker selection is done and invitations are on the way out. Below is a taste of the confirmed talks in store for you this November in Pasadena.

This is the Ultimate Hardware Conference and you need to be there! We’ll continue to announce speakers and workshops as final confirmations come in. Supercon will sell out so grab your ticket now before it’s too late.

Ben Krasnow
Depositing copper circuitry and optical displays onto 3D-printed parts

Producing printed circuits on plastic mechanical parts can be accomplished with a standard laser cutter and a handful of chemicals available from online retailers.

Ruth Grace Wong
Firmware From the Firehose

Practical tips for people who don’t know anything about firmware for deciphering the code and tracking down bugs.

Amie Danielle Dansby
Swords and High Voltage: Creating 3D Printing Designs for Electronics Props

You can easily bring digital video game assets to the human world with 3D printing, but what about modifying files, or adding electronics?

Sam Zeloof
Home Chip Fab: Silicon IC Fabrication in the Garage

IC and semiconductor fabrication techniques, tools, and processes that allow for mid 1970’s era device fabrication on a small budget in the home workshop.

Zach Archer
Live Coding a 40-Foot LED Sign

This is the story of how the massive 500-watt LED Toorcamp sign was designed, developed, and constructed inside of 3 weeks.

Leigh Johnson
Portable Deep Object Detection

The fundamentals of deep learning modules and object detection using Tensorflow and Keras on a Raspberry Pi.

We Want You at Supercon!

The Hackaday Superconference is a can’t-miss event for hardware hackers everywhere. Join in on three amazing days of talks and workshops focusing on hardware creation. This is your community of hardware hackers who congregate to hack on the official hardware badge and on a slew of other projects that show up for the fun. Get your ticket right away!

Kipp Bradford On The Importance Of Boring Projects, Medical Tech, And Sci Fi Novels

September 27, 2018 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

If someone suggests you spend time working on boring projects, would you take that advice? In this case, I think Kipp Bradford is spot on. We sat down together at the Hackaday Superconference last fall and talked about medical device engineering, the infrastructure in your home, applying Sci-Fi to engineering, and yes, we spoke about boring projects.

Kipp presented a talk on Devices for Controlling Climates at Supercon last year. It could be argued that this is one of those boring topics, but very quickly you begin to grasp how vitally important it is. Think about how many buildings on your street have a heating or cooling system in them. Now zoom out in your mind several times to neighborhood, city, state, and country level. How much impact will a small leap forward have when multiplied up?

The next Hackaday Superconference is just around the corner. Before you join us below for the interview with Kipp, make sure you grab your 2018 Hackaday Superconference ticket to be there for great talks like Kipp’s!

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Convince Your Boss To Send You To Supercon

September 21, 2018 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

The Hackaday Superconference is rapidly approaching and you need to be there. The good news is, if you play your cards right you can get your boss to sign off on sending you to Supercon as part of your professional development.

This is the Ultimate Hardware Conference. This is your chance to recharge your batteries and come back energized for an amazing year ahead. You’ll be among hundreds of people who love to push the boundaries of what is possible. Dozens of talks and workshops take place over the backdrop of three days worth of a Hacker Village atmosphere focusing on a badge hacking demoscene.

We’re here to help you get to yes with the powers that be in your company. If you have a tight set of requirements that dictate what counts as professional development, we have a template to use in formulating your ask. Fill in this letter with the details that work for you and head over to the corner office with this in hand.

If you already have a supervisor who understands the hacker lifestyle, the best route is to show off the best Supercon has to offer. Share the playlist of talks from 2017 with them and you’re a shoe-in for your company’s conference attendance budget. And while you’re at it, try to convince your boss to come along for the fun!

See you in November!

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Katherine Scott: Earth’s Daily Photo Through 200 Cubesat Cameras

September 14, 2018 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

Every year at Supercon there is a critical mass of awesome people, and last year Sophi Kravitz was able to sneak away from the festivities for this interview with Katherine Scott. Kat was a judge for the 2017 Hackaday Prize. She specializes in computer vision, robotics, and manufacturing and was the image analytics team lead at Planet Labs when this interview was filmed.

You’re going to chuckle at the beginning of the video as Kat and Sophi recount the kind of highjinks going on at the con. In the hardware hacking area there were impromptu experiments in melting aluminum with gallium, and one of the afternoon’s organized workshop combined wood and high voltage to create lichtenberg figures. Does anyone else smell burning? Don’t forget to grab your 2018 Hackaday Superconference tickets and join in the fun this year!

Below you’ll find the interview which dives into Kat’s work with satellite imaging.

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Twenty Projects That Just Won The Human Computer Interface Challenge

September 5, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 17 Comments

The greatest hardware competition on the planet is going on right now. The Hackaday Prize is the Oscars of Open Hardware. It’s the Nobel Prize of building a thing. It’s the Fields Medal of firmware development, and simply making it to the finals grants you a knighthood in the upper echelon of hardware developers.

Last week, we wrapped up the fourth challenge in The Hackaday Prize, the Human Computer Interface challenge. Now we’re happy to announce twenty of those projects have been selected to move onto the final round and have been awarded a $1000 cash prize. Congratulations to the winners of the Human Computer Interface Challenge in this year’s Hackaday Prize. Here are the winners, in no particular order:

Human Computer Interface Challenge Hackaday Prize Finalists:

Continue reading “Twenty Projects That Just Won The Human Computer Interface Challenge” →

Superconference Submission Deadline Extended

September 4, 2018 by Elliot Williams 6 Comments

Who among us doesn’t procrastinate from time to time? We can’t count the number of times that we’ve taken advantage of the Post Office staying open until midnight on April 15th. And when the 15th falls on a weekend? Two glorious additional days to put off the inevitable!

If you’ve been sitting on submitting your talk or workshop proposal to the 2018 Hackaday Superconference, we’ve got the next best thing for you: we’re extending the deadline until 5 pm PDT on September 10th.

The Hackaday Superconference is a singularity of hardware hackers: more of the best people in the same space at the same time than anywhere else. And that means that your ideas and experiences will be shared with the people most likely to appreciate them. From heroic hacks to creative robotics or untold hardware histories, if there’s a crowd who’ll appreciate how a serial console saved your bacon, it’s this one.

And if you give a talk or workshop, you get in free. But it’s more than that — there’s a different experience of a convention, even a tight-knit and friendly one like Hackaday’s Supercon, when you’re on the other side of the curtain. Come join us! We’d love to hear what you’ve got to say. And now you’ve got a little more time to tell us.

(If you want to get in the old-fashioned way, tickets are still available, but they won’t be once we announce the slate of speakers. You’ve been warned.)

Call For Proposals: Hackaday Superconference

August 23, 2018 by Mike Szczys No comments

It’s time to submit your proposal for a talk or workshop at the 2018 Hackaday Superconference!

Yep, it’s easy to procrastinate with the late days of summer upon us, but don’t miss out on your chance to present at the Ultimate Hardware Conference. We’re hungry for great stories about hardware creation. Before you have the chance to ask “should I submit a proposal?” — YES! We’re talking to you!

Some of the general topics that have been really popular in the past include:

Hardware custom built for research labs
Clever methods for prototyping
Engineering heroics that met a deadline, kept on budget, or just made the thing work
Ins and outs of product development
Stories of elite hacks that deserve to be shared and preserved

This is your time. Send in your proposal now and get ready to have an incredible weekend at the Hackaday Superconference!