Hackaday Links: July 7, 2024

July 7, 2024 by Dan Maloney 7 Comments

Begun, the Spectrum Wars have. First, it was AM radio getting the shaft (last item) and being yanked out of cars for the supposed impossibility of peaceful coexistence with ~~rolling broadband EMI generators~~ EVs. That battle has gone back and forth for the last year or two here in the US, with lawmakers even getting involved at one point (first item) by threatening legislation to make terrestrial AM radio available in every car sold. We’re honestly not sure where it stands now in the US, but now the Swiss seem to be entering the fray a little up the dial by turning off all their analog FM broadcasts at the end of the year. This doesn’t seem to be related to interference — after all, no static at all — but more from the standpoint of reclaiming spectrum that’s no longer turning a profit. There are apparently very few analog FM receivers in use in Switzerland anymore, with everyone having switched to DAB+ or streaming to get their music fix, and keeping FM transmitters on the air isn’t cheap, so the numbers are just stacked against the analog stations. It’s hard to say if this is a portent of things to come in other parts of the world, but it certainly doesn’t bode well for the overall health of terrestrial broadcasting. “First they came for AM radio, and I did nothing because I’m not old enough to listen to AM radio. But then they came for analog FM radio, and when I lost my album-oriented classic rock station, I realized that I’m actually old enough for AM.”

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Remoticon 2021 // Vaibhav Chhabra And The M19 Collective Make One Million Faceshields

March 10, 2022 by Arya Voronova 5 Comments

[Vaibhav Chhabra], the co-founder of Maker’s Asylum hackerspace in Mumbai, India, starts his Remoticon talk by telling a short story about how the hackerspace rose to its current status. Born out of frustration with a collapsed office ceiling, having gone through eight years of moving and reorganizations, it accumulated a loyal participant base – not unusual with hackerspaces that are managed well. This setting provided a perfect breeding ground for the M19 effort when COVID-19 reached India, mixing “what can we do” and “what should we do” inquiries into a perfect storm and starting the 49 day work session that swiftly outgrew the hackerspace, both physically and organizationally.

When the very first two weeks of the Infinite Two Week Quarantine Of 2020 were announced in India, a group of people decided to wait it out at the hackerspace instead of confining themselves to their homes. As various aspects of our society started crashing after the direct impact of COVID-19, news came through – that of a personal protective equipment shortage, especially important for frontline workers. Countries generally were not prepared when it came to PPE, and India was no different. Thus, folks in Maker’s Asylum stepped up, finding themselves in a perfect position to manufacture protective equipment when nobody else was prepared to help.

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Indian Makers Respond To The COVID-19 Pandemic By Producing Oxygen Concentrators

April 26, 2021 by Jenny List 56 Comments

We’ve all spent the last year or more under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, and though some of us may have been vaccinated or come through its various waves it remains far from over. One of the hardest-hit parts of the world at the moment is in India, where health services are struggling to maintain adequate oxygen supply such is the demand for it from sick patients.

India’s hacker and maker community have risen to the challenge and done their bit to supply needed resources, and fresh from last year’s PPE manufacturing efforts a group from the Makers Asylum hackerspace in Goa have launched upon a fresh challenge. They aim to start producing the established open-source OxiKit oxygen concentrator in the Indian hackerspace community using locally manufactured parts, and they’ve launched a crowdfunding effort to cover their development, prototyping, and certification work.

The oxygen concentrator project builds on Makers Asylum’s experience last year as part of an extremely successful network of makerspaces producing PPE, which demonstrates that they have the resources, logistics, and ability to take on a project of this size. The OxiKit is no hare-brained contraption but an established and successful design that is already at work, so we believe that this project has a good chance of success. It’s close to home for Hackaday too, and one of the people involved with it is our colleague [Anool Mahidharia].

In a global pandemic only a global response can overcome the incredible challenges before us. For that reason we’d like to urge you to take a look at the Makers Asylum page wherever you are, and if you can, support it.

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Rapidly Prototyping Prosthetics, Braille, And Wheelchairs

February 23, 2018 by Anool Mahidharia 4 Comments

We live in an amazing time where the availability of rapid prototyping tools and expertise to use them has expanded faster than at any other time in human history. We now have an amazing ability to quickly bring together creative solutions — perfect examples of this are the designs for specialized arm prosthetics, Braille printing, and custom wheelchair builds that came together last week.

Earlier this month we published details about the S.T.E.A.M. Fabrikarium program taking place at Maker’s Asylum in Mumbai. The five-day event was designed to match up groups of makers with mentors to build assistive devices which help improve the condition of differently-abled people.

The participants were split into eight teams and they came up with some amazing results at the end of the five-day program.

Hands-On: Prosthetic Designs That Go Beyond

Three teams worked on projects based on Bionico – a myoelectric prosthesis

DIY Prosthetic Socket – a Human Machine Interface : [Mahendra Pitav aka Mahen] lost his left arm during the series of train bomb blasts in Mumbai in 2006, which killed 200 and injured over 700 commuters. He uses a prosthetic arm which is essentially a three-pronged claw that is cable activated using his other good arm. While it is useful, the limited functionality restricted him from doing many simple things. The DIY Prosthetic socket team worked with [Mahen] and [Nico Huchet] from MyHumanKit (who lost his right arm in an accident 16 years back), and fabricated a prosthetic forearm for [Mahen] with a modular, 3D printed accessory socket. Embedded within the arm is a rechargeable power source that provides 5V USB output at the socket end to power the devices that are plugged in. It also provides a second port to help recharge mobile phones. Also embedded in the arm was an IR reflective sensor that can be used to sense muscle movements and help trigger specific functions of add-on circuits, for example servos.

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S.T.E.A.M. Fabrikarium Builds Assistive Tech In Mumbai

February 7, 2018 by Anool Mahidharia 3 Comments

Starting this weekend, a group of 65 invited Maker’s from various disciplines, along with 20 awesome Mentors, will gather at the Maker’s Asylum in Mumbai for the five day S.T.E.A.M. Fabrikarium program. The aim is to improve the capabilities of the differently-abled by building and expanding upon existing open source projects. At the same time, the teams will learn more about rapid prototyping techniques.

Among the participants will be at least 15 differently-abled people who will be a part of the whole process of learning as well as providing their inputs on the problems being tackled. Participants have an opportunity to understand how design thinking works and work on improving the existing designs.

Participants will team up and choose from five existing open source projects:

Bionico – a myoelectric prosthesis
Braille rap – using a 3D printer as a braille embosser.
e-Trotti – a low-cost, removable electrical assistance for wheelchair use, made from electric scooter parts.
Project Shiva – customized and beautiful upper limb prosthetics.
Flying Wheelchair – a wheelchair specially adapted for use while paragliding.

The Asylum’s fully-fledged workshop facilities offer a wood shop, a laser cutter, a CNC, several 3D printers, electronics tools and instruments and an infectious environment that will allow the participants to learn a lot during the five short days. While working on prototyping their projects, all teams will have constant access to a team of mentors and industry experts who will help solve their problems and give guidance when necessary.

The Maker’s Asylum includes fully-fledged workshop facilities for the build process, and the team succeeded in bringing onboard a slew of industrial partners and supporters to ensure that the program can be offered to the participants for free. That is a great way to bring makerspaces, makers, and the industry together in a symbiotic program that benefits society. The program was developed in collaboration with My Human Kit, a company from France who selected the five open-source projects mentioned above. The Fabrikarium is made possible via Bonjour-India, which fosters Indo-French partnerships and exchanges.

Hackaday is proud to be a part of this program and will be present to help document all of the awesome projects. Participants will share their progress on Hackaday.io, so watch for updates over the coming week. To get an idea of what to expect at the S.T.E.A.M. Fabrikarium 2018, check out the video from an earlier version embedded below.

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Hackaday Prize Worldwide : New Delhi Kicad + Show And Tell

July 28, 2015 by Anool Mahidharia 5 Comments

While Mumbai and Bengaluru have an active and large hacker community, New Delhi, India’s capital, seems to have leapfrogged ahead when it comes to hackerspaces – four at last count. So when the latest one in town, Maker’s Asylum, opened it’s doors last month, we decided to put together a hacker congregation to bring the community together and introduce them to the Hackaday Prize. Having already done Hackaday Prize bring-a-hack events in Mumbai and Bengaluru, we thought of doing something more substantial – a day long KiCad EDA workshop followed in the evening by a Show-n-Tell brag show.

Hackaday’s [Matt Berggren a.k.a. @technolomaniac] has done a couple of “Design a PCB from zero to WiFi with Hackaday!” Eagle EDA workshops recently. He designed a simple breakout board that allowed connecting an ESP-01 module to the USB port via an USB-UART cable with level conversion, pull up resistors and push button switches to make it easy to program. We had a slightly delayed start, so I quickly rushed through the awesome presentation that [Matt] has prepared, running through the “What is a PCB?” section and skipping the rest. We also discussed a couple of candidate designs for the day’s workshop – a pair of ATtiny line following robots, a simple Attiny SmartLED controller, but eventually, everyone got excited when I mentioned “ESP-8266” !

“What is a PCB?”

KiCad workshop

A helping hand

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Hackaday Prize Worldwide : Maker’s Asylum New Delhi

July 9, 2015 by Anool Mahidharia 1 Comment

Join me on July 18th for Hackaday Prize Worldwide: New Delhi — a KiCad workshop, hardware show & tell, and a chance for you to meet other hackers and makers in the area.

Hacker spaces are on the rise in India, a development that really excites me. When I helped co-found India’s first, community Hacker Space – Maker’s Asylum – in Mumbai, things were pretty lonely. And this was less than 2 years back in 2013 November. Last month, we opened New Delhi’s latest, and the Maker’s Asylum’s second space. There’s already a couple of other hacker spaces in New Delhi, and you can now find hacker spaces in Mumbai, New Delhi, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai, Cochin, Meerut, Kolkatta, Surat, Ahmedabad, Dharamsala, Hyderabad, Ramachandrapuram – and the list continues to grow.

To help build the community, and to bring the opportunity presented by the Hackaday Prize to local hackers, I hosted Hackaday Prize Worldwide events at the Maker’s Asylum in Mumbai and at Workbench Projects in Bangalore. This month, on July 18th, I’ll do another Hackaday Prize Worldwide event at the Maker’s Asylum in New Delhi. I love talking about, and supporting, Open Source Hardware at every opportunity. So for this event, I’ll be doing a fairly long and detailed workshop on KiCad – the awesome, open source EDA tool – lasting several hours. At the end of the day long workshop, I hope to get fellow hackers to complete a design that can be sent off for PCB fabrication. After a short break in the evening, we will have a Show-n-Tell, getting the assembled folks to show off the projects they are working on. There are a number of them who have submitted entires for the Hackaday Prize, so it will be interesting to hear them talk about their experience and share tips and ideas.

We can hold only a limited number of folks at the event, and slots are quickly filling up. So, if you’re in New Delhi or somewhere close by, do RSVP at this link quickly. Looking forward to an interesting event. Check out some pictures from the opening party of the New Delhi Maker’s Asylum after the break.

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