Get Your Hackaday Belgrade Tickets Now

February 8, 2016 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

We have just opened up registration for Hackaday | Belgrade — a hardware conference on April 9th. Get your ticket now and make arrangements to visit Belgrade this Spring. Tickets are inexpensive, travel costs from other parts of Europe are very reasonable, the weather will be beautiful, and the all-day madness that we have planned will make you wish it were a week instead of just sixteen hours. These tickets will sell out so please share this post with your friends so they are not left ticketless.

Packed with Amazing People

Hackaday is a global community and that is what makes Hackaday | Belgrade spectacular. We are still accepting proposals for talks through February 15th but haven’t yet made all of the decisions regarding presenters — you should submit a proposal! We’ll publish an article about all of the presenters once we have wrapped up the call for proposals. Expect to hear back about this around February 22nd.

One thing I am very excited about is that Mike Harrison will be at the conference. His talk will cover his exploration of an absurdly expensive and complicated relic which was used in the 1950’s for large-format video projection. Mike’s ability to unlock understanding of complex (and awesome) electronics is quite amazing; this talk is not to be missed. But Mike is just one of a dozen presenters from all over Europe. Several members of the Hackaday crew will be on hand and the venue will be packed with hundreds of fellow hardware hackers. You won’t want to miss this.

You Will Hack This Badge

This is the first Hackaday event where we have an active electronic badge. Voja Antonic has been hard at work with the design and just published the first details a few days ago.

The central feature of the badge is an 8×16 LED matrix driven by a PIC microcontroller. It’s running a USB bootloader which will let you flash your own custom code without needing a programmer. We were speaking with some of our friends over at Microchip regarding the bootloader and they offered to supply all the microcontrollers for the badge, an offer we were happy to accept.

Voja has already programmed the first demo application seen here, it’s Tetris written in assembly language. Impressive!

We were overwhelmed by the popularity of badge hacking at the Hackaday SuperConference last November. You can bet that badge hacking will be one of the most popular activities at Hackaday Belgrade. I have written a hardware emulator to work on some animations. It uses the SDL2 library to display the LED matrix and take three button inputs (the final badge design will have four buttons arranged in up/down/left/right configuration). Our hope is to host a demoscene competition that is open to anyone, whether you can attend the conference or not. More on that later.

Live Music and Hacking

As the evening sets in and the talks wind down, we have lined up bands and DJs to take the stage and carry us well into night. You won’t have to stop the badge hacking or anything else that you’re into, but you won’t have to solder in silence either.

As you can tell, this conference goes way beyond talks. This is hardware culture and you’ve just got to be there. Running from 10am until 2am, there’s more than enough to keep you occupied for one day. But make sure to hang out on the event page to get inside information on other non-formalized social events that will happen the night before and the day after. See you in Belgrade!

Hackaday Europe: Call For Proposals

January 21, 2016 by Mike Szczys 38 Comments

Hackaday is coming to Europe in April. The world’s most superb conference on hardware creation starts with you. Please submit your proposal to present a talk or workshop at 2016 Hackaday | Belgrade, Hackaday’s first-ever European conference.

Put it on your calendar: Saturday, April 9th in Belgrade, Serbia. We have a lineup spanning from 10am to 2am, and we’re building on the best of the inaugural SuperConference we held last November: a single track of hardware talks which will run concurrently with a set of hands-on workshops. The surprise hit from that conference was badge hacking, which will be expanded and extended into the wee hours of the morning. While that is in progress, a party with two stages will spin up with performances by Infinite Jest, Grupa TI, and DJ sets.

Tickets go on sale the first week of February. Voja Antonic, who does amazing work with PCBs and badge designs, is building the conference badge. The cost of the admission will be just enough to cover the cost of the badge. We’re keeping the admission cost so low to help offset your travel costs. Belgrade is gorgeous in April, and getting there from other parts of Europe is very affordable. This event will sell out so get organized and make sure you and your fellow hardware hackers get tickets early.

Many of the Hackaday crew will be on hand. We’re likely to have a less-formal meetup (hangover brunch?) on Sunday. Check out the Hackaday | Belgrade planning page to discuss this and learn more about the conference as it comes together. See you in Belgrade!

Hackaday Prize Worldwide: Zürich On Thursday

September 23, 2015 by Sophi Kravitz 2 Comments

Join us for a Meetup Thursday the 24th of September in Zürich, Switzerland. We’re co-hosting a meetup with FabLab Zürich and we are excited to see you!

Doors open at 18:00 on Thursday, 24 September. We’ll have some food and drink, project show and tell, and time to hang out and get to know each other. This is a free event but please RSVP to let us know you’re coming.

Bring the project you are working on to show off, everyone loves to see projects regardless of what stage they’re in. Many times, showing your project and talking about it pushes your project forward; “oh hey, I have an extra RN42 BT module you can have” or “I already wrote a driver for that chip and it’s on github”. Showing your project to others can also inspire someone else to make their own project based on your awesome idea. I’ve been motivated many times to start a project because of what I saw someone else make.

Germany Too!

This Zurich meetup isn’t the only chance to connect with Hackaday in Europe. Next week, we’ll be in Berlin! We’re co-hosting a Berlin Meetup with Vintage Computer Festival organizers in the evening after Berlin Maker Faire and the Vintage Computing Festival. VCF have planned food and drink, a live band or two… chip tunes! It will be on October 3rd, and [Elliot], [Sophi] and [Bilke] will all be there.

Munich: Help Plan Hackaday’s First European Event

September 20, 2014 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

On Thursday, November 13th we’ve rented a huge hall in Munich, Germany and plan to host a hacking event followed by a celebration.

You need to take the day off of work and join us. Better yet, convince your boss that this is professional development and that attending is good for the company!

We’re not taking the space shuttle across the pond, this illustration reflects the connection with The Hackaday Prize. This trip will mark the end of the contest and the unveiling of the Grand Prize winner.

What do you want to hack?

The big question we have right now, is what kind of hands-on hardware hacking do you want to do? We published a page over on Hackaday.io to discuss the possibilities. Let your imagination run wild and we’ll do our best to make it all happen. We know from James’ hackerspace tour last year that there are a ton of Hackaday community members within reasonable travel distance from Munich. Here’s our chance to get everyone together for an Epic day of building and night of partying.

Getting A Nest Thermostat To Work In Europe

October 5, 2012 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

[Julian] was really excited to get his hands on a Nest learning thermostat. It’s round, modern design will make it a showpiece in his home, but he knew there would be a few hiccups when trying to take advantage of its online features. That’s because [Julian] lives in Spain, and Nest is only configured to work in North America. But as you can see above, he did a bit of hacking to get it displaying his actual location.

The Nest is web-connected and phones home to the company’s server to handle configuration. Since they’ve made the decision to only support a portion of the world [Julian] had to do a little bit of digging to bend it to his will. He used Wireshark to sniff the packets it was sending. The calls to the company’s server use SSL, but the device also contacts the Weather Underground for data and this is not encrypted. So he was able to intercept that with his router and inject custom information. It’s not a full solution, but he’s part way there.

We’d really like to see what is possible with this device so please send us a link to any Nest hacks of your own.