Trinket EDC Contest Winners

It’s time to announce the winners of the Trinket Everyday Carry Contest! We’ve had a great 5 weeks watching the projects come together. A team of Hackaday staffers spent their weekend watching videos and selecting their top entries based on the contest rules. We had a really hard time picking the top three – the competition was tight, and there were quite a few awesome projects.

Without further ado, here are the winners!

1337toolFirst Prize: 1337 3310 tool. [Mastro Gippo] really knocked this one out of the park. He built a swiss army knife of a tool out of the iconic Nokia 3310 candybar phone. 1337 3310 tool is a graphing voltage and current meter, an ohmmeter, a continuity tester that plays the original Nokia ringtone, and a gaming machine which can play Tetris.  [Mastro Gippo] is 99% there with TV-B-Gone functionality as well. Amazingly, [Mastro Gippo] kept the Nokia look and feel in his user interface. He spent quite a bit of time grabbing data and bitmaps from the 3310’s original ROM.  [Mastro Gippo] is getting a Rigol DS1054Z scope to help iron out the bugs in his future projects!

pavaproSecond Prize: Pavapro – portable AVR programmer. [Jaromir] built an incredible pocket-sized microcontroller programming tool. Pavapro can read and edit text files, handle serial I/O at 9600 baud, and burn AVR microcontrollers. If that’s not enough, it can actually assemble AVR binaries from source. That’s right, [Jaromir] managed to fit an entire assembler on the Pro Trinket’s ATmega328 processor. Pavapro’s 16 button keypad won’t allow for much in the way of touch typing, but it does get the job done with T9 style text entry. The device is also extensible, we’re hoping [Jaromir] adds a few other architectures! PIC and MSP430 modes would be awesome!  [Jaromir] will be receiving a Fluke 179 multimeter with a 6 piece industrial electronics tip kit! We’re sure he’ll put it to good use.

robohandThird Prize: Robotic 3rd Hand. Let’s face it. We can’t all be Tony Stark. But [Tim] gets us a little bit closer with his awesome wearable entry. Need a tool? Just press the button, and Robotic 3rd Hand will give you a … hand. [Tim’s] creation utilizes the Pro Trinket to drive a servo which moves an incredibly well designed and 3D printed mechanism that lifts a screwdriver off the wearer’s wrist and places it into their hand. [Tim] originally was going to go with Electromyography (EMG) sensors to drive the hand, however he switched to a simple button when they proved problematic. We absolutely think this was the right decision for the contest – it’s always better to have a simpler but working project rather than a complex yet unreliable one. That said, we’d love to see him circle back and give EMG another try! [Tim’s] next project will be soldered up with the help of a Hakko FX888D with a tip kit. If things get a bit wobbly, he can use his new Panavise 324 Electronic Work center to keep everything steady.

If you didn’t make the top three in this contest, don’t give up! We’re going to be having quite a few contests this year. The top 50 entrants will receive custom Hackaday EDC Contest T-shirts. Check out the full list of 50 on Hackday.io!

Trinket EDC Contest – The Deadline Approaches

We’ve got just under 2 days left in the Trinket Everyday Carry Contest. With 79 entries, and t-shirts going to the top 50 entrants, you’ve got pretty darn good odds of getting a shirt out of all of this! The design is great too, [Joe Kim] really did a great job with it!

shirt-low

 

The idea is simple: Build small, pocketable projects which are useful everyday.

We explained everything in our announcement post, and the full rules are available on the contest page. But just as a reminder, the main requirements are

  • The project Must use a Pro Trinket, or a board based on the open source Pro Trinket design.
  • The project must have at least 3 project logs
  • The project must have at least one video
  • The Hackaday.io project must include enough documentation to allow an average hobbyist to replicate the project

There are already some awesome entries vying for the top prize, but who knows – someone may come out of nowhere and walk away with a sweet Rigol ds1054z oscilloscope!

 

The contest deadline is January 3rd, at 12:00 am PDT. The clock is ticking, so stop waiting, and go build something awesome! Good luck to everyone who enters!

Announcing The Trinket Everyday Carry Contest

Now that we’ve recovered from our Munich party and the awarding of The Hackaday Prize, we’re ready to announce our latest contest. We’ve been having a lot of fun with our Trinket Pro boards, both the 10th anniversary edition and the new Hackaday.io branded models.  While we were soldering, compiling, and downloading, a contest idea took root. Trinket Pro really excels when used in small projects, the kind which would fit in a pocket. To that end we’re holding the Trinket Everyday Carry Contest, a showcase for small, pocketable projects which are useful everyday. ‘Useful everyday’ is a bit of a broad term, and we intended it that way. Tools are useful of course , but so are jewelry pieces. It’s all in the eye of the builder and users. We’re sure our readers will take this and run with it, as they have with our previous contests.

There are some great prizes in store for the entrants, including a brand new Rigol DS1054Z  oscilloscope! The top 50 entrants will get custom Trinket Everyday Carry Contest T-shirts. Check out the contest page for a full list. 

submit-project-to-trinket-edcWe know you all love to procrastinate with your entries, so we’re going to be offering a few perks to those who enter early and update often. Each week, we’ll throw all the entrants who have published at least one project log full of details into a drawing for a special prize from The Hackaday Store. To be considered you must officially submit your project which is accomplished through a drop-down list on the left side of your project page.

Remember, the contest isn’t just about winning a scope, a meter, or any of the other prizes. It’s about creating new Open Hardware designs that nearly anyone can build. So grab those soldering irons, load up those copies of the Arduino IDE, AVR-GCC, or WinAVR, and get hacking!

You can view the all of the contest entries in this list.

Gaming System Inside An Atari Joystick

gaming-system-inside-an-atari-controller

This original Atari controller is pretty small (take a look at that RCA cable for a sense of scale). Despite it’s size, [Kyle Brinkerhoff] managed to fit a complete gaming system inside the controller. This Pocket Sized Atari is a follow-up to another project he did called ArduPong which let him play Pong using a joystick and an Arduino. This rendition takes the external project box from that build and moves everything into one tight little package.

In the video after the break [Kyle] gives us a tour of the internals. The Arduino board he went with is an Ardweeny which is no bigger than the ATmega328 footprint so it can be easily mounted off to one side. The joystick internals have been replaced with the analog stick module from a PlayStation controller. That is where the button came from as well. Just connect this to a 9V battery and the composite video input of a TV and you’re ready to do some gaming!

Now if you just want that retro look for your Xbox Live games check out this Xbox 360 controller in an Atari joystick.

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Homemade Music Player

Sadly, this pocket mp3 wav player doesn’t come close to the capabilities of even an iPod generation 1 yet, but you have to give [Owen] props for making it in less than 24 hours. The system consists of a Propeller MCU (cleverly wired to be swappable with “shields” similar to Arduino systems), SD card for song storage, and an LM386 for audio. While the setup is a little dull, and only plays through songs non stop with no controls whatsoever, it certainly is a good start in the right direction for a cheap and simple portable music player. Of course some planned changes are in the works, include an accelerometer (gesture based controls?), etched PCB, docking station, and a case. We’re surprised there is no form of screen planned, considering Owen appears to have a rather good handle on touch interfaces; perhaps he’s waiting for revision 3.

LED Pocket Watch

ledwatch

Today, it is not difficult to find all kinds of watches with LED displays. After [Paul]’s grandfather, a master horologist and pocket watch collector, passed away, he decided to retrofit a broken watch left to him with a custom LED face. Starting from scratch, he designed a PCB complete with 133 (hand soldered) LEDs, room for a temperature controlled oscillator for real time clock capabilites, a LiPo battery, and a cell phone vibrator to provide a simulated “second hand tick” feeling. The whole watch is powered by a PIC 16F946.

This is currently version 1, and he has already begun work on version 2. He plans on adding a more compact, lower power TCXO, automatic NTP syncing, and a USB port for charging and reprogramming. He has a number of detailed videos, and we have a demo video after the break.

[digg=http://digg.com/gadgets/LED_Pocket_Watch]

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Pocket Multimeter Review

three_pocket_multimeters

Reader [Mikey Sklar] told us about a review he wrote covering 3 different models of pocket multimeters. We’re sure that you’ve had the same experiences we have being the go-to-guy or got-to-gal  for all things electrical. For our sort, having a multimeter on hand at all times has become an expectation.

[Mikey] looks at a model from ebay, Harbor Freight, and Radio Shack. Not surprisingly, the ebay offering doesn’t rate too well but does get the job done. We were surprised to read that he picked up the Cen-Tech model for about $10 at Harbor Freight. Although it may no longer be sold there (we haven’t checked) [Mikey] seems pretty happy with it so we’ll be on the lookout during our next tool-buying trip. We’re unfamiliar with the tiny Radio Shack 22-820 but we’ve always been happy with our larger 22-811. The 22-820 allows the probes to be folded up inside of the case cover for a truly pocketable package.

You can never have too many meters at your disposal and we’ll have to keep this article in mind the next time we’re shopping for another. Never used a multimeter before? Take a look at the tutorial [Mikey] linked to over at ladyada.