Friday Hack Chat: 8-Bit Micros With Microchip

June 7, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 20 Comments

A few years ago, Microchip acquired Atmel for $3.56 Billion. There are plenty of manufacturers of 8-bit microcontrollers, but everyone makes 8051s, and the MSP430 isn’t as popular as it should be. Microchip’s acquisition of Atmel created what is probably the largest manufacturer of 8-bit micros, with a portfolio ranging from ATtinys smaller than a grain of rice to gigantic PICs.

This Friday, we’re hosting a Hack Chat with the Technical Marketing Engineer of 8-bitters at Microchip. If you love AVR, this is the guy to talk to. If you’re still rocking the vintage 1993 PICkit, this is the guy to talk to.

On the docket for this Hack Chat are some new PICs and some very interesting peripherals coming down the line. ADCC — A2D with computation — is on the table, along with configurable logic cells. This Hack Chat is also going to go over Microchip design tools like MP Lab Xpress.

Of course, these Hack Chats are a question and answer session for the community. We’re encouraging everyone to ask a few questions about what Microchip is doing. We’ve opened up a discussion guide for this Hack Chat. If you have a question, just add it to the list.

If you can’t make the Hack Chat, don’t worry. We’re going to have a transcript of the entire chat. That should be available here shortly after the chat concludes.

Here’s How To Take Part:

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This hack chat will take place at noon Pacific time on Friday, June 9th. Here’s a fancy time and date converter if you need timezone help.

Log into Hackaday.io, visit that page, and look for the ‘Join this Project’ Button. Once you’re part of the project, the button will change to ‘Team Messaging’, which takes you directly to the Hack Chat.

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: Audio Systems

May 31, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 6 Comments

Join us this Friday for a Hack Chat on Audio Systems. It’s going down June 2 at noon PDT (handy time zone converter thing).

Every Friday, we gather round the campfire with the best in the business to tease out whatever secrets are stored in their mind. This is the Hack Chat, and this week, we’re going to be talking about audio systems with [Dafydd Roche]. Bring your low-distortion volume knobs and porcelain speaker cable risers, this is going to be a good one.

[Dafydd] got his start in electronics in an application for a music degree. He mentioned he’d built a few guitar pedals, which landed him a call from the electronics department at York University. They told him he was a terrible musician, but that he might excel at electronics.

Many years later he’s still going strong with audio applications with Expat Audio, manufacturers of fine preamps. [Dafydd] is also the Audio Strategic Marketing Manager at Dialog, and spends his days arguing with engineers and doing his best to solve customer problems. [Dafydd] has been on The Amp Hour, and has published articles on audio systems.

For this Hack Chat, we’re going to be running the gamut of audio, electronics, and small business. The questions on audio mythbusting are sure to entertain, and we’ll also be discussing audio signal chains and small business production. Bring your questions and put them on the sheet to guide the discussion.

Here’s How To Take Part:

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging.

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: Antiquated Technologies With Fran Blanche

May 24, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 7 Comments

Join us this Friday for a Hack Chat on antiquated technologies.

Every Friday, we round up someone from the hardware scene and sit them down in front of a keyboard to discuss what they’re working on. This week, we’re talking with [Fran Blanche] to discuss ancient technologies, weird electronics, and everything that goes into building a hardware company from the ground up.

Who’s [Fran Blanche], you might ask? She’s a self-taught electronic engineer, artist, musician, photographer, mechanical engineer, and YouTube vlogger. She’s the founder of Frantone Electronics, one of the very first manufacturers of boutique guitar effects. Her Peachfuzz is one of the very, very few original distortion/fuzz circuits out there. She’s given talks at Brown University on the boutique effects industry, worked with the Franklin Institute on the Maillardet Automaton, wandered around the largest musical instrument, taken apart flight hardware from the Saturn V just to see how it works, and she’s been inside the warehouse for the Smithsonian’s Air and Space museum.

With a resume of work this cool, what’s [Fran] working on now? She’s trying to recreate the DSKY from the Apollo Guidance Computer. The DSKY is the user interface for the Apollo Guidance Computer, a wonderful block of aluminum studded with beautiful buttons and electroluminescent displays. For the last few years, her attempts to reproduce a modern DSKY — including the custom segmented EL display — has been on the back burner, but now [Fran] is attempting to raise the money for a reproduction on GoFundMe. I encourage you all to at least look at that GoFundMe campaign.

Here’s How To Take Part:

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging.

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: All About Hardware

May 17, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 2 Comments

Join us this Friday an noon PDT for a Hack Chat that’s all about hardware. We’ll be discussing Open Source hardware, product design, security, manufacturing, manufacturing in China, assembly, crowdfunding, DFM, DFA, and a whole bunch of other three-letter acronyms that make you say WTF.

Every Friday, we bring someone on the cusp of new technologies and interesting devices and invite them into the Hack Chat over on Hackaday.io. This week, we’re sitting down with [Mathieu Stephan], about designing, building, fabricating, and selling hardware.

[Mathieu] has a wealth of experience under his belt. He’s a firmware engineer who is very involved in Open Source, and he’s been alternating between positions ranging from Formula E cars to security engineering for Kudelski, to a Hackaday contributor. He’s the guy behind the Mooltipass, which was created as a project along with the Hackaday community back in 2014. In short, if you want to learn about building a thousand of something and selling them, this is the guy to talk to.

If you’ve ever wanted to know how to prepare a crowdfunding campaign, produce a truly secure device, manage order fulfillment, or have something manufactured in China, this is your chance. We’re going to be taking questions from the community, so if you have something you’d like to talk about, drop your question here.

Here’s How To Take Part:

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging.

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: Tenaya Hurst From Arduino

May 10, 2017 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

Join us this Friday at noon PDT for a Hack Chat with Tenaya Hurst of Arduino. If you’ve been one of the big Maker Faires over the last few years (or innumerable other live events) and stopped by the Arduino area you’ve probably met Tenaya. She is the Education Accounts Manager for Arduino and loves working with wearable electronics.

Come and discuss maker education and the role Arduino is playing in getting our students excited about electronics, and STEAM education in general. Tenaya will also be discussing a new wearable tech kit she’s been working on. We hope to see the gear in person at Bay Area Maker Faire next week.

Here’s How To Take Part:

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging.

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: Chip Gracey From Parallax

May 3, 2017 by Mike Szczys 25 Comments

Learn the ins and outs of multi-core microcontrollers as Chip Gracey leads this week’s Hack Chat on Friday 5/5 at noon PDT. Chip founded Parallax and has now been working for more than a decade on the Propeller 2 design, a microcontroller which has 8 and 16 core options.

When it comes to embedded development, most people think of a single process running. Doing more than one task at a time is an illusion provided by interrupts that stop one part of your program to spend a few cycles on another part before returning. The Propeller 2 has true parallel processing; each core can run its own part of the program. From the embedded engineer’s perspective that makes multiple real-time operations possible. Where things get really interesting is how those cores work together.

Here’s your chance to hear about multi-core embedded first hand, from both the silicon design side and the firmware developer side. Join us for a Parallax Hack Chat this Friday at noon PDT.

Here’s How To Take Part:

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging.

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: The Hackaday Prize

April 27, 2017 by Brian Benchoff No comments

Did you know Hackaday is hosting a fantastic contest to build hardware and software? It’s true! The Hackaday Prize will award hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hackaday community members for building the coolest hardware designed to make a difference in the world.

The Hackaday Prize has many ways to enter, focusing on several themes throughout this year. We’ll be discussing that and opening the floor to questions. Tomorrow, Friday, April 28, at noon, Pacific time, we’re hosting a Hack Chat for the Hackaday Prize over on Hackaday.io.

Our guest host for this chat is [Alberto], creator of the project that won last year’s Hackaday Prize. He’ll be in the Hack Chat telling everyone what he learned from last year’s Hackaday Prize. If we’re lucky, he might even tell us something about what building his project out in the Supply Frame Design Lab is like. It’s all very cool, and it’s going down tomorrow at noon, PDT.

Here’s How To Take Part:

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging.

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

And Tindie, Too!

Next Tuesday, we’re going to have another chat geared toward sellers on Tindie, the online marketplace where anyone can buy or sell DIY hardware.

This time around, we’re talking about Kickstarter. We roped [Zach Dunham] into this one. He’s the Design & Technology Outreach Lead at Kickstarter, and by every measure a really cool guy.

[Zach] will discuss the ins and outs of turning a hardware project into a Kickstarter campaign. Surprisingly, there’s a significant overlap between Tindie sellers and Kickstarter — some sellers test their ideas on Tindie and build up to doing a crowd funding campaign. Others complete a campaign and then come over to Tindie to sell excess inventory or second runs. Either way, there’s a great opportunity for market verification or simply getting your gear into the hands of those who want to use it.

If you want to get in on the Kickstarter chat action, head on over to the Tindie Dog Park. Request to join the project and show up in the chat sometime before 1pm Pacific on Tuesday, May 2.