2021 Hackaday Remoticon

34 Articles

Making Your Projects Move: Jeremy Fielding To Deliver Remoticon Keynote

October 18, 2021 by 4 Comments

We’re really excited to announce that Jeremy Fielding will give a keynote address at Hackaday Remoticon in November! Get your free ticket now!

The projects we in this community choose to tackle often take a lot to see to completion. Parts, tools, expertise, time; all are critical to getting projects from concept to reality. But how deep your parts bin is or how well-equipped your shop may be matters not a whit unless you’ve got the one thing that makes it all go: passion. Passion is what keeps a project rolling ahead paste the inevitable roadblocks and diversions; it’s what keeps us going back to the bench to try something new when we think we’ve tried it all.

Jeremy Fielding showing off his robot arm back in April

The passion to understand, to create, to innovate, is something that Jeremy Fielding clearly has. Anyone who has watched even a few of his YouTube videos knows how much he loves to make things move. His current project is a seven-axis industrial robot arm, and it’s a seriously impressive build that could easily be mistaken for a commercial product. What’s perhaps most impressive about this is that many of the skills needed to pull it off, like welding aluminum and machining, are skills that Jeremy has been teaching himself on the fly. Talk about passion!

For his keynote, Jeremy is going to focus on building hardware that moves. Most of us are reasonably good at putting together projects that flash a few lights or perhaps move a few small steppers or servos. But scaling that up, as Jeremy has done for his robot arm as well as other projects, introduces new challenges: what type of electric motor do I choose? How do I figure out the trade-offs between torque and speed? Do I even want to use electric motors — maybe pneumatics will be better? What are my control options? These questions can be just as daunting to the old hands as they are to beginners, and Jeremy is going to focus on how to handle these and other mechatronic challenges that crop up in our projects.

Aside from the (literal) nuts and bolts of mechanical engineering, there’s another place where Jeremy’s passion shines through: his passion for communicating what he has learned. His presentation style and enthusiasm are infectious, and we’re sure that’s going to come across in his keynote. Jeremy fancies himself a “contraption engineer,” which is both an apt and engaging way to look at what he does. Fellow contraption builders take note — you’re going to want to make sure you don’t miss this one!

Call for Proposals is Still Open!

We’re still on the hunt for great talks about hardware creation, so the Call for Proposals has been extended to October 20. And remember, get your tickets early — knowing how many people to expect really helps us with infrastructure planning so we can give everyone a quality experience.

Hackaday Remoticon: Call For Proposals Extended To October 20th

October 15, 2021 by No comments

In just a few short weeks, we’ll all be meeting up online for the second Hackaday Remoticon on November 19th and 20th. This is the year of the Talk, and who better than you, dear reader, to give one? Good news — we’ve extended the deadline for proposals to Wednesday, October 20th. We’ve all got at least one or two subjects that we could happily bloviate about for hours, be it hardware, software, skill sets, or the stuff that inspires you to stop dreaming and start doing. Why not share your wit and wisdom with the rest of the community?

So, what are you waiting for? Submit your talk proposal today! We’re not looking for you to pack the whole talk into the description box, but we would like to know what your talk will be about, and why it’s relevant to an audience of geeks, hackers, and engineers. Talks are typically 30 minutes in length, but we can likely accommodate shorter or longer talks if needed.

Everyone has something worth sharing, and the fact is, we are always looking for first-time speakers to showcase. Just share the things you’re doing that you’re passionate about, and you’re bound to have a great talk that generates excitement all around.

So grab some go-juice and start brainstorming the outline of your talk — give us enough information that we’ll be thirsty for more. Have you got terrible stage fright? Then encourage your outgoing hackerspace buddy to give one and cheer from the sidelines. Although we would rather see all of you in person, moving this conference online comes with the flexibility to hear from hackers all over the world, and no one has to leave home.

These First Remoticon Speakers Are Just A Taste Of What’s To Come

October 14, 2021 by 1 Comment

With the 2021 Hackaday Remoticon fast approaching, we’ve been hard at work crafting a schedule filled with thought-provoking presentations from knowledgeable speakers; precisely what you’ve come to expect from one of our events, virtual or otherwise. We’ve already announced that Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) astrophysicist Keith Thorne will be presenting a literally out-of-this-world keynote on the incredible engineering it takes to detect gravitational waves with the highest precision interferometers ever devised, but that’s only the beginning.

To make doubly sure we’ll be able to pack every available minute of our second Remoticon with fascinating content, we’ve decided to extend the deadline on talk proposals for a few more days to see what the late-bloomers can bring to the table. If you’ve ever wanted to present at a Hackaday event, but couldn’t swing the trip to Pasadena or Belgrade, this is your chance to take the stage virtually and show off what you’re passionate about.

In the meantime, we’ve churned through enough of the early proposals to let slip the first four talks that we’ll be beaming out between November 19th and 20th. There is plenty more to announce over the coming weeks, but hopefully this gives you an idea of what we’ve got in store for our global audience of hardware hackers. So grab your Remoticon ticket right now!

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Keith Thorne, Engineer At LIGO, To Deliver Remoticon Keynote

October 11, 2021 by 13 Comments

It is my pleasure to announce that Keith Thorne has graciously agreed to deliver a keynote take at Hackaday Remoticon 2. Get your ticket now!

Keith is an astrophysicist and has worked on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) since 2008, literally looking for ripples in space-time that you know as gravitational waves. The effects of the phenomena are so subtle that detecting an event requires planet-scale sensors in the form of 4 km long interferometers placed in different parts of the United States whose readings can be compared against one another. A laser beam inside these interferometers bounces back and forth 300 times for a total travel distance of 1,200 km in which any interaction with gravitational waves will ever-so-slightly alter how the photons from the beam register.

The challenges of building, operating, and interpreting such a device are manifold. These interferometers are the highest precision devices ever devised, able to detect motion 1/10,000 of the diameter of a proton! To get there, the mirrors need to be cooled to 77 nano-Kelvins. Getting the most out of it is what Keith and the rest of the team specialize in. This has included things like hacking the Linux kernel to achieve a sufficient level of real-time digital control, and using “squeezed light” to improve detection sensitivity in frequencies where quantum mechanics is getting in the way. While the detectors were first run in 2015 & 2016, successfully observing three events, the work to better understand this phenomenon is ongoing and may include a third site in India, and a space-based detector in the future.

In getting to know Keith he mentioned that he is excited to speak to a conference packed with people who want to hear the gory technical details of this fantastic piece of hardware. I’m sure we’re all giddy to learn what he has to say. But if you’re someone who wants to work on a project like this, he tipped us off that there’s an active EE job posting for LIGO right now. Maybe you’ll end up doing the keynote at a future Hackaday conference.

Call for Proposals is Still Open!

We’re still on the hunt for great talks about hardware creation. True creativity is fed by a steady stream of inspiration. Be that inspiration by giving a talk about the kinds of things you’ve been working on!

Hackaday Remoticon: Tickets And T-Shirts!

October 4, 2021 by 10 Comments

Tickets for the Hackaday Remoticon are now available and there’s one big addition this year:  Shirts!

As you have doubtless heard, the Supercon is on hold for one more year, so we’re doing Remoticon round two.  And aside from missing the direct human contact, our conference t-shirt drawer is getting a little empty. While we can’t fix the global pandemic, we can fix the latter problem with this eye-catching design, the latest in a long line of art created by Aleksandar Bradic for Hackaday Conferences.

Remoticon will kick off on Friday, November 19th with some new social shenanigans. All day Saturday we’ll present talks, capped off by the Hackaday Prize Ceremony and a party that evening. Keep your eyes peeled for more info, but grab your ticket today and block off your calendar.

Attendance is free, and your registering early helps us plan our infrastructure to handle the crowd. If you want a t-shirt, you can order one at the same time for $25. Shipping for people in the US is included, but because of the realities of postal costs, shipping will be $10 for those everywhere else in the world.

 

We’re also still looking for more great talks! The Call for Proposals is open until October 14th. Don’t sit on the sidelines, do your Hackaday duty and give a talk about something that interests you. There’s a critical mass of other geeks into the same stuff that will delight in hearing from you! Come join us.

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2021 Hackaday Remoticon: Call For Proposals

September 9, 2021 by 4 Comments

The Hackaday Remoticon is happening this November 19th and 20th and the whole Internet is invited. This time around we’re packing the weekend with talks about all the hardware, software, special skills, and inspiration that gets poured into the world of electronic stuff.

Send in your talk proposal now! I know, Call for Proposals sounds so official, but it’s really just a matter of giving us a summary of what the talk will cover, and an in-depth description where you make your case on why the talk is relevant to the people who will be watching it.

We go out of our way with all of our Hackaday conferences to get first-time speakers up on stage (or I suppose in front of a webcam in this case). Whether it’s your first time or your fortieth, the substance of the talk is what matters the most — we want to see what you’ve been doing at your workbench and in your lab so please give us a window into that part of your life.

Like many of you, we desperately wanted to get back to an in-person Hackaday Superconference this year. We waited until now to make the call in hopes that maybe a smaller live conference would be possible, but at this point, even if we could pull off the weekend safely, it’s hard to imagine people would have the relaxing good time that Supercon has come to be known for. On the plus side, holding a virtual event like Remoticon means more of the Hackaday community gets to join in on the action. To shake things up for 2021, we’re pivoting away from workshops to make room for more talks and adding some excellent new ways for you to participate that we’ll be sharing more about very soon.

But to pull it off we need a slate of engineers, hackers, and geeks who want to share what they’re passionate about with a captive audience of like-minded individuals. Think you’re up to the challenge? Submit your ideas and let’s build something amazing. Or if you’d rather just kick back and watch, reach out to your favorite hacker and encourage them to speak. The one huge upside of a virtual conference is that it breaks down the time and treasure barriers of travelling to Pasadena to participate, and having this event accessible to a much wider range of people is something we can all get behind.