Hackaday Links: November 9, 2014

November 9, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 18 Comments

After many years of searching, [Dan Wood] finally got his hands on something he’s wanted for the past twenty-two years: an Amiga 4000. No, it’s not the queen bee of Amiga land – that honor would fall to the 68060-equipped 4000T, but [Dan]’s 4000 is decked out. It has a 256MB RAM expansion, Ethernet, USB, and a Picasso IV graphics card that gives it better resolution and color depth than most modern laptops.

[Pistonpedal] has a fully automatic pneumatic can crusher that is far too cool to be wasted on a case of Keystone. A funnel at the top guides the cans in to be crushed one at a time and ejected into a garbage can underneath. Great for recycling.

Coming over from ‘normal’ programming into the world of embedded development? [AndreJ] has the AVR C Macro for you. It’s a great way to get away from all those ~=, |=, and &=s that don’t make any sense at all.

[CNLohr] has a reputation for running Minecraft servers on things that don’t make any sense at all. The latest build is a light up redstone ore block equipped with an ESP8266 WiFi chip.

Oh, the Hackaday overlords and underlings are in Munich for this little shindig we’re doing. If you in town for Electronica come on down. If you have a copy of Neil Young’s Trans, bring it to the party.

Hackaday’s Most Excellent Munich Adventure

November 7, 2014 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

Bags are packed… it’s insane the amount of random electronics I carry with me on a trip. But who doesn’t want to do some prototyping on the plane?

In case you haven’t heard, the Hackaday Crew is headed to Munich. The coming week is Electronica. We’ll be prowling “the world’s leading trade show for electronic components” looking for the jewels of interest to the hacking community. Watch our Twitter feed for updates on those adventures.

But of course, Thursday the 13th is all about Hackaday Munich. The place will be packed! During the afternoon we feature hands-on hacking of embedded systems. The hardware we’re supplying is already spoken for. But you should bring along your own dev boards to hack on, or just come to watch the fun.

Get a ticket to The Hackaday Prize party. This includes a talk by [Sprite_TM], the announcement of the Grand Prize winner for the 2014 Hackaday Prize, followed by a party with music by [DJ Muallen]. Nobody should miss this event so please help get the word out. See you there!

Hackaday Munich: DJ Muallem, Workshop Info, And More

October 30, 2014 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

DJ Muallem

If you don’t have your ticket to the Hackaday Prize Party at Hackaday Munich you better scramble for one. We are excited to announce that [muallem] is the DJ for the event. He is the driving force behind the music at the Bob Beaman Club in Munich and is sure to deliver a set to remember. Don’t take our word for it, we’ve been cranking his Soundcloud channel for a couple of days now and it’s hard to wait the two weeks left before the party starts.

Workshop details whether you have a ticket or not

For those able to show up during the afternoon we have started to post details about the workshops. One point of confusion has been the All-day tickets versus the Workshop tickets. Here’s a rundown:

Workshop tickets were limited based on the hardware we are able to bring to the event with us.
All day tickets are welcome to participate in the workshops if you bring your own hardware to hack. Of course you are also welcome to come and watch, visit, or work on a completely separate hardware hack of your own!

If you have a ticket you’ll want to check out the details about getting a head start (by pre-loading embedded development software and learning a bit about the challenges). If you don’t have a workshop ticket we’re recommending hardware you can bring in order to participate.

So far we’ve posted about the Roboto and Moog workshops but will add details about Reverse Engineering and Computer Vision workshops soon!

The Hackaday Prize: Space Trip or Cash?

There has been a brewing debate about whether the winner of The Hackaday Prize (who will be revealed live at Hackaday Munich) will take the Trip to Space or grab the $196,418 in cash. Tell us which what you would do and why.

Who Will Win The Hackaday Prize? Judging Begins Tonight

October 27, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 28 Comments

It’s been a long road for each of the five finalists; but after tonight they can breathe easy. The last judging round of the 2014 Hackaday Prize begins at 11:50pm PDT.

Each finalist must finish documenting their project by that time as a cached version of each of the project pages will be sent off to our orbital judges. Joining the panel that judged the semifinal round is [Chris Anderson], CEO of 3D Robotics, founder of DIY Drones, former Editor-in-Chief of Wired, and technology visionary. These nine are charged with deciding who has built a project cool enough to go to space.

In case you’ve forgotten, the final five projects selected by our team of launch judges are:

ChipWhisperer, an embedded hardware security research device for hardware penetration testing.
Open Source Science Tricorder, a realization of science fiction technology made possible by today’s electronics hardware advances.
PortableSDR, is a compact Software Defined Radio module that was originally designed for Ham Radio operators.
ramanPi, a 3D printed Raman Spectrometer built around a Raspberry Pi.
SatNOGS, a global network of satellite ground stations.

The ultimate results of the judging will be revealed at The Hackaday Prize party we’re holding in Munich during Electronica 2014. We’re also holding an Embedded Hardware Workshop with Moog synths, robots, hacked routers, computer vision, and a name that’s official-sounding enough to convince your boss to give you the day off work. We hope to see you there!

Hackaday Munich Speaker: Sprite_TM

October 20, 2014 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

Plans for Hackaday Munich are coming along quite nicely. Today we’re happy to announce that [Sprite_TM] will be speaking at the event. Click that link above and make sure you get your tickets for November 13th. You can do some hands-on hacking at the Embedded Hardware Workshop, hear the talks, find out which of the five finalists will be the grand prize winner, and enjoy The Hackaday Prize Party along with the Hackaday crew.

You may also know [Sprite_TM] as [Jeroen Domburg], one of the judges for The Hackaday Prize. That’s him on the left in the image above (we love a good avatar!). If you follow Hackaday, you should already be thrilled about meeting him and hearing his talk. The last talk we remember reading about was an epic hard drive controller hack. Just last month we saw a well-executed clock radio overhaul from him. While we’re on the topic, his micro-bots were a spectacular project.

[Sprite_TM] has also offered to help out with the reverse engineering workshop. We’re hard at work making sure everything is in place for those afternoon hacking events. As we solidify details we’ll be adding workshop pages (and emailing those already registered for Hackaday Munich) to let everyone know what to expect. We can report that we have shipped [Sprite_TM] a Bus Pirate so that he can be familiar with it. This will be the primary tool provided for this particular workshop.

The entire Hackaday crew is looking forward to it. See you there!

Hackaday Munich — Get Your Ticket Now!

October 16, 2014 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

If you’re anywhere remotely near Munich in November you’re not going to want to miss this. Hackaday is throwing our first European event! The fun runs from 12:30-23:30 on Thursday, November 13th, 2014.

Take the afternoon off of work

Tell your boss this is professional development, then grab all your hacking gear and head on down to Technikum at the Munich Kultfabrik.

Our set of workshops will test your embedded skills whether you’re a beginner or seasoned veteran. These include controlling small robots, working with audio processing from a Moog synth, reverse engineering some mystery hardware, and trying your hand at machine vision.

Try win the afternoon’s challenges. Implement the fastest and most reliable robot brain, design the best Moog synth add-on circuit. Or prove your logic skills by coding a perfect Computer Vision game solver. We’ll bring some prizes for those that show the most clever and impressive skill.

Take in the talks and learn the winner of The Hackaday Prize

Beginning at 19:00 we present a couple of talks about embedded hardware sure to impress the most discerning of hackers. Immediately following we will announce the Grand Prize winner of the 2014 Hackaday Prize. This Open Hardware build is the project that made it through more than 800 entries to secure a trip into space and eternal recognition from the Hackaday community.

Finish the day with a party

Finally, we’ll dim the lights and turn up the music for The Hackaday Prize Party. Enjoy some food and beverages, get yourself 3D scanned, try your hand at some vintage video games, and enjoy the company of the Hackaday Community. In attendance will be [Mike Szczys], [Brian Benchoff], [Aleksandar Bradic], [Jasmine Brackett], and [Ben Delarre].

We’ll see you there!

Get Ready For Hackaday Munich By Attending Make Munich

October 2, 2014 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

Need something to get you revved up for the Hackaday get-together in Munich next month? Don’t miss out on this year’s Make Munich.

The two-day festival will be held in Munich on November 1st and 2nd. Last year there were about 2500 in attendance and this year is shaping up to be even bigger! Wander through the exhibits to see what others have been building during their spare time. You’ll see everything from 3D printing, to custom electronics, crafts, art pieces, talks, and more. What a wonderful way to draw inspiration for the projects you want to pull off this winter!

What’s that you say? You have something to show off at Make Munich? You could always just carry it around with you but maybe it’s better to apply for a booth or to give a talk.

Seeing all that Make Munich has to offer should get you excited about doing some hands on hacking and you’ll have the chance just a couple of weeks later. The Hackaday crew is hard at work planning our own afternoon hackathon and evening party. Block out your calendar on Thursday, November 13th. We’re not quite ready to give away free tickets but watch the front page for an announcement soon!

We’re lucky to have a lot of people in the Munich area helping get the word out. A special thanks to [Nils Hitze] who is organizing Make Munich and has already connected us with a lot of interesting parts of the hacker community in the area.