Get your tickets now for the 2018 Hackaday Superconference. Join us November 2nd-4th in Pasadena, California! This is the ultimate hardware conference. Hackers, designers, and engineers from all over the world converge — from the greenest beginners to those who have made history with their designs. This is the Hackaday community, these are your people,…
via Hackaday Superconference: Tickets and Proposals — Hackaday
The next Hardware Developers Didactic Galactic (HDDG) take place at SupplyFrame in San Francisco this Thursday with Sarah Petkus and Ryan Cousins:
Come enjoy yummy snacks and bevs and hear fascinating talks by these kickass engineers.
Sarah Petkus – SHE BON: Using Body-data to communicate the intimate and the unseen
Ryan Cousins – How and Why We Failed at Everything (So You Don’t Have To)
https://www.meetup.com/Hardware-Developers-Didactic-Galactic/events/252249466/
Sarah Petkus is a kinetic artist, roboticist, and transhumanist from Las Vegas, who designs electronic and mechanical devices which encourage reflection regarding the human relationship with technology.
Their talk will be about a series of wearable augments built to facilitate in sensing, tracking, and indicating one’s level of excitement (or arousal)! Each of the wearables uses a variety of sensors as input to influence quirky electronic and mechanical devices of my design as output. The goal in doing so is not only to create a stellar suit of electronic armor (or amour), but also to help facilitate a dialogue about sex and intimacy amongst my peers that is relatable, honest, healthy, and fun.
Ryan Cousins is cofounder and CEO of krtkl inc. Based in Silicon Valley, krtkl (“critical”) makes life easier for companies developing heavily connected and automated products. Ryan earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering – with an emphasis in thermodynamics and fluid mechanics – from UCLA. He has worked in both R&D and business capacities across a variety of markets, including medical and embedded, and has been granted a European patent.
After years of working on embedded systems, product development, manufacturing, and startup-ing, Ryan has had the “pleasure” of experiencing nearly every type of failure a hardware business has to offer. Ryan will share some humorous – and horrifying – anecdotes from his arduous journey, along with some key takeaways that will (hopefully) prevent others from making the same mistakes.
After the talks, there will be demos, community announcements, and socializing. If you’d like to give a 2 minute demo/ community announcement, please see the organizers when you arrive to get set up.
A community announcement includes looking for a project partner, a job, offering a project/ job, the announcement of your startup launch, your Crowdfunding pitch, etc.
We’re looking forward to seeing you Thursday, July 12th, at 6:30pm!
From Bradley Ramsey on the Tindie blog:
Renier van der Lee is the father of three kids, a technology enthusiast, and a self-proclaimed “gentleman farmer,” which sounds incredibly official on its own. He is also a Tindie seller who created the award-winning Vinduino sensor, which has seen massive growth and sales both on Tindie and beyond since its inception.
Join us as we explore the history and proliferation of this unique and endlessly useful device that has a huge impact on water conservation and savings for growers.
What is Vinduino, and How Does it Work?
Vinduino is a water-saving irrigation project for vineyards, but it has applications for all types of growers who live in drought-ridden countries. Vinduino utilizes a gypsum soil moisture sensor to accurately measure the moisture present around the roots of a plant.
It was originally designed for use in vineyards, where it can be connected to several long-range RF LoRA modules and charged by solar power. All of this is connected to the irrigation system. When the sensor detects a drop in moisture, the sprinklers turn on, and not a moment before.
The concept won the Best Product award during the 2015 Hackaday Prize, which aims to find projects that have potential as a product people would want. Vinduino was also selected for residency in the SupplyFrame Design lab.
Renier first tested his VInduino installation on his own vineyard. Prior to the creation of Vinduino, he was spending over $4,300 each year on a vineyard management company to ensure his vines were watered.
Once he switched over to Vinduino, he didn’t need their assistance anymore. Over the course of a single year, he managed to save 430,000 gallons of water, which equates to $1,925 in cost savings. The entire installation costs $635. It offers a great return on the investment almost immediately and represents a viable solution for the ongoing water shortages in California and across the world.
It’s Friday, and that means this is your last weekend to get your project together for the Robotics Module Challenge in this year’s Hackaday Prize. We’re looking for tools for robots that blow the doors off what is commercially available.
via This Is Your Last Chance To Design The Greatest Robotics Modules — Hackaday
We were musing upon the relative paucity of education with respect to the fundamentals of electronic circuitry with discrete semiconductors, so we thought we’d do something about it. So far we’ve taken a look at the basics of transistor biasing through the common emitter amplifier, then introduced a less common configuration, the common base amplifier. There…
via Biasing That Transistor: The Emitter Follower — Hackaday
From Elliot Williams on the Hackaday blog:
Good morning Hackaday universe! Hackaday Belgrade 2018 has just started, and we’re knee-deep in sharing, explaining, and generally celebrating our craft. But just because you’re not here doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take part
Watch 2018 Hackaday Belgrade Conference on YouTube:
The tagline of Bay Area Maker Faire is “Inspire the Future” and there was plenty of inspiration for our future generation. We have exhibits encouraging children to get hands-on making projects to call their own, and we have many schools exhibiting their student projects telling stories of what they’ve done. 357 more words
via Hacking for Learning and Laughs: The Makers of Oakwood School — Hackaday
From Ben James on the Hackaday blog:
There are few scenes in life more moving than the moment the solder paste melts as the component slides smoothly into place. We’re willing to bet the only reason you don’t have a reflow oven is the cost. Why wouldn’t you want one? Fortunately, the vastly cheaper DIY route has become a whole lot easier since the birth of the Reflowduino – an open source controller for reflow ovens.
This Hackaday Prize entry by [Timothy Woo] provides a super quick way to create your own reflow setup, using any cheap means of heating you have lying around. [Tim] uses a toaster oven he paid $21 for, but anything with a suitable thermal mass will do. The hardware of the Reflowduino is all open source and has been very well documented – both on the main hackaday.io page and over on the project’s GitHub.
The board itself is built around the ATMega32u4 and sports an integrated MAX31855 thermocouple interface (for the all-important PID control), LiPo battery charging, a buzzer for alerting you when input is needed, and Bluetooth. Why Bluetooth? An Android app has been developed for easy control of the Reflowduino, and will even graph the temperature profile.
When it comes to controlling the toaster oven/miscellaneous heat source, a “sidekick” board is available, with a solid state relay hooked up to a mains plug. This makes it a breeze to setup any mains appliance for Arduino control.
Hardware Developers Didactic Galactic (HDDG) is tonight at SupplyFrame in San Francisco featuring talks by Roy Jui Liang Hung, Tanya Fish (Pimoroni) and Jason Kridner (BeagleBoard.org Foundation):
This HDDG should be an awesome crowd as makers from all over are in the SF Bay Area this weekend for Maker Faire.
https://www.meetup.com/Hardware-Developers-Didactic-Galactic/events/250456428/
(look for our Drew Fustini in purple)
Can’t make it? SupplyFrame will have LIVE STREAM starting at approximately 7:00pm US PDT:
Enjoy delicious food (that is unlikely to be pizza) and beverages while listening to fascinating technical talks by these crazy and creative engineers.
Tanya Fish – Explaining Electronics to the Unitiated
Roy Jui Liang Hung – Mastering Animal Mechanics with the 3D Printer
Jason Kridner – Simplifying Hardware Design with System-in-Package Tech#HDDG LIVE STREAM –> http://bit.ly/2sPgORW
Tanya Fish (@tanurai) has been working at Pimoroni for the past couple of years, and is on a mission to explain how all their boards work to a wider audience. Hear her discuss the issues of explaining the “invisible magic” to complete beginners at electronics, and how the school system in the UK ill-prepares students for anything beyond building a simple circuit.
Roy is founder of Perkūnas Studio and an artist who’s passionate on tinkering. He first learned about 3Dprint in 2011, teaching himself how to master the machine. He is the most renowned 3DP expert in Taiwan. Roy will be talking about the process he used to make his incredible 3D sculptures, which he will be showing off at Maker Faire this weekend. He will even bring one of them to HDDG!
Jason Kridner is the co-founder and board member of the BeagleBoard.org foundation, and spends a lot of time defining strategy for growing open platform ecosystems. Jason will be talking about simplifying hardware design with system-in-package technology.
After the talks, there will be demos, community announcements, and socializing. If you’d like to give a 2 minute demo/ community announcement, please see the organizers when you arrive to get set up.
A community announcement includes looking for a project partner, a job, offering a project/ job, the announcement of your startup launch, your Crowdfunding pitch, etc.
We’re looking forward to seeing you Thursday, May 17th, at 6:30p!
~Jasmine, Stephen, Sophi, Matt, and AlekCode of Conduct (https://hackaday.io/project/28093-code-of-conduct)
Maker Faire Bay Area is this weekend, and the Hackaday and Tindie crew are getting ready to jack some cupcake cars. The Bay Area Maker Faire is one of the greatest gatherings of…
via This Weekend: Hackaday x Tindie Meetup At Bay Area Maker Faire. — Hackaday
OSH Park 