2019 Hackaday Prize

209 Articles

Little Flash Charges In 40 Seconds Thanks To Super Capacitors

November 21, 2019 by 10 Comments

We’ve all committed the sin of making a little arduino robot and running it off AA batteries. Little Flash is better than that and runs off three 350 F capacitors.

In fact, that’s the entire mission of the robot. [Mike Rigsby] wants people to know there’s a better way. What’s really cool is that 10 A for 40 seconds lets the robot run for over 25 minutes!

The robot itself is really simple. The case is 3D printed with an eye towards simplicity. The brains are an Arduino nano and the primary input is a bump sensor. The robot runs around randomly, but avoids getting stuck with the classic reverse-and-turn on collision.

It’s cool to see how far these capacitors have come. We remember people wondering about these high priced specialty parts when they first dropped on the hobby scene, but they’re becoming more and more prevalent compared to other solutions such as coin-cells and solder tab lithium batteries for PCB power solutions.

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Open Source Kitchen Helps You Watch What You Eat

November 20, 2019 by 6 Comments

Every appliance business wants to be the one that invents the patented, license-able, and profitable standard that all the other companies have to use. Open Source Kitchen wants to beat them to it. 

Every beginning standard needs a test case, and OSK’s is a simple one. A bowl that tracks what you eat. While a simple concept, the way in which the data is shared, tracked, logged, and communicated is the real goal.

The current demo uses a Nvidia Jetson Nano as its processing center. This $100 US board packs a bit of a punch in its weight class. It processes the video from a camera held above the bowl of fruit, suspended by a scale in a squirrel shaped hangar, determining the calories in and calories out.

It’s an interesting idea. One wonders how the IoT boom might have played out if there had been a widespread standard ready to go before people started walling their gardens.

A Scratch-built RISC-V CPU In An FPGA

November 19, 2019 by 17 Comments

“RISC architecture is going to change everything”, which is why [SHAOS] is building this cool RISC-V DIY retro-style computer.

The project took inspiration from another hacker’s work in building a RISC-V emulator; shared in the Hackaday FPGA chat. He took it a bit further and got it going on an UPDuino v2.0 board which features a iCE40 FPGA from Lattice.

The board passes all the tests for the RISC-V subset he’s aiming for and even run some Zephry RTOS examples. He’s done a really good job of documenting how he got the code to run as well as many of the experiments he’s run so far. All the project files for ICEcube2 software are posted. It’s not the only RISC-V CPU we’ve seen in an FPGA, but the code is actually very clear and worth a read if you’re into such things.

We think anyone interested in duplicating his work could do so somewhat easily and start playing around with this increasingly popular architecture. Or at least get some LED’s blinking in an arcane but meaningful way. Video after the break.

Continue reading “A Scratch-built RISC-V CPU In An FPGA” →

This RGB Tree Has Its Roots In A PCB

November 18, 2019 by 1 Comment

[Paczkaexpress]’s RGB tree is a mix of clever building techniques and artistic form that come together into quite a beautiful sculpture.

The branches of his tree are made from strands of enameled copper wire capped with an RGB LED and terminated in a female header. The separate wires are all wound and sculpted into the form of a tree. The wire is covered in a very thin layer of plastic, which we highly recommend observing under a microscope, that allow it to maintain a uniform and reflective copper color without shorting, adding to the effect.

The part we found an especially pleasing mix of form and function was how the “roots” of the tree clicked home in the PCB base. The PCB holds the STM32, power components, and an LED Driver. It doesn’t hide how the magic works, and the tree really does get its nutrients from the soil it’s planted in. This would be a fun kit to build. Very clever and you can see the final effect after the break.

Continue reading “This RGB Tree Has Its Roots In A PCB” →

Tangible Programming Brings Code Into The Real World

November 17, 2019 by 13 Comments

We love the idea of [Amos]’s Tangible Programming project. It reminds us of those great old Radioshack electronics labs where the circuitry concepts took on a physical aspect that made them way easier to digest than abstractions in an engineering textbook.

MIT Scratch teaches many programming concepts in an easy to understand visual way. However, fundamentally people are tactile creatures and being able to literally feel and see the code laid out in front could be groundbreaking for many young learners. Especially those with brains that favor physical touch and interaction such as ADHD or Asperger’s minds.

The boards are color-coded and communicate via an I2C bus. Each board’s logic and communication is handled by an ATTiny or ATMega. The current processing is visible through LEDs or even an OLED display. Numbers are input either through thumbwheel switches or jumpers.

The code concepts will, of course, be simple and focused due to the physical nature of the blocks. Integer arithmetic, simple loops, and if/else conditionals. Quite a lot of concepts can be built around this and it could be a natural diving board into the aforementioned Scratch and eventually an easy to learn language like python.

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FieldKit Is The Grand Prize Winner Of The 2019 Hackaday Prize

November 16, 2019 by 21 Comments

FieldKit, an open-source, modular sensor system for conducting research in harsh environments has just been named the Grand Prize winner of the 2019 Hackaday Prize. The award for claiming the top place and title of “Best Product” in this nine-month global engineering initiative is $125,000. Five other top winners and five honorable mentions were also named during this evening’s Hackaday Prize Ceremony, held during the Hackaday Superconference in Pasadena, California.

This year’s Hackaday Prize focused on product development. From one good idea and a working prototype, entrants were encouraged to iterate on their UX, industrial design, ergonomics, software, and mechanical plans as they worked toward a product that is both manufacturable and meets the needs of the user it has been designed for. Out of twenty finalists, the top eleven are covered below. Over $200,000 in cash prizes have been distributed as part of this year’s initiative where thousands of hardware hackers, makers, and artists compete to build a better future. Continue reading “FieldKit Is The Grand Prize Winner Of The 2019 Hackaday Prize” →

The Ultimate Hacker’s Compact 4WD!

November 16, 2019 by 3 Comments

If you’ve spent any time at one of the larger European hacker camps over the last few years you’ll have seen the invasion of little electric vehicles sporting hoverboard motors as an all-in-one propulsion system. German hackers, in particular, have incorporated them into the iconic Bobby Car children’s toy, and ca be seen whizzing around looking slightly incongruous as adults perched on transport designed for five-year-olds.

[Peter Pötzi] has created just such an electric Bobby Car, and his one is particularly well-executed with a 3D-printed steering column extender and four motors for full 4WD rather than the usual two. A steering wheel-mounted display has a neat enclosure, and is fed SPI from the ESP32 that runs the show via an RJ45 patch cable. Many of these builds use hoverboard motor controllers with hacked firmware, but this one instead takes a set of off-the-shelf VESCs. Control comes via a set of Xbox 360 trigger buttons mounted to the underside of the steering wheel.

The result is typically self-contained as are all the Bobby Car builds, with the added bonus of the extra power of four motors rather than two. We’re not so sure that 4WD gives it off-road capabilities though, but having seen these vehicles perform some nifty maneuvers in the past perhaps it’ll lend extra traction on corners.

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