Hack Chat

234 Articles

Chatting About The State Of Hacker-Friendly AR Gear

June 2, 2023 by 13 Comments

There are many in the hacker community who would love to experiment with augmented reality (AR), but the hardware landscape isn’t exactly overflowing with options that align with our goals and priorities. Commercial offerings, from Google’s Glass to the Microsoft HoloLens and Magic Leap 2 are largely targeting medical and aerospace customers, and have price tags to match. On the hobbyist side of the budgetary spectrum we’re left with various headsets that let you slot in a standard smartphone, but like their virtual reality (VR) counterparts, they can hardly compare with purpose-built gear.

But there’s hope — Brilliant Labs are working on AR devices that tick all of our boxes: affordable, easy to interface with, and best of all, developed to be as open as possible from the start. Admittedly their first product, Monocle, it somewhat simplistic compared to what the Big Players are offering. But for our money, we’d much rather have something that’s built to be hacked and experimented with. What good is all the latest features and capabilities when you can’t even get your hands on the official SDK?

This week we invited Brilliant Lab’s Head of Engineering Raj Nakaraja to the Hack Chat to talk about AR, Monocle, and the future of open source in this space that’s dominated by proprietary hardware and software.

Continue reading “Chatting About The State Of Hacker-Friendly AR Gear” →

Open-Source AR Hack Chat

May 29, 2023 by No comments

Join us on Wednesday, May 31 at noon Pacific for the Open-Source AR Hack Chat with Raj Nakaraja!

We may live in a soup of electromagnetic waves that range in wavelength from the diameter of Jupiter down to a fraction of the radius of a hydrogen atom, but our eyeballs have evolved to only let us sense a tiny slice of that spectrum. That’s too bad, really, because there’s a lot going on in the rest of the spectrum that could potentially inform our ROYGBIV-centric view of the world. Think of the possibilities of being able to see UV the way an insect does, or being able to watch the radiation pattern of an antenna and make adjustments on the fly. Sounds like a job for augmented reality.

join-hack-chatIf seeing the world with different eyes sounds as cool to you as it does to us, you won’t want to miss Raj Nakaraja’s stop by the Hack Chat. Raj is head of engineering at Brilliant Labs, an augmented reality company that’s looking to bring AR into the mainstream. They’ve got some cool ideas about AR, and we’re going to take the opportunity to talk to Raj about open-source AR in general, Brilliant’s products specifically, and how AR can be incorporated into not only our projects, but into our lives as well.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, May 31 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a handy time zone converter.

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 Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

Learning 3D Printing Best Practices From A Pro

May 26, 2023 by 13 Comments

It might seem like 3D printing is a thoroughly modern technology, but the fact is, it’s been used in the industry for decades. The only thing that’s really new is that the printers have become cheap and small enough for folks like us to buy one and plop it on our workbench. So why not take advantage of all that knowledge accumulated by those who’ve been working in the 3D printing field, more accurately referred to as additive manufacturing, since before MakerBot stopped making wooden printers?

That’s why we asked Eric Utley, an applications engineer with Protolabs, to stop by the Hack Chat this week. With over 15 years of experience in additive manufacturing, it’s fair to say he’s seen the technology go through some pretty big changes. Hes worked on everything from the classic stereolithography (SLA) to the newer Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) printers, with a recent focus on printing in metals such as Inconel and aluminum. Compared to the sort of 3D printers he’s worked with, we’re basically playing with hot, semi-melted, LEGOs — but that doesn’t mean some of the lessons he’s learned can’t be applied at the hobbyist level. Continue reading “Learning 3D Printing Best Practices From A Pro” →

Design For 3D Printing Hack Chat

May 22, 2023 by No comments

Join us on Wednesday, May 24 at noon Pacific for the Design for 3D Printing Hack Chat with Eric Utley!

Like a lot of enabling technologies, 3D printing has had a strange trajectory. It started out as a laboratory oddity, moved on to industrial applications, and finally filtered down to the DIY set, first as scratch-built machines and later as inexpensive commodity printers that can be found almost anywhere. Pretty much everyone who needs a 3D printer now has one.

Not all additive manufacturing technologies are created equal, though, and there are plenty of applications for 3D printed parts where FDM just won’t cut it. Luckily, any of us can get access to the latest and greatest manufacturing technologies through job houses that specialize in everything from metal 3D printing to sheet metal fabrication, CNC machining, and even small-run injection molding. We may not be able to afford any of the machines, but in a lot of cases we can afford to rent time of them and get high-quality parts quickly.

join-hack-chatBut that raises another question: Is my design ready for printing? What works on an Ender on your shop bench might not quite translate to the latest SLS printer, and sending off an iffy design could just end up wasting time and money. Whether you’re sending your designs out and running them up on your own printer, you want to know what you’re doing will work. That’s why we’ve asked Eric Utley, an applications engineer with Protolabs, to stop by the Hack Chat. With 12 years of additive manufacturing experience, he’ll be able to help you tune up your designs and make sure they’re ready to print.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, May 24 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a handy time zone converter.

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 Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

Daniel Valuch Chats About CERN’s High Caliber Hacking

March 3, 2023 by 9 Comments

For those of us who like to crawl over complex systems, spending hours or even days getting hardware and software to work in concert, working at places like NASA or CERN seems like a dream job. Imagine having the opportunity to turn a wrench on the Space Shuttle or the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — not only do you get to spend some quality time with some of the most advanced machines ever produced, you can be secure in the knowledge that your work will further humanity’s scientific understanding of the universe around us.

Or at least, that’s what we assume it must feel like as outsiders. But what about somebody who’s actually lived it? What does an actual employee, somebody who’s had to wake up in the middle of the night because some obscure system has gone haywire and stalled a machine that cost taxpayers $4.75 billion to build, think about working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research? Continue reading “Daniel Valuch Chats About CERN’s High Caliber Hacking” →

Life At CERN Hack Chat

February 27, 2023 by No comments

Join us on Wednesday, March 1st at noon Pacific for the Life at CERN Hack Chat with Daniel Valuch!

You know the story — work is just…work. The daily grind, the old salt mine, the place where you trade your time and talent for the money you need to do other stuff in the few hours you’re not at work. It’s not the same for everyone, of course, but chances are good that just getting through the day is a familiar enough experience even for someone who’s currently working his or her dream job.

We’re going to go out on a limb here a bit, but it really seems like working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), has got to be a dream gig for almost any engineer. CERN is the top place in the world for particle physics research and home to such ludicrously large machines as the famous Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The facilities and instruments at CERN attract tens of thousands of researchers from all over the world every year who produce multiple petabytes of data; perhaps not coincidentally, it’s also the place where Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web. Thanks, Sir Tim!

join-hack-chatTo say that being an electrical engineer at CERN might be a little like dropping a kid off at a combination candy store/bouncy house/petting zoo is probably not an understatement. When the biggest of Big Science is always on the menu, it must be hard to focus on this cool project or that new instrument. Then again, we’re just guessing — maybe it’s all still “just work.” Luckily, we found someone to ask: Daniel Valuch, currently an electrical engineer who is rapidly closing in on 25 years at the fabled institution.

You’ll recall Daniel from some of his side projects, like the most accurate pendulum clock in the world, or his super-clicky pseudorandom number generator. He’s also teaching at the university level, and we’ve seen him give back to the community with his work for the “ZENIT in Electronics” contest, an annual STEM event that’s currently in its 39th year of inspiring students. Daniel is going to stop by the Hack Chat so we can pick his brain about what it’s like to work at CERN, what kind of projects he’s worked on, and what a career in Big Science is all about.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, March 1 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a handy time zone converter.

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 Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

[Featured image: CERN, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons]

Picking A Laser Hack Chat

February 20, 2023 by 25 Comments

Join us on Wednesday, February 22 at noon Pacific for the Picking a Laser Hack Chat with Jonathan Schwartz!

You’ve got to admit that it’s a pretty cool world to live in that presents a problem like, “Which laser cutter should I buy?” It wasn’t all that long ago that decisions on laser purchases were strictly in the realm of Big Science, and the decision was driven as much by spending grant money as by the specifics of the application. If you were in need of a laser back then, chances are good you had some deep pockets, or at least access to someone else’s pockets.

Fast forward a couple of decades or so and buying a laser is an entirely different exercise. Lasers have become a commodity, and finding the right one depends entirely on your use cases. Lasers are no longer jealously guarded laboratory instruments, but workhorses on the vanguard of the desktop manufacturing revolution. They engrave, they cut, they melt — in short, they do a LOT of work. And it’s up to you to choose the right laser for the job.

join-hack-chatTo help us sort all this out and come up with a plan for figuring out the best laser for any use case, we’ve invited Jonathan Schwartz back on the Hack Chat. Jon dropped by back in March of 2021 to share his wealth of laser experience thanks to his laser-cutting business. This time around we’re going to focus — err, concentrate — oops, drill down — oh, whatever! — on the more practical aspects of buying a laser. We’ll talk about laser types, fiber lasers, applications vs. laser specs — anything you can think of. If you have questions about buying a laser, we’ll have answers!

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, February 22 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a handy time zone converter.

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 Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.