From a cockroach filled with LEDs, to an impressively dense 576 RGB LED display, and even a hunk of carpet, our final installment of the unofficial hardware badges at DEF CON 26 are beyond impressive. I tried to see every badge and speak to every badge maker this year. So far we’ve covered a ton…
We’ve all been there; you finally get the last DigiKey box and now your desk is covered in parts to stuff into a shiny new PCB you’ve been working on. First stop? Passive town, population endless waves of 1uF capacitors. The first one goes in the upper left, then a little below that, then… once…
via Interactive KiCAD BOMs Make Hand Assembly a Breeze — Hackaday
Who among us doesn’t procrastinate from time to time? We can’t count the number of times that we’ve taken advantage of the Post Office staying open until midnight on April 15th. And when the 15th falls on a weekend? Two glorious additional days to put off the inevitable!
If you’ve been sitting on submitting your talk or workshop proposal to the 2018 Hackaday Superconference, we’ve got the next best thing for you: we’re extending the deadline until 5 pm PDT on September 10th.
The Hackaday Superconference is a singularity of hardware hackers: more of the best people in the same space at the same time than anywhere else. And that means that your ideas and experiences will be shared with the people most likely to appreciate them. From heroic hacks to creative robotics or untold hardware histories, if there’s a crowd who’ll appreciate how a serial console saved your bacon, it’s this one.
And if you give a talk or workshop, you get in free. But it’s more than that — there’s a different experience of a convention, even a tight-knit and friendly one like Hackaday’s Supercon, when you’re on the other side of the curtain. Come join us! We’d love to hear what you’ve got to say. And now you’ve got a little more time to tell us.
(If you want to get in the old-fashioned way, tickets are still available, but they won’t be once we announce the slate of speakers. You’ve been warned.)
At Hackaday, we’re constantly impressed by the skill and technique that goes into soldering up some homebrew creations. We’re not just talking about hand-soldering 80-pin QFNs without a stencil, either: there are people building charlieplexed LED arrays out of bare copper wire, and using Kynar wire for mechanical stability. There are some very, very talented people out there, and they all work in the medium of wire, heat, and flux.
At this year’s DEF CON, we opened the floodgates to competitive soldering. Along with [Bunny] from Hardware Hacking Village and the many volunteers from the HHV and Soldering Skills Village, dozens competed to solder up a tiny kit full of LEDs and microscopic resistors.
The kit in question was an SMD Challenge Kit put together my MakersBox, and consisted of a small PCB, an SOIC-8 ATtiny, and a LED and resistor for 1206, 0805, 0603, 0402, and 0201 sizes. The contest is done in rounds. Six challengers compete at a time, and everyone is given 35 minutes to complete the kit.
From Radomir Dopieralski (ꝺeshipu) on Hackaday.io:
A Python-based micro game console, optimized for game development workshops.
I really like the #PewPew FeatherWing as a platform for teaching game development, but the cost of Feather boards needed to use it makes it difficult to organize workshops for larger groups of people. I have previously tried to work around that problem by merging the FeatherWing with the schematic stolen from a Trinket M0 (with an additional flash memory), but the resulting design was complex, difficult to make and still a bit expensive. Now after having designed a few more CircuitPython boards I think I can really cut the costs and make a standalone device with all the functionality of the original shield, but optimized for workshops.
From All the Badges of DEF CON 26 (vol 3) on Hackaday:
E-Paper Badge is a Hint at Great Things to Come
Friend of Hackaday, Drew Fustini, came to our Breakfast at DEF CON meetup sporting a name badge of his own design. The E-Paper Badge uses a Teensy LC to drive a 2.15″ E-Paper display. The row of capacitive touch buttons to the left allow the image to be changed, and he just happened to have the Jolly Wrencher in the gallery of choices for this picture.
This badge gets me really excited for this year’s Open Hardware Summit which is at MIT on September 27th. This year’s badge is a collaborative effort between a group on Hackaday.io! It’s basically Drew’s badge on steroids, and he told me the experience of working with a team has been really positive. It seems each time the group hits a hard problem or a pile of work that needs to be done, someone on the team grabs it and runs with it. It’s a great example of both certified open hardware and team development.
Hackaday will be hosting a dinner the evening before the 2018 Open Hardware Summit:
I tried my best to see every badge and speak with every badge maker at DEF CON 26. One thing’s for sure, seeing them all was absolutely impossible this year, but I came close. Check out the great badges shown off in volume 1 and in volume 2 of this series. The game is afoot…
Alex Glow from Hackster posted an update on the Charmware modular tech jewelry system:
New Charmware PCBs from OSH Park! (Pt. 1)
Sweet, a package from OSH Park! Time for an unboxing! Plus, see how to upload and order your own boards.
New Charmware PCBs from OSH Park! (Pt. 2)
These mini PCB beads (PCBeads?) help you build wearable electronic circuits!
Advice from the Intelligent Toasters blog on how to do tented vias in DesignSpark PCB software:
Tented Vias – who’d have thought they play such an essential role? If you have no idea what tented vias are, then you’re not alone and I’m here to enlighten you.
OSH Park 