Smile For The Raspberry Pi Powered Photo Booth

June 5, 2015 by Rick Osgood 5 Comments

[Roo] was tasked with finding a better way to take corporate employee photos. The standard method was for a human resources employee to use a point and shoot camera to take a photo of the new recruits. The problem with this method is many people feel awkward trying to force a smile in front of other people. Plus, if the photo turns out poorly many people won’t ask to have it retaken so as not to feel vain or inconvenience the photographer. [Roo’s] Raspberry Pi powered photo booth solves this problem in a novel way.

The new system has the employee use their own mobile phone to connect to a website running on the Pi. When the employee tells the Pi to snap a photo, the system uses the Raspberry Pi camera module to capture an image. [Roo] actually 3D printed a custom adapter allowing him to replace the standard camera lens if desired. The photo can be displayed on an LCD screen so the user can re-take the photo if they wish.

The system is built into a custom case made from both 3D printed and laser cut parts. The front plate is a frosted white color. [Roo] placed bright white lights behind the front panel in order to act as a flash. The frosted plastic diffuses the light just enough to provide a soft white light for each photo taken. Once the photo is selected, it can then be uploaded to the company database for use with emails, badges, or whatever else.

[Roo] also mentions that the system can easily be changed to send photos via Twitter or other web applications. With that in mind, this system could be a great addition to any hackerspace or event. The code for an older version of the project can be found on the project’s github page.

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Hackaday Prize Worldwide: SXSW

March 12, 2015 by Mike Szczys 3 Comments

Having announced the start of the 2015 Hackaday Prize a few days ago, it’s time to take the message to the people. We’ll be evangelizing the message of grass-roots hardware development all over the world this year. The next event starts tomorrow in Austin, Texas and is free for all to attend.

Friday Mid-Day Meetup

Join the Hackaday Crew at the Hackaday South by Southwest Meetup on Friday from 11am-12pm. We’ll be discussing the bright future of small shop and grass roots hardware development. This concept ties into the 2015 Hackaday Prize which calls on you do develop solutions to some of the problems found in your community. Want to organize your own #HackadayPrize event to help get the word out? Great! Email prize -at- hackaday.com and we’ll help with the planning.

Friday Night at Hardware House

Find us on Friday Night at Hardware House. They are presenting several talks; notably from [Huge Fiennes] (Co-founder of Electric Imp), [Sam de Brouwer] (Co-founder of Scanadu), [Nick Yulman] (from Kickstarter), and [Jason Johnson] (Co-Founder of August). In between there will be some lightning talks and [Sophi] will be giving one on the 2015 Hackaday Prize. and we’ll be sticking around for the socializing as well. It runs from 6-9pm… don’t forget to RSVP.

Stuffing 150 sq. ft. with Hardware

The finalists from last year’s Hackaday Prize were gracious enough to lend us their prototypes to exhibit at our SXSW Create Booth which is open Friday through Sunday. These are SatNOGS, ChipWhisperer, PortableSDR, Open Science Tricorder, and RamanPi. Thank you to them all, we’ll make sure to bring some of those along to the meetup. We’re also happy to have one of [Radu Motisan’s] uRADMonitor modules on hand, one of the Mooltipass beta units which were the topic of the Developed on Hackaday series, and one of [Macetech’s] new LED glasses (which we might just be giving away to someone who stops by).

Tacos or Drinks or Hangouts, oh my

The midway is open 11-6 everyday but you can bet after that (and perhaps before) we’ll be looking to do some socializing. Hit us up on Twitter if you have any suggestions or wonder what we’re up to. Assuming the Internet is working we’ll be checking and Tweeting regularly. On site we’ll be using the following accounts: @Hackaday, @Hackaday.io, @HackadayPrize.

Hackaday Meetup At SXSW

March 6, 2015 by Mike Szczys 2 Comments

Each year the giant South by Southwest (SXSW) festival descends on Austin, Texas. It attracts droves of music lovers, among them an ocean of our kind of tech geeks. This year the crowd will trend evermore in that direction since Hackaday has decided to be there too!

In addition to scouring the crowd for awesome tech, we have a booth and are hosting an organized Hackaday meetup on Friday 3/13 at 11:00am. It’s free to all so put it on your calendar now! Several of our Hackaday crew will be there, we’re bringing cool hardware, and of course we’ll have some swag in tow the most hardcore of hackers.

This is one chance to talk about our passion: hardware development. We’ll be discussing the concept of focused and sustained efforts at building hardware as individuals, small teams, and a growing community. We know this is possible… we saw a lot of it with The Hackaday Prize and had a great look at one type of distributed development process through Developed on Hackaday which followed the Mooltipass project. Of course it’s not a lecture so bring your own ideas while we all chew the fat of what the future needs to look like.

As we mentioned, we have a booth at SXSW Create. Entry is again free to all and runs 11am-6pm for three days — find us in one of the four corner stalls. There we will be exhibiting the hardware from SatNOGS, ChipWhisperer, PortableSDR, Open Science Tricorder, and RamanPi. Don’t know what’s notable about these projects? They all won big for sharing the details of their future tech designs.

So, find us there! Give a shout on Twitter if you wonder what’s going on (we’re always looking for a good impromptu beer meetup or taco crawl). @hackaday, @hackadayio, @hackadayprize

Building An Isolation Booth For Your Home Recording Studio

August 2, 2012 by Mike Szczys 34 Comments

[Brattonwvu] wanted to lay down some tracks with as high an audio quality as possible. To help get rid of the noise pollution of the everyday world he built this isolation booth in his attic.

The project started off with a trip to the home store for some 2×4 stock and OSB to use as sheathing. The framing is as you would expect, but to help deaden the sound he went with a surprising material. He’s filled the cavities between each 2×4 with stuffed animals and old clothes. The same is done in the walls and the inside surfaces are all covered in fabric to prevent echoing. The door has a lip and we can just make out what looks like weather stripping to provide a seal. There is just one opening in the box, where a PVC pipe allows electrical and microphone cables to pass through. [Brattonwvu] reports that you can hear your heartbeat in your ears when standing inside the sealed booth.