[Chris Anderson] Joins The Hackaday Prize As An Orbital Judge

August 14, 2014 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

[Chris Anderson] has had many labels in his lifetime: Punk rocker. Technology editor. Best selling author. UAV enthusiast. CEO. He now will also be able to add “Space Enabler” to that list as he joins The Hackaday Prize as an “Orbital Judge”. He will be on the panel choosing the Grand Prize winner (space-goer) from the list of five finalists. He joins the cast of “Launch Judges” who will be narrowing from 50 semifinalists down to 5.

Chances are that you already know [Chris] in one way or another. His book Free: The Future of a Radical New Price was an early analysis of how free and freemium models are changing the way that businesses connect with customers. On the hardware side of things he is the author of The Long Tail and Makers, both of which discuss the specialty hardware market that we so often explore around here. He has been an editor for Nature, Science, and The Economist. He served as the Editor in Chief of Wired for nearly 10 years, and most recently he started DIYdrones, the 50K+ member community that works on open source software and hardware for UAVs and RC controlled flyers. This spawned a company called 3DRobotics, of which he is the co-founder and CEO. 3DR continues to push the frontier of Open Source Hardware for hobbyists and professional drone users.

If you’ve been on the fence until now, this should convince you to take an afternoon to enter your project idea. You have until August 20th to document your concept of an Open, Connected device. Entry is easy and requires only that you outline your idea with a 2-minute video, proposed system diagram, and four project logs which may discuss different aspects of your plan. If you make the first cut of 50 in August, you’ll already be a winner of at the least a $1000 grab-bag of electronics. You’ll also be well on your way having [Chris] study your work as you advance to a functional prototype in November.

Want a step-by-step view of putting together an entry in under 4 minutes?

Judge Spotlight: Andrew “Bunnie” Huang

July 22, 2014 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

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This week’s Judge Spotlight focuses on [Andrew “Bunnie” Huang]. If you haven’t heard of him you need to pay more attention. His hacker cred goes way back to the original Xbox, which he reverse engineered and laid bare its security flaws. Maintaining his hacker spirit he went on to design and hack the Chumby. More recently he took on the challenge of developing and Open laptop called Novena. All of this while continuing to explore and experiment with all kinds of electronics, posting about his adventures for those of us that care about an electronics ecosystem that doesn’t shut out the user from tinkering with the hardware. Join us after the break for our conversation with The Hackaday Prize judge [Bunnie Huang].

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Judge Spotlight: Joe Grand

July 15, 2014 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

We’ve been fascinated by [Joe Grand] for years. His early talks at DEFCON, and extensive work designing badges for it, helped to put the conference on our radar. We’ve seen many pieces of hardware come from his company Grand Idea Studio over the years, and of course there was the television show Prototype This! which must have been way too awesome for some TV exec to allow it to continue.

We asked [Joe], who is a judge for The Hackaday Prize, a few a questions. He sent back the video response embedded below. He talks about what he’s doing these days, the hacker community in Boston, shows off some hardware he uses when teaching about security, and much more.

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Judge Spotlight: Elecia White

July 8, 2014 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

If you’re a fan of the Embedded podcast you know her voice well. If not, you need to check out the show! Of course we’re talking about [Elecia White], who spent her recent holiday answering our questions.

She’s an accomplished embedded systems engineer — she literally wrote the book on it. We’re delighted that [Elecia] agreed to lend us her skill and experience as a judge for The Hackaday Prize!

We find that embedded engineers come from all manner of backgrounds. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got into the field?

I majored in a combination of applied computer science and theoretical systems engineering: my classes were all about programming, C, Fourier, and control loops. I had no idea I’d built a major that would be perfect for low level embedded development.

After school, I went to Hewlett-Packard. I was in the network server division, monitoring servers, writing drivers, and getting ever closer to the hardware. I moved over to HP Labs’ BioScience division to do real embedded work, though I didn’t understand that at the time (yay for a hiring manager who did!). Once I made a motor move, well, it was all over for me. I loved having my software touch the physical world. Happily, the environment was great and the electrical engineers were very patient.

Do whimsical embedded challenges ever come to mind? For instance, do you ever flip on the TV and think to yourself: “some day I’m going to reprogram the uC and write something that works!”?

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Judge Spotlight: Dave Jones

July 1, 2014 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

This week’s Judge Spotlight features [Dave Jones] who posted a video reponse to our slate of questions. If you’ve spent much time around here chances are you know of [Dave] quite well. He is the man behind the EEVblog and also hosts The Amp Hour podcast along with [Chris Gammell].

It’s great to pick [Dave’s] brain a bit. He’s seen a lot during his career, with insights on professional engineering from the point of view of job seeker, employer, job interviewer, and more. His time with the EEVblog and Amp Hour have furthered his experience with looks inside of all manner of equipment, adventures in crowd funding, and interactions with a multitude of hardware start-ups. Check out his video, as well as a list of the questions with timestamps, after the jump.

We’re sure you know by now, he’s judging The Hackaday Prize which will award a trip to space and hundreds of other prizes for showing off your connected device built using Open Design.

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Judge Spotlight: Limor “Ladyada” Fried

June 24, 2014 by Mike Szczys 52 Comments

We sent off a list of questions, just like every week, and [Ladyada] offered to do a video response. How awesome is that? Not only did she answer our questions, but she talked at length for several of them. We’re biased, but her explanation about Adafruit’s manufacturing processes and options for home hackers to get boards spun was a real treat.

Perhaps we should step back for a minute though. In case you don’t know [Limor Fried], aka [Ladyada], is a judge for The Hackaday Prize which will award a trip into space and hundreds of other prizes for hackers who build connected devices that use Open Design (Open Hardware and Open Source Software). She’s the founder of Adafruit Industries, an MIT double-grad, and all around an awesome engineer!

Check out the video after the break. We’ve included a list of the questions and the timestamps at which they are answered.

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Judge Spotlight: Jack Ganssle

June 10, 2014 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

This week we’re getting to know The Hackaday Prize Judge [Jack Ganssle] a little better. His depth of experience with embedded systems is formidable, and recently I was very interested to learn about his mission to improve the quality of the product in the embedded code universe. We’ll get to that in a little bit, but I wanted to start off with [Jack’s] answer to my final question.

Is there anything else you’d like our audience to know about you?

My entry into this field was when the first 8 bit processor (the 8008) came out, and still find it endlessly fascinating. I write a lot about embedded topics, and give talks and seminars, on all of the continents except Antarctica (so far!). We live in heavily-wooded Finksburg, MD, which is just stunning this time of year, and, since my office is in the house, the commute is pretty tolerable. Other passions include sailing; I wrote an on-line book (www.ganssle.com/jack) about racing alone across the Atlantic. Great trip, other than losing the boat.