Retrocomputing For The Masses Hack Chat

May 27, 2019 by Dan Maloney 6 Comments

Join us on Wednesday 29 May 2019 at noon Pacific for the Retrocomputing for the Masses Hack Chat!

Of the early crop of personal computers that made their way to market before IBM and Apple came to dominate it, few machines achieved the iconic status that the Sinclair ZX80 did.

Perhaps it was its unusual and appealing design style, or maybe it had more to do with its affordability. Regardless, [Sir Clive]’s little machine sold north of 100,000 units and earned a place in both computing history and the hearts of early adopters.

Spencer Owen is one who still holds a torch for the ZX80, so much so that in 2013, he hatched a seemingly wacky idea to make his own. A breadboard prototype of the Z80 machine slowly came to life over Christmas 2013, one thing led to another, and the “RC2014” was born.

The RC2014 proved popular enough to sell on Tindie, and Spencer is now following his dream as a retrocomputing mogul and working on RC2014 full time. He’ll be joining us to discuss the RC2014, how it came to be, and how selling computing nostalgia can be more than just a dream.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday May 29 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have got you down, we have a handy time zone converter.

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io. You don’t have to wait until Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

Flexible PCBs Hack Chat With OSH Park

May 20, 2019 by Dan Maloney No comments

Join us Thursday at noon Pacific time for the Flexible PCBs Hack Chat with Drew and Chris from OSH Park!
Note the different day from our usual Hack Chat schedule!
Printed circuit boards have been around for decades, and mass production of them has been an incalculable boon to the electronics industry. But turning the economics of PCB production around and making it accessible to small-scale producers and even home experimenters is a relatively recent development, and one which may have an even broader and deeper impact on the industry in the long run.

And now, as if professional PCBs at ridiculous prices weren’t enough, the home-gamer now has access to flexible PCBs. From wearables to sensor applications, flex PCBs have wide-ranging applications and stand to open up new frontiers to the hardware hacker. We’ve even partnered with OSH Park in the Flexible PCB Contest, specifically to stretch your flexible wings and get you thinking beyond flat, rigid PCBs.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Thursday, May 23 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have got you down, we have a handy time zone converter.

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io. You don’t have to wait until Thursday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

IoT For Agriculture Hack Chat With Akiba

May 13, 2019 by Dan Maloney 3 Comments

Join us Wednesday at 5:00 PM Pacific time for the IoT and Agriculture Hack Chat with Akiba!

Note the different time than our usual Hack Chat slot! Akiba willi be joining us from Japan.

No matter what your feelings are about the current state of the world, you can’t escape the fact that 7.7 billion humans need to be fed every day. That means a lot of crops to grow and harvest and a lot of animals to take care of and bring to market. And like anything else, technology can make that job easier and more productive.

To test concepts at the interface between technology and agriculture, Akiba has developed HackerFarm, a combination of homestead, hackerspace, and small farm in Japan. It’s a place where hackers with agriculture-related projects can come to test ideas and collaborate with other people trying to solve the problems of a hungry world by experimenting on an approachable scale with open-source technology.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, May 15 at 5:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have got you down, we have a handy time zone converter.

Marketing And Selling Hardware Hack Chat

May 6, 2019 by Dan Maloney 14 Comments

Join us Wednesday at noon Pacific time for the Marketing and Selling Hardware Hack Chat with Shawn Hymel!

It may not be every hardware hacker’s dream, but a fair number of us harbor fantasies of thinking up the Next Big Thing and kissing the day job goodbye forever. It’s an understandable dream and a laudable goal, but as they say, a goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline. What’s your plan for turning your project into a marketable product? Chances are good you don’t have one, and if you ever expect to get to your goal you’re going to need one.

Shawn Hymel is an engineer who led several marketing campaigns for Spark Fun and recently shared his thoughts on marketing with attendees of the first-ever KiCon conference in Chicago. He’ll be dropping by the Hack Chat to talk about everything you ever wanted to know about marketing your hardware projects but were afraid to ask.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, May 8 at noon Pacific time. If time zones have got you down, we have a handy time zone converter.

AI At The Edge Hack Chat

April 29, 2019 by Dan Maloney 4 Comments

Join us Wednesday at noon Pacific time for the AI at the Edge Hack Chat with John Welsh from NVIDIA!

Machine learning was once the business of big iron like IBM’s Watson or the nearly limitless computing power of the cloud. But the power in AI is moving away from data centers to the edge, where IoT devices are doing things once unheard of. Embedded systems capable of running modern AI workloads are now cheap enough for almost any hacker to afford, opening the door to applications and capabilities that were once only science fiction dreams.

John Welsh is a Developer Technology Engineer with NVIDIA, a leading company in the Edge computing space. He’ll be dropping by the Hack Chat to discuss NVIDIA’s Edge offerings, like the Jetson Nano we recently reviewed. Join us as we discuss NVIDIA’s complete Jetson embedded AI product line up, getting started with Edge AI, and where Edge AI is headed.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, May 1 at noon Pacific time. If time zones have got you down, we have a handy time zone converter.

Hack Chat: The Home Machine Shop With Quinn Dunki

March 18, 2019 by Dan Maloney 4 Comments

Join us Wednesday at noon Pacific time for the Home Machine Shop Hack Chat!

Even if you haven’t been here for very long, you’ll probably recognize Quinn Dunki as Hackaday’s resident consulting machinist. Quinn recently did a great series of articles on the “King of Machine Tools”, the lathe, covering everything from the history of precision machine tools to making your first chips. She’s documented the entire process of procuring and setting up a new lathe, pointing out all the potential pitfalls the budding home machinist may face. You can get a much deeper dive into her machining adventures on her YouTube channel, Blondihacks.

Flinging hot metal chips around is hardly all Quinn has accomplished, though. Long before her foray into machine tools, there was Veronica, a scratch-built 6502 machine Quinn created as an homage to the machines that launched her into a life of writing software. We’ve featured Veronica on our pages a couple of times, and she’s always made quite a hit.

Please join us for this Hack Chat, where we’ll discuss:

How developing software and machining are alike, and how they differ;
How social networks have changed the perception of machining;
Best practices for getting started in machining; and
Are there any new machine tool purchases in the pipeline?

You are, of course, encouraged to add your own questions to the discussion. You can do that by leaving a comment on the Home Machine Shop Hack Chat and we’ll put that in the queue for the Hack Chat discussion.

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, March 20, at noon, Pacific time. If time zones have got you down, we have a handy time zone converter.