THP Hacker Bio: Hackersbench

July 17, 2014 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

Remote sensing applications that make sense and cents? (sorry, couldn’t help ourselves) That’s what [hackersbench], aka [John Schuch], aka [@JohnS_AZ] is working on as his entry for The Hackaday Prize.

He received a multi-thousand-dollar water bill after having an underground pipe break and leak without knowing it. His idea will help you notice problems like this sooner. But if you actually have a way to capture data about your own water use you also have a tool to help encourage less wasteful water use habits. We wanted to learn more about the hacker who is working on this project. [John’s] answers to our slate of questions are after the break.

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Judge Spotlight: Joe Grand

July 15, 2014 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

We’ve been fascinated by [Joe Grand] for years. His early talks at DEFCON, and extensive work designing badges for it, helped to put the conference on our radar. We’ve seen many pieces of hardware come from his company Grand Idea Studio over the years, and of course there was the television show Prototype This! which must have been way too awesome for some TV exec to allow it to continue.

We asked [Joe], who is a judge for The Hackaday Prize, a few a questions. He sent back the video response embedded below. He talks about what he’s doing these days, the hacker community in Boston, shows off some hardware he uses when teaching about security, and much more.

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Vote Or Be Sorry — Round 2 Of Astronaut Or Not

July 10, 2014 by Mike Szczys 37 Comments

Have you voted in the second round of Astronaut or Not? You’d better get in there by Friday at 9pm EDT or miss your chance to win a Bukito Portable 3D Printer in the voter’s lottery.

You must vote at least once per round to be eligible. At the appointed time we’ll draw a random number and look up to see if that profile on Hackaday.io has voted. If so, winner winner (like the Rigol scope that was awarded last Friday). If not, no Bukito for you! This new round just started at the beginning of the week. Your vote quota has been restored, and we tweaked the interface to only show you each project once.

In addition to your own gain, you’re helping us choose which projects deserve a bit of swag. We’re one again sending shirts to the projects who rise to the top of the head-to-head gudgematch.

UPDATE: To clarify, you must vote in the current round to be eligible for the current voter lottery. Your participation in previous rounds has no bearing on the current round eligibility.

THP Hacker Bio: Nsted

July 10, 2014 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

thp-contestant-bio-nsted

Have you ever wanted to build a robot arm, or even a full robot, but were put off by the daunting task of making all of those articulations work? Moti could make that a lot easier. The project seeks to produce smart servo motors which can connect and communicate in many different ways. It’s a great idea, so we wanted to know more about the hacker behind the project. After the jump you’ll find [nsted’s] answers to our slate of question for this week’s Hacker Bio.

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Judge Spotlight: Elecia White

July 8, 2014 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

If you’re a fan of the Embedded podcast you know her voice well. If not, you need to check out the show! Of course we’re talking about [Elecia White], who spent her recent holiday answering our questions.

She’s an accomplished embedded systems engineer — she literally wrote the book on it. We’re delighted that [Elecia] agreed to lend us her skill and experience as a judge for The Hackaday Prize!

We find that embedded engineers come from all manner of backgrounds. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got into the field?

I majored in a combination of applied computer science and theoretical systems engineering: my classes were all about programming, C, Fourier, and control loops. I had no idea I’d built a major that would be perfect for low level embedded development.

After school, I went to Hewlett-Packard. I was in the network server division, monitoring servers, writing drivers, and getting ever closer to the hardware. I moved over to HP Labs’ BioScience division to do real embedded work, though I didn’t understand that at the time (yay for a hiring manager who did!). Once I made a motor move, well, it was all over for me. I loved having my software touch the physical world. Happily, the environment was great and the electrical engineers were very patient.

Do whimsical embedded challenges ever come to mind? For instance, do you ever flip on the TV and think to yourself: “some day I’m going to reprogram the uC and write something that works!”?

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Judge Spotlight: Dave Jones

July 1, 2014 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

This week’s Judge Spotlight features [Dave Jones] who posted a video reponse to our slate of questions. If you’ve spent much time around here chances are you know of [Dave] quite well. He is the man behind the EEVblog and also hosts The Amp Hour podcast along with [Chris Gammell].

It’s great to pick [Dave’s] brain a bit. He’s seen a lot during his career, with insights on professional engineering from the point of view of job seeker, employer, job interviewer, and more. His time with the EEVblog and Amp Hour have furthered his experience with looks inside of all manner of equipment, adventures in crowd funding, and interactions with a multitude of hardware start-ups. Check out his video, as well as a list of the questions with timestamps, after the jump.

We’re sure you know by now, he’s judging The Hackaday Prize which will award a trip to space and hundreds of other prizes for showing off your connected device built using Open Design.

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THP Hacker Bio: David Cook

June 26, 2014 by Mike Szczys 25 Comments

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[David Cook] has been on the front page with gnarly hacks many times. We’re happy to present his Hackaday Projects profile as this week’s Hacker Bio.

His entry for The Hackaday Prize is something of a one-wireless-pair-to-rule-them approach to connected devices which he calls LoFi. We were delighted by his first demo video which is exactly what we envisioned for preliminary entries; [David] explains the concept and how he plans to implement it using a few visual aids to drive the point home.

Join us after the break to find out more about [David]. Oh, if you’re wondering about the times he’s been featured on Hackaday, check out his capacitor/coin cell swap which is one of our favorites.

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