All The Workshops, And The SMD Challenge Happening At Hackaday Remoticon

Last week we announced the first fifteen workshops happening at Hackaday Remoticon, November 6-8, 2020. The weekend really is packed full of these hands-on events, and you’re invited to participate from anywhere in the world. Today we’re excited to announce the rest of the workshops, all of which are currently open for registration.

Can we get a few hundred people to show off their soldering skills (or amusing lack of skills) from their own workbench during the event? We think we can, so we’re running the SMD Challenge virtually this year. All of this, plus keynote talks, demos, a show-and-tell, and more make for one wild weekend. Read on!

Surface mount components are not really meant to be hand soldered, it’s a hack. So let’s hack together and do it on camera! For the past two years we’ve used the excellent SMD Challenge board designed by MakersBox as the target of a head-to-head challenge at live events. At Remoticon, you can take the challenge from your own workbench.

Your $5 SMD challenge ticket covers the cost of the kit — you just need to pay for shipping. The bargain is that you must commit to soldering the kit live on camera sometime during the weekend of Remoticon. This is an exhibition challenge… we’re not looking for the best, we’re looking for the most fun. So failing to complete all the parts is perfectly fine, at least you tried and that’s the point. Please limit yourself to one ticket.

To help amp up the fun, we’ve invited several hardware badge teams from conferences all over the world to compete as well. More on that later, but all of this should make the SMD Challenge room a hot place to hang out all weekend.

Gareth Halfacree writes on Hackster about a work-in-progress by Scott Shawcroft to let people play with glue logic in STEMMA QT projects:

Scott Shawcroft Aims to Replace 7400-Series Logic with a STEMMA QT FPGA Board Design

Scott Shawcroft has shown off a new board for the STEMMA QT I2C ecosystem, designed to house a Lattice MachXO2 32QFN field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and replace 7400-series logic chips with a programmable glue logic system.

“This is a STEMMA QT board. So, it’s got the two-in and -out there, and then it’s got logic level shifters and a regulator in case it’s five volts, and then this is a MachXO2 FPGA,” Shawcroft explains of the design during an Adafruit Show and Tell session. “I was thinking what i would do is add software so that it would act like a 7400-series logic chip.”

KiCon 2020 could not take place at CERN as planned due to the pandemic so a virtual session will happen instead this Saturday, October 3rd:

KiCon 2020: A Virtual Conference, in two parts

After a successful first year of KiCon in 2019, we decided to change venues. We were very excited to hold the conference at CERN, a major contributor to the KiCad project. However, Coronavirus / COVID-19 changed a lot of plans, including ours. KiCon 2020 is completely remote, so that community members can still connect with the developers and each other. We will have a Developer component (coming up on Oct 3rd), and a Community component. Read on to hear more about each element, and sign up on the mailing list below so you keep up with the latest talks and speakers.

KiCon 2020 Developer Q&A

Since we will be all-remote this year, we’re kicking things off with a 2 hour discussion with the KiCad developers! You can hear about upcoming features for KiCad V6, get an update on the project, and ask your questions directly to the developers.

The Q&A will take place on October 3rd, starting at 14:00 UTC / 10:00 EST / 07:00 PST. Find your local meeting time here.

KiCon 2020 Community Talks

We will be hosting community talks at various times throughout the month of October. These will be streamed live and/or released directly as videos. The KiCon team will help to promote these events and facilitate discussion around the topic. Click below to learn more.

From Seth Kerr of Oak Dev Tech:

Getting Started With The TPS22917 Load Switch

Trying to figure out how to reduce the power consumption of your project with multiple peripherals can be tricky, especially if these peripherals are operating off different power supplies than your main controller. This is where the easy to use TPS22917 Power Switch/Load Driver from Texas Instruments comes in.Packed into a tiny SOT23 package, the TPS22917 is compact enough to fit into any project, requiring just four total components including the main IC. Combined together on a small breakout board, we then have an easy to use form factor that can be used to easily integrate it right into your project without the extra hassle.

In this tutorial we’re going to show you how easily it is to use our TPS22917 breakout board in your project.

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Did you know we’ve pivoted? We’re moving into the electronics development industry providing our own forest of products to help bring your projects to life! https://t.co/SNFo9V70RT to learn more and shop! pic.twitter.com/uQ6sRUviWu

— oak dev tech (@oakdevtech) September 10, 2020