These Are The 100 Finalists In The Hackaday Prize

November 2, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 3 Comments

The Hackaday Prize is the greatest hardware competition on the planet. It’s the Academy Awards of Open Hardware, and over the last few years we’ve been doing it, we’ve seen literally tens of projects that have gone from an idea to a prototype to a finished project to a saleable product. It’s the greatest success story the Open Hardware community has.

Over the last eight months, we’ve been deep in the weeds with this year’s Hackaday Prize. It’s five challenges, with twenty winners per challenge. That’s one hundred projects that will make it to the semifinals in the hopes of becoming the greatest project this year. Only one will make it, but truthfully they all deserve it. These are the one hundred finalists in the Hackaday Prize, all truly awesome projects but only one will walk home with the Grand Prize. Continue reading “These Are The 100 Finalists In The Hackaday Prize” →

Video Quick Bit: The Best DIY Musical Instruments

November 1, 2018 by Brian Benchoff No comments

The Hackaday Prize is almost over, and soon we’ll know the winners of the greatest hardware competition on the planet. A few weeks ago, we wrapped up the last challenge in the Hackaday Prize, the Musical Instrument Challenge. This is our challenge to build something that goes beyond traditional music instrumentation. Majenta’s back again looking at the coolest projects in the Musical Instrument Challenge in the Hackaday Prize.

We’re old-school hardware hackers here, and when you think about building your own drum machine, there’s really nothing more impressive than building one out of an Atari 2600. That’s what [John Sutley] did with his Syndrum project. It’s a custom cartridge for an Atari with a fancy ZIF socket. Of course, you need some way to trigger those drum sounds, so [John] is using an Arduino connected to the controller port as a sort-of MIDI-to-Joystick bridge.

If you want more retro consoles turned into musical instruments, look no further than [Aristides]’ DMG-01 Ukulele. It’s a ukulele with a 3D printed neck, bolted onto the original ‘brick’ Game Boy. Yes, it works as a ukulele, but that’s not the cool part. There are electronics inside that sense each individual string and turn it into a distorted chiptune assault on the ears. Just awesome.

How about a unique, new musical instrument? That’s what [Tim] is doing with Stylish!, a wearable music synthesizer. It’s based heavily on a stylophone, but with a few interesting twists. It’s built around an STM32, so there are a lot of options for what this instrument sounds like, and it’s all wrapped up in a beautiful enclosure. It’s some of the best work we’ve seen in this year’s Musical Instrument Challenge.

The Hackaday Prize is almost over, and on Saturday we’ll be announcing the winners at this year’s Hackaday Superconference. Tune in to the live stream to see which project will walk away with the grand prize of $50,000!

The Solution To DJs Playing Their MacBooks

October 13, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 29 Comments

The greatest invention relating to music in the 20th century was multi-track recording, for which we have Les Paul to thank. The second greatest? Non-linear editing and Pro Tools. For some bizarre reason, we have Ricky Martin to thank for that because Livin’ La Vida Loca was the first #1 single to be recorded and mixed entirely in Pro Tools.

The third greatest invention in recording since Edison is the plugin. If you’ve already got a computer sitting in front of you, you’ve got every instrument ever made. All you need is a plugin. [Jan] was working on his live setup recently, and didn’t want to look like a DJ playing the MacBook. Instead, he built a box that combines those powerful plugins into a single, easy to use box that sits right on top of his keyboard.

Inside this box is a modern Windows machine with a PCI Express audio interface. The display is not a touchscreen, because [Jan] originally thought a touchscreen wouldn’t be good for a live performance. He’s reconsidering that now. Other than that, you’re looking in effect at a microATX motherboard and a 10″ LCD in a box, but that’s where this build gets interesting.

The mechanical design of this build is of paramount importance, so [Jan] is using two mod wheels on the side, a bunch of silicone buttons on the bottom, and a few rotary encoders. These are MIDI controls, able to change whatever variables are available in the custom VSTs. That in itself is a pretty interesting build, with circuit bent MIDI controllers and off-the-shelf buttons.

The completed build attaches right to the Nord Stage master keyboard, and eight VST instrument channels are right at [Jan]’s fingertips. You can check out a video of this build in action below.

Continue reading “The Solution To DJs Playing Their MacBooks” →

This Is Your Last Chance To Enter The Hackaday Prize

October 5, 2018 by Brian Benchoff No comments

For the last seven months, we’ve been running the world’s greatest hardware competition. The Hackaday Prize is the Academy Awards of Open Hardware, and a competition where thousands of hardware hackers compete to build a better future. The results have already been phenomenal, but all good things must come to an end: we’re wrapping up the last challenge in the Hackaday Prize, after which the finalists of the five rounds will move on, with the ultimate winner being announced next month at the Hackaday Superconference.

We’re in the final hours of the Musical Instrument Challenge, where we’re asking everyone to build the next evolution of modern music instrumentation. We’re looking for the next electric guitar, theremin, synthesizer, violin, or an MPC. What we’ve seen so far is, quite simply, amazing. One of the finalists from the five challenges in this year’s Hackaday Prize will win $50,000 USD, but twenty projects from the Musical Instrument Challenge will each win $1000. We’ll be figuring out those winners on Monday, where they’ll move onto the final round, refereed by our fantastic judges.

It’s still not too late to get in on the action in this year’s Musical Instrument Challenge. We’re looking for the best musical projects out there, but time is of the essence. This round closes on October 8th at 07:00 PDT. There’s still time, though, so start your entry now.

Continue reading “This Is Your Last Chance To Enter The Hackaday Prize” →