Sparkpad Sparks Joy For Streamers

August 24, 2021 by Kristina Panos 2 Comments

The best streamers keep their audience constantly engaged. They might be making quips and doing the funny voices that everyone expects them to do, but they’re also busy reading chat messages aloud and responding, managing different scenes and transitions, and so on. Many streamers use a type of macro keyboard called a stream deck to greatly improve the experience of juggling all those broadcasting balls.

Sure, there are dedicated commercial versions, but they’re kind of expensive. And what’s the fun in that, anyway? A stream deck is a great candidate for DIY because you can highly personalize the one you make yourself. Give it clicky switches, if that’s what your ears and fingers want. Or don’t. It’s your macro keyboard, after all.

[Patrick Thomas] and [James Wood] teamed up to build the perfect stream deck for [James]’ Twitch channel. We like the way they went about it, which was to start by assessing a macro pad kit and use what they learned from building and testing it to design their ideal stream deck. The current version supports both the Arduino Pro Micro and the ESP32. It has twelve key switches, a rotary encoder, an LED bar graph, and an OLED screen for choosing between the eight different color schemes.

If you’d rather have dynamic screens instead of cool keycaps, you can do it cheaper by making non-touch screens actuate momentaries.

Redefine Robots Is The Newest Hackaday Prize Challenge

August 23, 2021 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

Roboticists and automation enthusiasts, start your engines. This 2021 Hackaday Prize challenge is made just for you! It’s the Redefine Robots challenge and it calls for a softer, more utopian side of what tomorrow’s automated future can be.

The promise of robots has always been one of making our lives better. But so far we still don’t have a robot assistant sitting next to us ready to lend a hand. That’s where you come in! Whether it’s a physical, nuts-and-bots robot or a 1’s and 0’s software bot, create something that people can see and interact with in their day-to-day lives in ways that make sense and make us feel good about where technology is going.

We make fun of the robot that’s been brought into the world to pass the butter, but honestly if that’s something someone needs help with, isn’t a robot a pretty good solution? That’s what [Michael Roybal] thought way back during the 2016 Hackaday Prize when he designed Zizzy the robot to zip around a tabletop, assisting people with limited mobility.

In the same year, [Mike Rigsby] was working on a little bot whose purpose was to wander around interacting with people. A robot companion (dare we say pet?) is one way to keep up interactivity for people spending long periods of time alone. Along the same lines is the EMOJO chatbot already entered in this year’s contest that seeks to deliver a digital companion onscreen.

Assistive robots aren’t the only ones to shine here. Consider some labor savers, like pick-and-place robots that help you build electronics. Does that reinvent robots? Maybe, maybe not, but getting a 3D printer to do your solder for you sure does. Think of how revolutionary robot vacuums were for people who own both hardwood floors and cats. Those bots are around humans all the time and seem normal now. What’s next automation to get this introduction into everyday life?

Ten finalists from this round will win $500 and be shuttled onto the final round judging in October for a chance at the $25,000 Hackaday Prize and four other top prizes. Start your project page on Hackaday.io and use the drop-down in the left sidebar to enter it into the 2021 Hackaday Prize.

Last Chance To Reimagine Supportive Tech For The Hackaday Prize Is This Weekend!

August 20, 2021 by Mike Szczys No comments

This is the final weekend to enter your supportive tech project in the 2021 Hackaday Prize. To goal is to find ways to make building or using electronics easier.

Accessibility is one obvious approach to this challenge. But you can also consider the example of reference designs in datasheets. Manufacturers know you don’t want to re-invent the wheel to use their switch-mode power supply so they give you information on how to lay it out on the PCB and what parts to choose. Now take that idea and run with it. This could be a modular design that takes the wizardry out of building electronic projects. But it could just as easily be a aimed at the end user — perhaps lab equipment that’s normally expensive and requires expertise to operate but you’ve reimagined it to have most of that expertise built in.

Need some more help figuring out what this is all about? Let’s look at some of the projects that have already been entered. With devices all around us that have superb cameras and dazzling screens, [Timo] realized it wouldn’t take much to turn one into an inspection microscope, which is just what’s been done with nothing more than a 3D-printed stand and a desk lamp.

[Alain] put his electronics knowledge, and the availability of cheap modules, to great use for his non-verbal son. The PECS Communication Board has a grid of sixteen images, each is a button to act as input. He makes the point that tablet apps exist for this, but durability and cost are both issues that his approach helps address.

There are already a ton of other great entries for this round of the Hackaday Prize, but it wouldn’t be complete without yours. Ten will be chosen to receive $500 each and move on to the finals with a $25,000 grand prize on the line. Start your project right now on Hackaday.io and use the left sidebar drop down menu on your project page to enter it.

You have until Monday morning when the next round begins. Good luck!

Why Buy A New Scope When You Can ‘Just’ Build One?

August 17, 2021 by Dave Rowntree 26 Comments

Hackaday Prize 2021 Finalist ThunderScope is doing exactly that. [Aleska] is building a modular open source PC-connected oscilloscope aiming at four channels and a cool 100 MHz bandwidth with a low budget. The detailed project logs, showing how he is learning about ‘scope technology on-the-fly is a fascinating look into the mind of an engineer as he navigates the ups and downs of a reasonably complicated build.

We like how [Aleska] has realised early on, that keeping the project private and only releasing it when “I’m done” actually impedes progress, when you could open source from the beginning, log progress and get great feedback right from the start. All those obvious mistakes and poor design choices get caught and fixed before committing to hardware. Just think of all the time saved. Now this is an attitude to cultivate!

Continue reading “Why Buy A New Scope When You Can ‘Just’ Build One?” →

Solar Display Case Is A Portable Triple Monitor Setup

August 15, 2021 by Lewin Day 10 Comments

They say once you start using twin monitors on the desktop, you’ll never want to go back. It’s even worse when you upgrade to three or more. However, it can be difficult to take such a set up on the road. Desiring better productivity on the go is what spurred [Brian Whitsett] to develop the Solar Display Case to solve this problem.

The Solar Display Case aims to pack three 17″ full-size monitors into a portable waterproof case. Brian has already built a prototype, which puts the monitors on folding arms so that they can be quickly stowed or deployed when needed.

The build also relies on solar power to charge batteries, in order to make the solution as portable as any laptop or other hardware you may be using with it. It’s no good having three mains-powered monitors sitting in the field with no AC power, after all. [Brian] aims to use a flexible solar panel to make the most of the surface area of the deployed assembly, for maximum power generation.

It’s a great project, and one we’d love to see fleshed out to the fullest. Imagining a briefcase that folds out into a triple-monitor workstation is exciting, and it looks like [Brian] is well on the way to making it a reality.

3D Printed Smart Glasses Put Linux In Your Face

August 14, 2021 by Tom Nardi 20 Comments

Unimpressed by DIY wearables powered by dinky microcontrollers, [Teemu Laurila] has been working on a 3D printed head-mounted computer that puts a full-fledged Linux desktop in your field of view. It might not be as slim and ergonomic as Google Glass, but it more than makes up for it in terms of raw potential.

Featuring an overclocked Raspberry Pi Zero W, a ST7789VW 240×240 IPS display running at 60 Hz, and a front-mounted camera, the wearable makes a great low-cost platform for augmented reality experiments. [Teemu] has already put together an impressive hand tracking demonstration that can pick out the position of all ten fingers in near real-time. The processing has to be done on his desktop computer as the Zero isn’t quite up to the task, but as you can see in the video below, the whole thing works pretty well.

Structurally, the head-mounted unit is made up of nine 3D printed parts that clip onto a standard pair of glasses. [Teemu] says the parts will probably need to be tweaked to fit your specific frames, but the design is modular enough that it shouldn’t take too much effort. He’s using 0.6 mm PETG plastic for the front reflector, and the main lens was pulled from a cheap pair of VR goggles and manually cut down into a rectangle.

The evolution of the build has been documented in several videos, and it’s interesting to see how far the hardware has progressed in a relatively short time. The original version made [Teemu] look like he was cosplaying as a Borg drone from Star Trek, but the latest build appears to be far more practical. We still wouldn’t try to wear it on an airplane, but it would hardly look out of place at a hacker con.

Continue reading “3D Printed Smart Glasses Put Linux In Your Face” →

Rotary Time Tracker Puts A New Spin On Productivity

August 13, 2021 by Kristina Panos 3 Comments

Like many of us, [quincy] feels the distracting pull of non-work programs on what has become a mixed-use computer. So what’s the answer to the puzzle of work-life balance? We’re not sure, but time management and keeping track of tasks will probably get you most of the way there. The only problem is that keeping track of these things is boring and tedious and way too easy to forget, even for the fun tasks.

Similar commercial gadgets exist to serve this time-tracking purpose, but [quincy] wanted something much cooler that would work the same way: turn the indicator to the current task, and the status gets recorded on a computer. Rather than some smart polygon with informative stickers on each face à la the Timeflip2, [quincy] built a rotary task manager that serves the same purpose, but does it with magnets.

Our favorite part aside from the magnets has to be the clever binary encoding work. [quincy] is using three photoresistors and a single green LED to create a 3D-printed gray encoder that sidesteps the need to ever flip two bits at once. An Arduino takes care of reading the 3-bit code and converting it back into a decimal. There are more updates to come, including the main .ino file, but you can start printing the pieces while you wait.

If you have trouble staying on task, maybe you need a Pomodoro timer. We’ve seen a few over the years, ranging from the minimal to the sculptural.