The Open Source Underwater Glider has just been named the Grand Prize winner of the 2017 Hackaday Prize. As the top winner of the Hackaday Prize, the Open Source Underwater Glider will receive $50,000 USD completes the awarding of more than $250,000 in cash prizes during the last eight months of the Hackaday Prize. More than…
via Open Source Underwater Glider Wins 2017 Hackaday Prize
From Jeremy S. Cook on the Tindie blog:
Thermal imaging has remained an interesting, if costly, technology for some time. One lower cost option is the the Grid-EYE sensor from Panasonic. While it has a resolution of only 8×8 pixels, it’s priced in the low double digit range, making it an ideal candidate for budget projects. If you’d like to add it to your build, Pesky Products has a has a breakout available that allows it to be used with the I²C protocol.
Xose Pérez, after finding this sensor and breakout on Tindie, which he (correctly) considers “a great place to find uncommon electronic components or weird/interesting boards,” decided to make his own low-resolution IR camera. At only 64 pixels of resolution, it’s not as capable as more expensive units, but it could still be very useful for getting a general idea of what is hot and cold in a room/environment. The case is made out of slices of acrylic, paper, cardboard, and MDF, giving it a very unique look. It also features a small screen to display supplemental information, and a simple button/switch interface.
shows how to create a DIY Robocar forked off of the “Donkey” Self-Driving car platform using the OpenMV Cam
The OpenMV Cam Donkey Car is designed to be easy to build out of parts that you can buy online and assemble together with basic tools. Below is the list of essential parts you’ll need to build the self-driving car.
Here is the car in action:
kwagyeman has shared the servo controller board on OSH Park:
Ben Strahan of Hologram.io writes about why development hardware should be open source:
It’s a simple premise – black boxes stifle innovation while open systems encourage exploration. Black Boxes and IP have their place as an essential tool in our economy; but in an industry like IoT where rapid innovation is needed, we need to push for open development tools as the building blocks that lead to innovative end-products for industry and consumers.
Going forward Hologram will open-source all hardware we develop for the developer community, including dependent firmware, through OSHWA. We see this as a mandatory step we need to take to help move IoT forward, to lower the barriers to entry, and to spur innovation in a rapidly evolving ecosystem.
The hardware design files for the new Hologram Nova module are available on GitHub:
Want to experience the Hackaday Superconference from the comfort of your own workshop? Just follow us on YouTube or on Facebook as two days of live streaming talks begin this Saturday morning. This weekend is the Hackaday Superconference, the greatest hardware conference on Earth. While the Superconference is the most amazing gatherings of engineers and engineering…
via Live Streams and Hack Chat From The Hackaday Superconference
If you aren’t able to attend and still want to be able to hack on the badge, then you can order one from Tindie:
Dan Maloney writes on Hackaday about Timothy Woo’s Reflowduino:
Face it — you want a reflow oven. Even the steadiest hands and best eyes only yield “meh” results with a manual iron on SMD boards, and forget about being able to scale up to production. But what controller should you use when you build your oven, and what features should it support? Don’t worry…
Dubbed the Reflowduino for obvious reasons, Timothy Woo’s Hackaday Prize entry has everything you need in a reflow oven controller, and a few things you never knew you needed.
From John Baichtal on Hackaday:
[jg] recently passed some damaged Braille signs and took on the challenge of repairing them. Informed by his recent work on PCB lapel pins, [jg] immediately thought of using circuit boards for this project. He’d noticed that round solder pads made for uniform hills of solder, and this reminded him of the bumps in Braille.
He began by reading up on the standards of the Braille Authority of North America, which stipulates a dot height of 0.6mm. He loaded up the PharmaBraille font system and laid it out the dots in photoshop, then and imported it into KiCad and laid out the boards. When the PCBs had arrived from OSH Park, [jg] soldering up the pads (lead free, but of course) to see if he could get the hills to 0.6mm. He’s experimenting with different methods of melting the solder to try to get more even results
[Ben Krasnow] is known for his clear explanations alongside awesome hardware, being one of only a few hackers who owns an electron microscope. This time he’s explaining how E-paper works while modifying the firmware of a 4.2 inch E-paper module to get a higher refresh rate. As for the awesome hardware, he also analyses the…
via [Ben Krasnow] Hacks E-Paper For Fastest Refresh Rate — Hackaday
Hardware teardowns are awesome when guided by experts. One of our favorites over the years has been [Mike Harrison], who has conquered teardowns of some incredibly rare and exquisitely engineered gear, sharing the adventure on his YouTube channel: mikeselectricstuff. Now he’s putting on a workshop to walk through some of the techniques he uses when looking…
OSH Park 