workshop

55 Articles

Surface Mount Soldering Workshop Shares Secrets Of CM

September 12, 2015 by 19 Comments

Friday afternoon I had the pleasure of sitting in on a surface mount soldering workshop. I’ve done some surface mount soldering before and am quite adept with a soldering iron, but this focused on solder paste and a hot air pencil. [Bob Cogeshall] ran the workshop and went beyond the most basic information. His experience founding Small Batch Assembly, a contract manufacturer whose offices are in the Nova Labs hackerspace, has led him to learn a lot of tricks of the trade.

Continue reading “Surface Mount Soldering Workshop Shares Secrets Of CM” →

Saturday In Washington DC: Hackaday Meetup

September 9, 2015 by 3 Comments

If you’re in the DC area, clear your schedule this Saturday night. Hackaday is hosting a Meetup at Nova Labs starting at 6pm. All you need to do is let us know you’re planning to attend.

The Reston, Virginia hackerspace is minutes away from Dulles airport. If you haven’t stopped by the hackerspace since they moved this is a great chance to see the new location. Bring along any hardware you’re working on. You can give a lightning talk about it, or just show it off casually while enjoying some food and beverage. Several members of the Hackaday crew will be on hand: [Anool Mahidharia] will be in town presenting a weekend-long workshop on PCB design using KiCAD. [Mike], [Brian], and [Sophi] will join him for the meetup on Saturday evening. For more details on what is going down that weekend take a look at the original announcement post. See you soon!

Hackaday Prize Worldwide: Washington DC

September 3, 2015 by 4 Comments

Join us for a Meetup on Saturday, September 12th near Washington DC. The Hackaday Crew is headed out to the DC area a week from Saturday and we want to hang out with you. We’ll be hosting a meetup at Nova Labs hackerspace in Reston, Virgina which is on the Northwest side of DC.

We’ll get things rolling at 6pm on Saturday, September 12. The event includes a few lightning talks, some food and drink, and a lot of socializing. This is free to all but you do need to RSVP to let us know you’re coming. We want you to bring a hack to show off. We love to see what people are working on no matter the level of complexity or stage of completion.

Breakout board laid out in KiCAD
Breakout board laid out in KiCAD

This all started when [Anool Mahidharia] mentioned that he’d be at Nova Labs on September 11-13 to lead a KiCAD PCB design workshop. This 2.5 day boot-camp starts with installing the Open Source EDA software on your laptop and ends when you have a completed PCB design ready to be submitted to a board fab. There is a charge for the workshop and attendance is limited so if you’re interested in it you should sign up now. Our events page is a good collection of information on both events as well as directions to get to Nova Labs.

The workshop is being organized by our friend [Bob Coggeshall] who we first met (and interviewed about his work on the Linux ‘sudo’ command) back in 2014 at Bay Area Maker Faire. Since then, [Brian Benchoff] swung by and visited [Bob] to talk about his company Small Batch Assembly and to tour Nova Labs. He will be conducting his own surface mount soldering workshop, will speak about Design For Manufacturing, and will show his Pick and Place machine during the weekend.

It will be fun to visit with [Bob] and to meet everyone who can make it to the Saturday evening meetup. So far  [Mike Szczys], [Brian Benchoff], and [Sophi Kravitz] are all planning to be there. [Anool Mahidharia] will of course be there since he’s leading the workshop. The following weekend [Anool] and [Brian] will both be headed to Philadelphia for the 2015 Open Hardware Summit for which Hackaday is a proud sponsor. [Matt Berggren] and [Amber Cunningham] will both be at OSH as well, talking all things Tindie.

A Perfect San Francisco For Hackaday Prize Worldwide

July 6, 2015 by 3 Comments

Whew, that was a perfect day. Seriously. A few weeks back, on Saturday June 13th PCH International opened their doors for the Hackaday Zero to Product workshop. I don’t live in California, so having two huge glass garage doors making up one entire wall of your office is odd to me. But on a perfect day like this one it was something miraculous.

Checking at Hackaday Prize Worldwide-SF
Ryan Vinyard’s talk on Open Hardware
The Workshop Begins

We opened the Workshop at 9:30am and those lucky enough to get a free ticket before the event was full streamed in. The topic at hand was a transfer of knowledge on professional level PCB design and once again [Matt Berggren] didn’t disappoint. A former Altium veteran, experienced hardware start-up-er-er, and all around circuit design guru, [Matt] has a natural and satisfying way of working with the many questions that arise while also following his epic talk framework. There must be around a hundred slides in his presentation that covers the bases from component selection, to signal routing, to material selection (substrate, copper density, solder mask material) and a lot more.

The day ran in segments…. sign-in followed by coffee and bakery goods and a talk on Open Hardware from [Ryan Vinyard]. He is the Engineering Lead at Highway1, the well-known hardware startup accelerator which provided a space for the event in the PCH Innovation Hub building. From there we dropped into the first segment of Zero to Product and started riffing on all things PCB design.

PCH Innovation Hub
Open-air room was amazing
lots of dev boards for those in attendance

A break for salad and pizza three hours later lead into the final two sessions that are broken up by a social pause. Thanks to our Hackaday Prize Sponsors (Atmel, Freescale, Microchip, Mouser, and Texas Instruments) we had plenty of time to discuss the builds each person is planning and to connect them with sponsor-supplied dev boards to help with the prototyping.

We have an album up so that you can check out all the pictures from this event. We’ve held the Zero to Product workshop in Los Angeles, and Shenzhen as well in the recent weeks. Keep watching Hackaday to learn of future opportunities to take part in events in your area!

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

The Spirit Of Hackaday Shines In Shenzhen

June 29, 2015 by 11 Comments

Hackaday loves to spread the message of the hardware hacking lifestyle. That’s only possible where there are hardware hackers willing to spend their time getting together to talk the future of the hardware industry, and to celebrate where we are now. We’re honored that you came out en masse for our Shenzhen Workshop and Meetup!

Zero to Product

[Matt Berggren] has presented his Zero to Product  workshop a few times now as part of our Hackaday Prize Worldwide series. This spring that included Los Angeles, San Francisco, and ten days ago it was Shezhen, China.

[Matt] leading Zero to Product workshop
Participants designing a PCB
All levels of experience are welcome

We partnered with MakerCamp, a week-long initiative that pulled in people from all over China to build a Makerspace inside of a shipping container. Successful in their work, the program then hosted workshops. The one caveat, Shenzhen in June is a hot and sticky affair. Luckly our friends at Seeed Studio were kind enough to open their climate-controlled doors to us. The day-long workshop explored circuit board design, using Cadsoft Eagle as the EDA software to lay out a development board for the popular ESP8266 module.

Continue reading “The Spirit Of Hackaday Shines In Shenzhen” →

Hackaday Prize Worldwide: Shenzhen

May 27, 2015 by 11 Comments

That’s right, we’re headed to the epicenter of electronics manufacturing next month: Shenzhen, China. We have a ton planned and this is the quick and dirty overview to get you thinking. If you are in the area (or are itching to travel) join us for a week of hardware hacker culture. Highlights for our tour include:

  • Meet Up on June 18th – (RSVP details coming soon)
  • Zero to Product PCB Workshop on June 19th – RSVP Now
  • Hackaday Talks presented at Maker Faire Shenzhen on June 19th and June 21st
  • Hackaday Booth at MFSZ on June 20-21

Zero to Product Workshop at MakerCamp Shenzhen

shenzhen-makercamp-drawingMakerCamp brings 30 talented Makers, Hackers, Designers, and Engineers together for a few days to build a makerspace inside of a shipping container.

We won’t be part of that build team (registration is open until 6/1 if you want to be). We will be supporting the event as part of the workshops that help celebrate the completion of the space. A mobile hackerspace full of interesting tools is one thing. But the sharing of knowledge, experience, and skill is what truly makes a hackerspace work.

zero-to-product-workshop-LAOur Zero to Product workshop created by [Matt Berggren] has been generating a ton of buzz and will be offered at Shenzhen MakerCamp.

RSVP for the Workshop

The workshop runs from 10am to 6pm on Friday, June 19th on the grounds of Maker Faire: Shenzhen. The event covers PCB design and at the end you will have laid out a development board for use with the ESP8266 WiFi module.

We were totally sold out for the workshop in LA a few weeks ago this is another chance to join in. If Shenzhen is a bit too far for you to travel, we are also planning the next installment in San Francisco on June 13th.

2015-bamf-meetupHackaday Shenzhen Meetup

If you just want to hang out, so do we! On the night of Thursday, June 18th we’ll be rolling into an area bar for a tasty beverage and a night of interesting conversation. As always, we want to see the hardware you’ve been working on. We do recommend bringing things that fit easily in your pocket or backpack since we’re meeting up to spend some time with other Hackaday community members in the area.

We don’t have the location nailed down for this one. Check this post again as we’ll be adding it here. And if you have a bar to suggest to us please leave a comment below.

The picture above is from just a few weeks ago. We had a huge turnout for the BAMF meetup. There was a ton of hardware on hand which makes for really easy conversation as you meet other hackers for the first time.

Talks by [Mike] and [Sophi] plus Booth at Maker Faire Shenzhen

[Mike] is giving a talk on Friday, June 19th about the power of Open Design to move education forward. [Sophi] will be presenting her talk on Sunday, June 21st about making stuff that matters and working on research equipment used to investigate the world around us such as solar, medicine and disease.

Come to the Faire to hear our talks, but make sure you swing by the Hackaday booth as well. We’ll be bringing some of our most favorite projects to exhibit but we can’t resist the opportunity to do something interactive. Stop by and build an oscillator, wire up a sequencer, and create your own rudimentary music based on [Elliot Williams’] series Logic Noise.

Tag Along with Hacker Camp Shenzhen?

hcsz2015-thumbnailOne of the adventures we’ve always wanted to take part in is Hacker Camp Shenzhen which is run by Hackaday alumnus and Hackaday Prize Judge [Ian Lesnet]. The week-long camp leverages [Ian’s] knowledge of the area, manufacturers, markets, and people to provide tours and workshops for those interested in manufacturing. It just so happens that HackerCamp lines up the same week as all of the Hackaday events. We can’t take part in the entire thing, but are hoping that we have a free day to meet up (and possibly tag along) with the HackerCamp crew.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

Hackaday Los Angeles Event: Develop Your Hacking Superpowers

April 20, 2015 by 4 Comments

When we get together we like to build stuff, and that’s what has been motivating us as we work toward Hackaday Prize Worldwide: Pasadena. This two-day event held May 9th and 10th in the Los Angeles area is not to be missed. We are presenting a workshop, speakers, hacking, and socializing. Drop what you’re doing and get a ticket for the low-low price of being an awesome person.

On Saturday the ninth, Hackaday opens our doors for the workshop: “Zero to Product”. [Matt Berggren] leads the workshop. He is well known for running the Hardware Developer’s Didactic Galactic up in San Francisco (a meetup that we love to attend). [Matt] comes from a hardware design background and has done it all. He’s been involved in building schematic and PCB tools, been run through the startup gauntlet, and has a ton of hardware experience including everything from FPGA layout to getting that product out the door.

The workshop covers the things you need to consider when producing production-quality, professional-level circuit boards. Don’t be afraid of this, the discussion is approachable for the newcomer as well as the experienced hacker. Of course a PCB does not a product make so the conversation will also move through component selection, enclosures, best practices, and much more.

You Can’t Miss these Talks

 

judge-thumb-White[Elecia White]

[Elecia] is an embedded systems expert and a Hackaday Prize judge in both 2014 and 2015. Elecia will be demonstrating a gadget designed to familiarize engineers with the capabilities of inertial various sensors like accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers.

[Samy Kamkar]

[Samy] is a privacy and security researcher, has had a number of projects featured on Hackaday. The most notable in our minds is the wireless keyboard sniffer he built into a cellphone charger. He’ll be discussing that build as well as some other projects like his drone army.

We do have a few other speakers and lighting talks lined up but we don’t want to announce until we have final confirmation from those presenters. Please check on the event page for updates.

Show Off Your Hacks and Build More On-Site

 

build
The robot build at Hackady’s 10th Anniversary last October

We have the space, we have the people, add some food and beverage and now you’re talking. On Saturday evening we’ll warp up the talks and workshops, throw on some tunes, and pull out the projects we’ve been working in our spare time.

This casual hang-out is a great time to find answers and advice for that one problem that’s been tripping you up. We’ll make sure there’s something to fill your belly and keep you happy while you think about what you want to hack on the following day.

Sunday is Open Hack Day. Want to work on the concepts you picked up from Saturday’s workshop? Great, we can help with that! We’ll also have hardware development boards on-hand from our Hackaday Prize Sponsors, other random hackable stuff, and of course you may bring your own equipment and get down to business. Anything is fair game but we’re especially excited to see what people are building as their 2015 Hackaday Prize entries!

In case you missed the ticket link, please RSVP now. We’ll see you in May!

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by: