Friday Hack Chat: All About The Hackaday Prize

March 21, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 1 Comment

For this week’s Hack Chat, we’re talking all about the Hackaday Prize. Our guests for this week’s Hack Chat are Alberto Molina and Elecia White.

Elecia White was a Hackaday Prize judge in 2015 and 2016, and she’ll be discussing what makes a standout entry from a judging perspective. Elecia is an embedded software engineer at Logical Elegance, Inc., author of Making Embedded Systems, and host of the Embedded.fm podcast.

Alberto Molina won the Grand Prize of the 2016 Hackaday Prize with Dtto, an Open Source, self-reconfiguring rescue robot that Alberto is continuing to develop. Alberto is an Electronic engineer who wants to design the next generation of robots and he will share his insights on putting together a fantastic entry for your project.

The Hackaday Prize is the greatest hardware competition ever. It’s the Academy Awards of Open Hardware (and will remain so until we get a cease and desist). The Hackaday Prize is a competition where thousands of hardware hackers, makers, and artists compete to build a better future.

The Hackaday Prize is in its fifth year in 2018, and the theme this year is Build Hope. We’re challenging everyone to put your ideas and creativity to use and Build Something That Matters. Do this, and you’ll be in the running for the Grand Prize of $50,000. In total we’re giving away $200,000 in total cash prizes to build hardware, something no other hardware competition can match.

Also on board for this Hack Chat, like all Hack Chats, will be Stephen Tranovich, Technical Community Leader at Hackaday.io. Steven has been working hard on the logistics for the Prize this year, and will field any and all questions about entering the 2018 Hackaday Prize.

In this Hack Chat, we’ll be discussing how the Prize is judged, the new challenges for the 2018 Hackaday Prize, the achievements the winners of the Hackaday Prize have already seen, and of course, your questions. We know there’s a lot of interest in the Hackaday Prize, and we want you to ask what’s on your mind. If you have a question, just add it to the Hack Chat event page as a comment, and we’ll answer it.

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week it’s going down at the usual time, on noon, Pacific, Friday, March 23rd Want to know what time this is happening in your neck of the woods? Have a countdown timer!

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io.

You don’t have to wait until Friday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

Friday Hack Chat: Everything Raspberry Pi

March 14, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 17 Comments

The Raspberry Pi is six years old now, and in that time it’s become the most popular single board computer. Over these last few years, the Pi has improved from a relatively anemic board based on a smartphone SoC to a surprisingly fast board that’s loaded up with some of the best software and the best community support we’ve ever seen. There’s an awful lot you can do with a Pi, and the continued support of the Raspberry Pi Foundation has enabled millions of people to get their hands on a cheap computer that runs Linux. It’s great.

Now it’s your turn to ask the engineers behind this tiny little computer what’s going on in the world of Pi. We’re having a Hack Chat this Friday, and you’re invited.

Our guest for this week’s Hack Chat will be [Roger Thornton], principal hardware engineer for the Raspberry Pi, where he oversees design, test, compliance, and production for Raspberry Pi products. Previously, [Roger]’s work for Broadcom included being part of the team that characterized and tested numerous SoCs including the BCM2835/6/7 found in various Pis. He also has experience in the smart home and IoT fields from working in a consultancy where be helped bring chips to market.

[Roger]’s most recent work was announced today; the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ is the latest in a long line of Pis, and while it’s not the octocore ARM monster with SATA and PCIe and Gigabit networking and 4G that the power-hungry have been clamoring for, it is more capable than its predecessor and still only costs less than forty bucks.

This is also the second time [Roger] has been a guest on our Hack Chats. You can check out the transcript of the 2017 chat here.

During this chat, we’re going to be discussing the future of Raspberry Pi products, Pi events around the world, and a question on the minds of many: where you can buy Pi Zeros in quantity. You are, of course, encouraged to add your own questions to the Hack Chat. You can do that by leaving the questions as a comment on this Hack Chat’s event page.

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week it’s going down at the usual time, on noon, Pacific, Friday, March 16th Want to know what time this is happening in your neck of the woods? Have a countdown timer!

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io.

You don’t have to wait until Friday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

Friday Hack Chat: Everything About The ESP

March 7, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 16 Comments

When the ESP-8266 first arrived, it was a marvel. For two dollars, you could buy a simple module that could serve as a bridge between WiFi networks and microcontroller projects. It understood the Hayes command set, it didn’t use much power, and, as noted before, it only cost two dollars. The idea of cheap and accessible Internet of Things things was right there for the taking.

Then hackers figured out what was actually going on inside the ESP-8266. It was a full-blown microcontroller. There was Lua stuff you could put on it. You could program it with the Arduino IDE. It had WiFi. This was the greatest microcontroller release in the last decade, and it came from a company no one had ever heard of.

Since then, the ESP ecosystem has bloomed, and there’s a new ESP on the block. The ESP-32 is an even more powerful WiFi and Bluetooth-enabled chip that’s just as easy to program, and it costs three dollars. Microcontrollers have never been cooler.

For this week’s Hack Chat, we’re going to be talking all about the ESP. Our guest for this Hack Chat should need no introduction, but if you’re unfamiliar, [Sprite_tm] plays video games on his keyboard and has installed Linux on a hard drive. He also works at Espressif, the company behind the ESP-8266 and ESP-32, where he’s applied his skills towards tiny Game Boys and miniature Macs.

During this week’s Hack Chat, we’re going to be covering everything about the ESP, including peripherals, ultra-low power consumption, SIP packages, and what’s coming up for the ESP family. You are, as always, welcome to submit your questions for [Sprite]; just add those as a comment on the Hack Chat page.

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. [Sprite]’s in China, so we’re not doing this one at the usual time: This week, the Hack Chat will happen at 7:00 am, Pacific, Friday, March 9th. Want to know what time this is happening in your neck of the woods? Have a countdown timer!

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io.

You don’t have to wait until Friday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

Friday Hack Chat: Everything PCB

February 28, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 14 Comments

It was not too long ago that all PCB design packages were proprietary. Getting PCBs made was expensive, and if you tried to do this over the Internet, the best way was to download a board house’s proprietary software, design your board in their software suite, and send your boards off to be made. A 5 cm square board would cost two hundred dollars. I know this to be true because I’ve said it before, and no one has corrected me.

For this week’s Hack Chat, we’re talking Everything PCB with OSH Park. OSH Park is the leading creators of perfect purple PCBs. They have POGs, and for the last two weeks, they’ve been one of the few places you can send some Gerbers to and have it manufactured in a timely manner if you live in the US. Because China was closed.

For this week’s Hack Chat, we’re going to be talking about everything PCB. How do you do castellated holes? How do you mill slots and square or otherwise non-round holes? Internal cutouts? Stop mask expansion? Artwork? Panelization? Why purple? More POGs!

Our guests for this chat will be [Dan Sheadel] and [Drew Fustini] of OSH Park, and they’re going to be there answering all your questions. [Dan] has been around OSH Park from the beginning and enjoys designing tiny useless robots and mentoring students building better ones. [Drew] is an Open Source hardware developer, firmware designer, a BeagleBoard board member, and is usually found at hardware meetups wearing purple.

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This Hack Chat is going down Friday, March 2nd at noon, Pacific time. Want to know what time this is happening in your neck of the woods? Have a countdown timer!

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io.

You don’t have to wait until Friday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

Friday Hack Chat: Trusting The Autorouter

February 21, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 41 Comments

Ah, the autorouter. Inside every PCB design tool, there’s a function called the ‘autorouter’. This function, when used correctly, is able to automagically lay traces between pads, producing a perfect board in under a minute. The trouble is, no one uses it. We have been told not to trust the autorouters and we hear a lot of other dire warnings about it. The autorouter never works. The autorouter will put traces everywhere. The autorouter doesn’t consider floorplanning, and sometimes you’re going to get traces that go right through the edge of your board. Is avoiding the autorouter sound advice?

For this week’s Hack Chat, we’re talking about trusting the autorouter. The autorouter is just a tool, and like any tool, it will do exactly what you tell it. The problem, therefore, is being smart enough to use the autorouter.

Our guest for this week’s Hack Chat is Ben Jordan, Director of Community Tools and Content at Altium. Ben is a Computer Systems engineer, with 25 years experience in board-level hardware and embedded systems design. He picked up a soldering iron at 8, and wrote some assembly at 12. He’s also an expert at using an autorouter successfully.

In this Hack Chat, we’re going to talk to Ben about Altium, Circuit Maker, and how to get the best performance out of an autorouter. How do you set the autorouter up? How do you test your settings? What, actually, is the technology and math that goes into an autorouter? What is the best way to design a multilayer board? How do you do multiboard designs? And what’s the deal with mixed signals?

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This Hack Chat is going down Friday, February 23rd at noon, Pacific time. Want to know what time this is happening in your neck of the woods? Here, look at the neat time zone converter thingy.

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io.

You don’t have to wait until Friday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

Friday Hack Chat: Making A Makerspace

February 14, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 7 Comments

How do you make a makerspace? Over the last decade, there have been plenty of talks and tutorials handing out pointers. No day of the week will be good for a meeting, so the meetings are always on Tuesdays. The bike shed will be painted orange, no exceptions. Are you going to be a for-profit, or not-for-profit? Are we a makerspace or a hackerspace? Jerry, stop being clever. Pantone 021 U.

For this week’s Hack chat, we’re going to be talking all about making a makerspace. These are community hubs where people come together and share resources to bring their inventions to life. It’s not as simple as it may seem. You need insurance, you need a building, you need a landlord who’s cool, and there are a thousand and one things that can go wrong. Who best to steer you through the storm of opening a Hackerspace? Who can you solicit advice from?

Our guests for this week’s Hack Chat are Vaibhav Chhabra, a mech E from Boston University. He spent two years working on an eye diagnostic device, is an instructor at MIT REDX health care innovation lab, and is a founder of the incredible Makers Asylum. Eric Michaud is a Hacker, runner, and author, currently working on Rift Recon, Shellcon, and hackerspaces.org. He has written tutorials on Adafruit, and was a founding member of HacDC before he took off to Chicago and started PS:One.

Topics for this week’s Hack Chat include what it takes to open a makerspace, how you can fund it, organizational structure concerning for-profit, not-for-profit, and the thing that the members are most concerned about: what equipment is most crucial for a successful makerspace. You are, of course, encouraged to add your own questions to the Hack Chat; to do that, just leave a comment on the Hack Chat event page.

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This Hack Chat is going down Friday, February 16th at 09:30am Pacific time. This is different than our usual time slot. Want to know what time this is happening in your neck of the woods? Here, look at the neat time zone converter thingy

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io.

You don’t have to wait until Friday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

Friday Hack Chat: How Do You Collaborate With Hardware?

February 7, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 6 Comments

The world of Open Source software is built on collaboration. In one corner of the world, someone can fix a bug in a piece of software, and push it up to the gits. In another part of the world, someone else can put that fix into the next release, and soon everyone has newer, better software. The Internet, or the ability to rapidly transmit text and binary files, has made this all possible.

Hardware is another story. There’s a financial barrier to entry. Not only do you need a meter and a good iron, you’re probably going to need oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and a bunch of other expensive tools. You’ll need to buy your BOM. If you’re using a PIC, it might be a good idea to buy the good compiler. Hardware is hard and expensive, and all those software devs who complain don’t know what they’re talking about. Collaborating on hardware is much more difficult than pushing some code up to the cloud.

For this week’s Hack Chat, we’re going to be talking about collaborating on hardware projects. This is a deep dive on how to make collaboration with physical objects work, and this week we’re going to be learning from some of the best.

Our guests for this week’s Hack Chat are Pete Dokter and Toni Klopfenstein of SparkFun Electronics. Pete is formerly the Director of Engineering at SparkFun and now the Brand Ambassador for SparkFun Electronics. He hosts the According to Pete video series expounding on various engineering principles and seriously needs a silverburst Les Paul and a Sunn Model T. Toni is currently the product development manager at SparkFun. She’s served on the Open Source Hardware Association Board and participates in the Open Hardware Summit yearly. In her free time, she spends fifty weeks out of the year finding dust in her art and electronics projects.

During this chat, we’re going to be discussing what makes a collaborative hardware project, how to make distributed development work for your team, and the limits of what you can do with several hardware engineers separated by thousands of miles. This is a hard problem, much harder than a distributed team of software engineers, and a fantastic discussion for all.

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This Hack Chat is going down Friday, February 9th at noon, Pacific time. Time Zones got you down? Here’s a handy countdown timer!

Click that speech bubble to the left, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io.

You don’t have to wait until Friday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.