the hackaday prize

439 Articles

Hackaday Prize Entry: Two Factor Authentication Key

July 20, 2015 by 18 Comments

Because people are generally idiots when it comes to choosing passwords — including people who should know better — Google created Google Authenticator. It’s two-factor verification for all your Google logins based on a shared secret key. It’s awesome, and everyone should use it.

Actually typing in that code from a phone app is rather annoying, and [Alistair] has a better solution: an Authenticator USB Key. Instead of opening up the Authenticator app every time he needs an Authenticator code, this USB key will send the code to Google with the press of a single button.

The algorithm behind Google Authenticator is well documented and actually very simple; it’s just a hash of the current number of 30-second periods since the Unix epoch and an 80-bit secret key. With knowledge of the secret key, you can generate Authenticator codes until the end of time. It’s been done with an Arduino before, but [Alistair]’s project makes this an incredibly convenient way to input the codes without touching the keyboard.

The current plan is to use an ATMega328, a real-time clock, and VUSB for generating the Authenticator code and sending it to a computer. Getting the secret key on the device sounds tricky, but [Alistair] has a trick up his sleeve for that: he’s going to use optical sensors and a flashing graphic on a web page to send the key to the device. It’s a bit of a clunky solution, but considering the secret key only needs to be programmed once, it’s not necessarily a bad solution.

With a small button plugged into a USB hub, [Alistair] has the perfect device for anyone annoyed at the prospect at opening up the Authenticator app every few days. It’s not a replacement for the app, it just makes everything easier.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: An Arduino Alarm System

July 19, 2015 by 5 Comments

The last few years have seen an incredible increase in the marketing for home automation devices. Why this tech is just picking up now is something we’ll never understand – home automation systems have been around for decades, mostly in the form of security systems. For his Hackaday Prize entry, [IngGaro] is building an Arduino-based security system that does everything you would expect from a home automation system, from closing the shutters to temperature monitoring.

[IngGaro]’s system is built around a shield for an Arduino Mega. This shield includes connections to an alarm system, a GSM modem, temperature and humidity sensors, an Ethernet module, and IR movement sensors. This Arduino Mega attaches to a control box mounted near the front door that’s loaded up with an LCD, an NFC and RFID reader, and a few buttons to arm and disarm the system.

This project has come a long way since it was featured in last year’s Hackaday Prize. Since then [IngGaro] finally completed the project thanks to a change in the Ethernet library. It’s much more stable now, and has the ability to completely control everything in a house that should be automated. Now all [IngGaro] needs to do is create a cool PCB for the project, but in our opinion you can’t do much better than the mastery of perfboard this project already has.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

Hackaday Prize Entry: A Portable Environmental Monitor

July 18, 2015 by 8 Comments

There are a lot of environmental monitors in the running for this year’s Hackaday Prize. Whether they’re soil moisture sensors for gardens or ultraviolet sensors for the beach, the entrants for The Hackaday Prize seem to grasp the inevitable truth that you need information about the environment before doing anything about the environment.

But what about sharing that information? Wouldn’t it be handy if there were an online repository where you could look up environmental conditions of any location on the planet? That’s where [radu.motisan]’s Portable Environmental Monitor comes in. It’s a small, pocketable device that measures just about everything and uploads that data to the Internet.

This project is a continuation of [radu]’s entry for The Hackaday Prize last year, the Global Radiation Monitoring Network. This was more than just a Geiger tube connected to the Internet; [radu] has a global network of Geiger counters displaying counts per minute on a nifty live map.

[radu]’s latest project expands on the capabilities of the Global Radiation Monitoring Network with more sensors and portability. Inside the Environmental Monitor are enough sensors to look at Alpha, Beta and Gamma radiation, dust and toxic gas, and other types of pollution. With the addition of an ESP8266 WiFi module, this portable device can upload sensor readings to the Internet, greatly expanding [radu]’s uRADMonitor network.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

Hackaday Prize Entry: Orchestral Invention Defies Convention

July 17, 2015 by 3 Comments

Like many of us, [Laurens] likes video game music and bending hardware to his will. Armed with a Printrbot, a couple of floppy drives, and some old HDDs, he built the Unconventional Instrument Orchestra. This 2015 Hackaday Prize contender takes any MIDI file and plays it on stepper and solenoid-based hardware through a Java program.

A while back, [Laurens] won a Fubarino in our contest by using a MIDI keyboard and an Arduino to control the Minecraft environment with Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time songs. The Unconventional Instrument Orchestra uses that Fubarino of victory to control the steppers of two floppy drives. He only needed three pins to control the drives—one to enable, one to set the head’s direction, and one to make it step once per pulse.

If ever you’ve been around a 3D printer, you know they make music as a natural side effect. The problem is getting the printer to obey the rests in a piece of music. In order to do this, [Laurens] used his software to control the printer, essentially withholding the next command until the appropriate time in the song.

The percussive elements of this orchestra are provided by a hard drive beating its head against the wall. Since it’s basically impossible to get an HDD to do this as designed (thankfully), [Laurens] replaced the control board with a single transistor to drive the coil that moves the head.

[Laurens] has made several videos of the orchestra in concert, which are a joy all their own. Most of the visual real estate of each video is taken up with a real-time visualization of the music produced by the software. There’s still plenty of room to show the orchestra itself, song-specific gameplay, and a textual commentary crawl in 16-segment displays. Check out the playlist we’ve embedded after the break.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

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Hackaday Prize Entry: New Firmware For A Smartwatch

July 16, 2015 by 25 Comments

Smartwatches are the next big thing. Nobody knows what we’re going to use them for, but that’s never stopped a product from being the hottest item around. The WeLoop Tommy isn’t the Apple Watch, it isn’t the Moto360, and it isn’t the Microsoft Band. It is, however, a nice smartwatch with a Sharp memory display and a battery that lasts longer than a few days. For his Hackaday Prize entry, [Krzysiek] is making an open source firmware for the WeLoop Tommy that will add capabilities no other smartwatch has.

This project is a complete reverse engineering of the WeLoop Tommy smartwatch. [Krzysiek] is tearing everything down to the bare components and figuring out how the RAM, Flash, buttons, LCD, and accelerometer connect to the processor. After that, it’s time for custom firmware.

Already [Krzysiek] has a test app that displays [OSSW] on the Sharp memory display. It’s not much, but the hardware is solid. With the right firmware, the WeLoop Tommy will be able to do just about everything an Android, Apple, or Microsoft smartwatche can do using repurposed hardware and open source firmware.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

Hackaday Prize Entry: A Better Bench Power Supply

July 15, 2015 by 20 Comments

Back in February, [The Big One] started building the bench power supply to rule them all. His previous power supply was just an ATX computer power supply. It worked, but that didn’t give him fancy stuff like different channels of individually adjustable voltages. Since then, we’ve spun up the 2015 Hackaday Prize, and [The Big One] has changed his DIY power supply into a Hackaday Prize entry that competes well against $1000 mid-range commercial units.

The single most expensive component in this power supply are a pair of isolated switched power supplies rated for 15V and 7A. This is a change from [The Big One]’s original plan to use a big ‘ol transformer; a switched mode supply is smaller, lighter, costs about the same, and is much better suited to the modular nature of the project.

The final design for this power supply has some interesting features: up to six channels are possible, voltage and current can go all the way down to zero, and everything can be controlled over USB. Those are amazing features that won’t be found in any $100 cheapo bench power supply, and [The Big One]’s amazing documentation for this project makes it a perfect entry for The Hackaday Prize.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

Carbon fiber weaving robot!

Hackaday Prize Entry: Weaving Carbon Fiber With Industrial Robots

July 14, 2015 by 24 Comments

Oh to have a 6-axis robot arm to play with… For [Basia Dzaman’s] final graduation project for School of Form, she designed and 3D printed an end effect tool for an industrial KUKA robot — for weaving carbon fiber.

Through an iterative design process, she developed many prototypes of the tool until the one you see above. It’s capable of holding a Dremel multi tool which can be used to drill into a work surface for installing pegs which make up the custom weaving jig. The pegs (nails) are then installed by hand so that the robot can thread carbon fiber — fed through an epoxy bath as it is dispensed — onto the jig. In the example, she shows a traditional Polish handcraft called Snutki (a type of stitching), wrapping the carbon fiber in patterns around the pegs. Once the epoxy cures, a strong structure can be removed.

Remember the 6-axis robot that can 3D print in metal, and is currently working on 3D printing a bridge? [Basia’s] design could do similar things, for a completely different industry. You can check out [Basia]’s video for the project below.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

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