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In the time since the Hackaday Prize was first run it has nurtured an astonishing array of projects from around the world, and brought to the fore some truly exceptional winners that have demonstrated world-changing possibilities. This year it has been extended to a new frontier with the launch of the Hackaday Prize China (Chinese language, here’s a Google Translate link), allowing engineers, makers, and inventors from that country to join the fun. We’re pleased to announce the finalists, from which a winner will be announced in Shenzhen, China on November 23^rd. If you’re in Shenzen area, you’re invited to attend the award ceremony!

All six of these final project entries have been translated into English to help share information about projects across the language barrier. On the left sidebar of each project page you can find a link back to the original Chinese language project entry. Each presents a fascinating look into what people in our global community can produce when they live at the source of the component supply chain. Among them are a healthy cross-section of projects which we’ll visit in no particular order. Let’s dig in and see what these are all about!

Want To Make A Voice Assistant? First, Make Your Own SBC

We’re used to voice assistants from the likes of Google and Amazon, but [dimension] eschews those by creating their own. It’s a two-PCB device, with a board containing display and sound circuitry mated via a PCI-E connector to a tiny self-designed CPU board which is called the Mini-Pi. This is an Allwinner H3-based SBC which we can imagine having applications beyond this project, but the attention to detail of creating an SBC for the project rather than using one off the shelf is very unexpected. The software is derived from the Jasper project which some readers may already be familiar with, and clearly a lot of effort has been put into making a product rather than a benchtop prototype.

Cleaning Robots In Disguise! This robotic floor sweeper is part hexapod, part wheeled.

If you have a Roomba or similar robotic home cleaner, you’ll be aware of its limitations. Obstacles can defeat it, and any challenges such as stairs or uneven surfaces are beyond it. A home sweeping robot with far more versatility comes from [Lìrèn] and takes the form of a Transformers-style hybrid between the type of wheeled machine that we’re used to and a hexapod walker. An extra twist is that the hexapod can detach itself from the wheeled sweeper to access spaces with restricted height such as beneath furniture. At its heart is a HiKey development board, which (from a bit of Google Translate detective work) we think is based upon a Huawei Kirin 970 SoC.

What would a PDA have looked like using 2019 components? The PDA, Re-Invented

There was a time back in the 1990s when the future of mobile computing seemed to lie in the PDA, relatively low-powered small tablets that held time-management and other productivity apps. All of the PDA’s functions have transferred into the smartphone which has delivered on the promise of those early devices and then some, but perhaps there is still a niche for such a device. It’s an avenue [qwert1213131] is exploring with Jakiro, an ESP32 based device sporting both an eInk touchscreen and a small OLED display. It’s interesting, because by revisiting the idea twenty years later with the benefit of components that simply weren’t available to the designers of the originals it can bring some of what was useful in a PDA such as convenience and simplicity along with the integrated wireless and computing power of the ESP and the low-power persistence of the eInk.

Three-sensor motion capture for your arm Motion Capture For The Rest Of Us

If we think of motion capture, it’s likely that scenes of actors wearing body suits covered in lights spring to mind, in the manner of the systems used for example by CGI artists. But the field of motion capture extends across a multitude of projects and technologies from hacked Nintendo PowerGloves upwards. It’s something [fantc] has made an inroad into, with a one-arm motion capture system using three MPU6050 inertial sensors coupled to an MSP430 family CPU. The whole setup is a compact unit strapped to the arm with a couple of smaller sensor boards, and the interfacing is performed via Bluetooth Low Energy. It doesn’t stretch the imagination to see this approach brought to other limbs with more sensors, perhaps creating full-body motion capture without some of the expensive set-up described earlier.

It’s A Handheld Console, But With So Much More Promise! This Pi Compute Module console board has so much potential!

At first sight, [Counterattack]’s handheld game console appears to be nothing special, after all while it is undoubtedly nicely built, it is not the only such project to be found. It’s only when it’s opened up do we gain an insight into why it deserves a second look. This is a complete and very well executed platform for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3. This was selected because it has the power required for the most faithful PlayStation emulation, but because the Pi is such a widely-supported and versatile device in itself we can instantly see huge appeal for this device in a host of applications beyond the world of gaming. Using a Pi ties you to one of the official form factors, and the Compute module offers a chance to roll your own Pi. If we consider this console as a roll-your-own Raspberry Pi 3 for portable battery-powered applications it becomes of interest far beyond a few PlayStation games.

The insect hexapod hardware isn’t the clever part Walking Like An Insect

[HarrytheOrange] brings us a hexapod walker, which would be nothing special were it not that its gait is derived from a study of insect movement rather than from a circular motion. In particular his interest lies in the insect’s ability to retain mobility with less than six operational legs, and he details his rather inhumane research methodology. The walker itself appears to be a straightforward enough design, and if the typical Arduino-style walkers we’ve seen are anything to go by we can imagine there is significant room for gait improvement.

The non-Chinese part of the Hackaday community is frequently fascinated by the work emerging from that country. But we know there is a ton of interesting things going on in the engineering communities there that the rest of the world often doesn’t have the chance to enjoy. What began as a few lone voices giving us a peek at their world is beginning to expand to a flow of interesting work share by the Chinese hardware hacking community to the excitement of non-Chinese-speaking hardware geeks everywhere. We hope that this competition helps to continue that trend, and if the high quality of these projects is anything to go by, we look forward to the Hackaday Prize China returning in future. Congratulations to these finalists, and all who entered!

Tags:  contests  

We love seeing the astonishing array of projects large and small entered into Hackaday contests which push the boundaries of what is possible. Our latest has been the Connected World contest which was announced back in June, and today we’re pleased to bring you its four top winners. As a recap, the brief was to create something that connects wirelessly and shows a blend of creativity and functionality. The final four have a diverse range of applications, and here they are with their respective categories:

Best Project:  Hive Tracker The Hive Tracker sensor head

Watchers of the gaming hardware scene may be familiar with the HTC Vive Tracker virtual reality position feedback system in which an infra-red laser scans a scene and is picked up by a handheld device to measure its position at a milimetric level. HiveTracker takes the Vive Tracker’s sensor and miniaturises it, with a central board containing a Nordic NRF52 RF-enabled microcontroller, and four satellite boards containing Triad TS4231 laser tracking chips.

The original intention was to use an FPGA for the processing, but clever use of a peripheral interface mode on the Nordic chip allowed them to dispense with it.

Best Design: Fossasat Open Source Satellite FossaSat-1, with solar panels deployed.

Think for a moment to the most ambitious project you might attempt… it’s possible that you couldn’t set your sights higher than space. That’s what the Fossa Systems team from Spain have done with FossaSat-1, an open-source pocketqube picosatellite that is to be launched with its total budget for both development and launch to be only 30,000 Euros. Like many of these tiny satellite designs it will be constructed from FR4 PCB material, and features both an ATmega328AU processor and a LoRa radio. It has a set of solar panels that are concealed within its 50mm-sided cube at launch, but will fold out to give it extra power in flight. Its payload will be student projects using an ATmega1284 processor.

Best Documentation: Domsnif Dot Matrix The Domsnif prototype board.

Many devices now contain a microprocessor, but do their job without any computer interface at all. Extracting their data can present a near-impossible challenge requiring complete reverse engineering. There is often something of a backdoor which can be used to circumvent the need for such work, and it comes in the form of the device’s LCD display.

Since many of these devices use known protocols it can become a relatively straightforward task to read the data being sent to them if you can gain access to their interface connector. This is the approach taken by DoMSnif, which hooks up to an LCD interface, decodes its signals, and offers the data to the wider world over a Bluetooth connection. As it stands in prototype form it uses a Teensy to retrieve the data and a Feather to handle both Bluetooth and USB, but the next plan is to use a 5V Cortex M0+ chip from Microchip in those roles.

Best Social: Telepresent Heart The Telepresent Heart mechanism can clearly be seen in this series of views.

Being apart from the love of your life is rough, especially when it is for an extended time. Telepresent Heart from [Claire Puginier]  aims to bring pining couples a little closer together by means of a pair of heart sensing pendants that each pulsate to the heartbeat of the other. It works with a sensor and servo-driven heartbeat mechanism, coupled vial Bluetooth to a smartphone app. The partners pair their smartphone apps, and each feels the heartbeat of the other. We really like this as a truly novel idea, and we look forward to seeing it realised as a working pair of devices.

Of course, these four winners are just a tiny fraction of the total entry, and indeed they aren’t even all of the winners, either. There are 30 other uncategorised winners listed on the contest page which contain some real gems, as well as the rest of the entries which can be found in the competition entry list. Thanks very much to all who took part, and we look forward to the next Hackaday contest.

Tags:  contests  

High resolution digital cameras are built into half of the devices we own (whether we want them or not), so why is it still so hard to find good pictures of all the incredible projects our readers are working on? In the recently concluded Beautiful Hardware Contest, we challenged you to take your project photography to the next level. Rather than being an afterthought, this time the pictures would take center stage. Ranging from creative images of personal projects to new ways of looking at existing pieces of hardware, the 100+ entries we received for this contest proved that there’s more beauty in a hacker’s parts bin than most of them probably realize.

As always, it was a struggle to narrow down all the fantastic entries to just a handful of winners. But without further adieu, let’s take a look at the photos that we think truly blurred the line between workbench and work of art:

CRM200 MEMS Gyroscope

If you ever needed a reminder that beauty is all around you, look no further than the work Evilmonkeyz has done with these CRM200 MEMS gyroscopes. With the lids removed, the intricate internal features of these tiny gadgets become visible under the microscope. Most people have a MEMS gyroscope or two in their pocket courtesy of the modern smartphone, but even counting the technologically enthralled readers of Hackaday, we wager the vast majority have never seen the three dimensional nature of the device when viewed from an angle like this.

Evilmonkeyz says it only took a few minutes of manual labor with 400 grit sandpaper to ablate the encapsulation on these chips and uncover the incredible world underneath; something to keep in mind if you’re considering your own microscopic exploration. We also appreciate the fact that he gave the viewer some scale by stacking four of the CRM200s on a 100 yen coin in honor of their Japanese heritage.

City of Siliconia

If Alpha 1 Zero hadn’t included the “candid” shot of this incredible science-fiction skyline that showed the Arduino and tangle of wires that power it, we would have had a hard time believing it wasn’t computer-generated. Reminiscent of the misty, neon-drenched, cyberpunk worlds of Blade Runner or Altered Carbon, this electronic metropolis was created entirely from custom PCBs and addressable RGB LEDs.

City of Siliconia doesn’t just look the part, Alpha 1 Zero says it’s meant to be an exploration of futuristic city design that incorporates efficient vertical integration of transportation, power, and communication systems.

Pixel Republic

There’s an undeniable beauty in simplicity, and that principle is in ample display with Pixel Republic by ACROBOTIC Industries. On the surface, it seems little more than an admittedly well-framed photograph of a column of RGB LEDs doing what they’re designed to do. But upon closer examination, you realize that the photographer has captured the individual colored emitters glowing; clearly illustrating how one little device is able to generate so many colors.

Still, the name Pixel Republic hints at a deeper meaning. Is this the national flag of some hitherto unknown digital domain? Or perhaps its display of rainbow colors is meant to signify the creative diversity of the hacker culture? Pondering the true meaning, if any, remains an exercise for the reader.

Honorable Mentions

There were so many fantastic entries into the Beautiful Hardware Contest that we couldn’t announce these winners without also calling out a few Honorable Mentions:

• Balance
• Alphanumeric LED Display Tester
• Led Blinker
• LITEF 104267 “Enigma” LED display
• Nixie Temperature Display
• Kawaii Hearts Pendant

This contest challenged hackers to step a bit outside of their comfort zone, but we think the results speak for themselves. If you’re looking to take your project documentation to new heights, a stroll through the complete list of entries should provide plenty of inspiration.

Tags:  contests  

Whilst we patiently wait for the day that Womble-shaped robots replace human tennis players at Wimbledon, we can admire the IBM powered AI technology that the organisers of the Wimbledon tennis tournament use to enhance the experience for TV and phone viewers.

As can be expected, the technology tracks the ball, analyses player gestures, crowd cheers/booing but can’t yet discern the more subtle player behaviour such as serving an ace or the classic John McEnroe ‘smash your racket on the ground’ stunt. Currently a large number of expert human side kicks are required for recording these facets and manually uploading them into the huge Watson driven analytics system.

Phone apps are possibly the best places to see the results of the IBM Slammtracker system and are perfect for the casual tennis train spotter. It would be interesting to see the intrinsic AI bias at work – whether it can compensate for the greater intensity of the cheer for the more popular celebrities rather than the skill, or fluke shot, of the rank outsider. We also wonder if it will be misogynistic – will it focus on men rather than women in the mixed doubles or the other way round? Will it be racist? Also, when will the umpires be replaced with 100% AI?

Finally, whilst we at Hackaday appreciate the value of sport and exercise and the technology behind the apps, many of us have no time to mindlessly watch a ball go backwards and forwards across our screens, even if it is accompanied by satisfying grunts and the occasional racket-to-ground smash. We’d much rather entertain ourselves with the idea of building the robots that will surely one day make watching human tennis players a thing of the past.

Tags:  contests  

We all have awesome hardware projects to show off. Great photos of them are how you unlock the excitement others see in your work. Whether you’re using a DSLR or the camera in your smartphone, it’s not difficult to capture an amazing picture of the project you pour so much effort into. We want you to unleash your photography skills for the Beautiful Hardware contest. Show us your epic hardware photos and win prizes.

The Skeleton Watch by Mile is a great example of superb photography. Excellent framing, focus, and color make it great.

The only real barrier between us and superb hardware photos is having an eye for framing your shots, and a few simple tricks to get everything else right. Think about good lighting, shooting with an interesting background, framing off to the side and at an angle (as just one example) for more interest, and spending a few moments with an image editor to complement what the camera captured. With this contest, we want you to take those tricks for a spin on your own workbench.

Lee Wilkins put together a simple guide to get you going with spectacular hardware photography. From the basics of photography and the tricks used for making product hype photos, to capturing great images of LEDs and getting the colors just right, this is a comprehensive quickstart. There’s even a collection of great examples to strive for.

There are three top prizes of $100 cash waiting for you. Just start a new project on Hackaday.io and upload the finest photos you can take of some fun hardware. In the left sidebar of that project use the “Submit project to…” menu to enter it in the Beautiful Hardware contest.

Tags:  contests  

For his Hackaday Prize entry, [Martin] is building an Open Source Multimeter that can measure voltage, current, and power. It’s an amazing build, and you too can build one yourself.

The features for this multimeter consist of voltage mode with a range of +/-6V and +/-60V. There’s a current mode, basically the same as voltage, with a range of +/-60 mA and +/-500mA. Unlike our bright yellow Fluke, there’s also a power mode that measures voltage and current at the same time, with all four combinations of ranges available. There’s a continuity test that sounds a buzzer when the resistance is below 50 Ω, and a component test mode that measures resistors, caps, and diodes. There’s a fully isolated USB interface capable of receiving commands and transmitting data, a real-time clock, and in the future there might be frequency measurement.

This build is based on the STM32F103 microcontroller, uses an old Nokia phone screen, and unlike so many other multimeters, this thing is small. It’s very small. More than small enough to fit in your pocket and forget about it, unlike nearly every other multimeter available. There’s one thing about multimeters, and it’s that the best multimeter is the one that you have in your hands when you need it, and this one certainly fits the bill.

The entire project is being written up on hackaday.io, there’s a GitHub repo for all the hardware and software, and there’s also a video demo covering all the features (available below). This is a stand-out project, and something we desperately want to get our hands on.

The HackadayPrize2019 is Sponsored by:

Tags:  contests  

Back in March, the call went out: take your wiggliest, floppiest, most dimensionally compliant idea, and show us how it would be better if only you could design it around a flexible PCB. We weren’t even looking for a prototype; all we needed was an idea with perhaps a sketch, even one jotted on the legendary envelope or cocktail napkin.

When we remove constraints like that, it’s interesting to see how people respond. We have to say that the breadth of applications for flex PCBs and the creativity shown in designing them into projects was incredible. We saw everything from circuit sculpture to wearables. Some were strictly utilitarian and others were far more creative. In the end we got 70 entries, and with 60 prizes to be awarded, the odds were ever in your favor.

Now that the entries have been evaluated and the winners decided, it’s time to look over the ways you came up with to put a flexible PCB to work. Normally we list all the winners in our contest wrap-ups, but with so many winners we can’t feature everyone. We’ll just call out a few of the real standout projects here, but you really should check the list of winning projects to see the full range of what this call for flexibility brought out in our community.

Circuits You Can Wear “Schmartwatch” prototype, by Basti Neumann

As expected, a fair number of entries came from the wearables space. The human body has few flat parts, at least on most of us, and the flexible PCB can be a game changer in producing form-fitting electronics for sensors, actuators, and displays. Basti Neumann’s “Schmartwatch”, designed in homage to the Pebble watch, is an always-on e-ink display that takes advantage of flex PCBs specifically for the watch band. It’s a feature-packed wearable that Basti has already ramped up to a small production run.

Also somewhat in the category of wearables is the piezoresistive sensor element that Chris Coulston came up for optimizing prosthetic limb fitment. As we previously described, the idea came about from watching a friend struggle getting the right fit on a prosthetic leg. His friend had developed a one-channel force sensor to measure the pressure between the residual limb and the prosthetic, but Chris took it to the next level. His matrix of sensors uses flex PCBs and Velostat to build a real-time picture of forces over the entire interface between limb and prosthetic, and could be a real boon to getting a comfortable fit.

Chris Coulston’s piezoresistive sensor array helps with prosthetic fitment. What Goes Up…

Few areas have benefitted as much from advances in electronics design as the aerospace field has, and Eric Sims’ Flexible GPS Antenna for model rockets proves that’s not just limited to the big flying machines. Although since this array of five GPS antennas, intended to keep a GPS lock and aid recovery no matter how the rocket lands, was designed to wrap around a 4″ (10 cm) diameter rocket tube, we’re not sure Eric’s rockets are exactly toys. We really like the fact that each antenna has its own LNA, and that an addressable RF switch can power down antennas to save power.

The long, long antenna Eric Sims designed to wrap around big model rockets. Click to embiggen. Flexible Repairs Oops! Anthony Kouttron was able to repair this lens after he tore a flex PCB while cleaning it.

We’re not surprised to open up a laptop or TV these days and see a fair number of flexible PCBs. That makes sense, since being able to jam a PCB in that conforms to often complex shapes and can move around a bit is an important aspect of modern design. Anthony Kouttron learned the hard way that flex PCBs aren’t bulletproof, though, as he tore one while attempting a deep cleaning of a beloved camera lens. Unable to source a repair part, Anthony did what any of would do: he made his own replacement flex PCB.

Dead laptop? The least you can do is harvest the camera before sending it off to e-waste.

Not so much a repair as a repurposing, we really enjoyed Arsenijs’ guide to laptop webcam reuse. Dead laptops are a dime a dozen, and most of them are crammed with goodies. And most of that stuff is connected with low-profile flex PCB connectors and harnesses. Once you liberate the camera, dealing with the flex PCB and sorting out the wiring can be a chore.

Congratulations!

As we mentioned, your odds of winning this contest were really good. Sixty of the seventy entries were selected, and each will receive a code from our sponsor OSH Park good for three complementary PCBs. Winners have been notified by email with instructions on redeeming their code. In addition, we offered three $100 Tindie gift cards to entrants from three categories: Best Project, Best Documentation, and Best Social Media Picture or Video. Sadly, we got no social entries that went the social media route, so we couldn’t award that gift card. But Madaeon took the prize for best documentation for his silicone-free DIY flex keyboard, and Basti’s Schmartwatch won for Best Project.

Congratulations to all the winners of the Flexible PCB contest. We hoped the contest rules would prove challenging both through the constraints and the freedom of the rules. We weren’t disappointed. And here’s hoping that everyone takes a look at the new Connected World contest.

Tags:  contests  

We’re on the lookout for the most interesting connected projects, things that communicate wirelessly to do something clever. Show us your creations and you can win the Connected World contest.

Chances are you’ve already been automating the world around you with wireless connections. This could be as simple as WiFi, or as convoluted as systems separated by miles yet connected via line-of-site laser communications. It could be 433 MHz wireless modules, or Bluetooth steering wheel control for your miniature robot. We’d really like to see a washing machine with a satellite uplink but we’d better be careful what we wish for.

We’ll pick the top 20 entries based on your creativity, execution, functionality, and how well you tell the backstory. Each will receive a free PCB coupon for up to $50 from OSH Park. Additionally, we’ll award the title of Best Project, Best Aesthetic, Best Documentation, and Best Media to four entries and give each a $100 Tindie gift card.

Don’t delay, put your project up on Hackaday.io and use the dropdown box on the left sidebar to enter it in the Connected World contest.

Tags:  contests  

For college-aged engineers and designers, finding a problem they’re truly passionate about early on could very well set the trajectory for an entire career. This is precisely the goal of the Cornell Cup, a competition that tasks applicants with solving a real-world problem in a unique and interesting way. From what we saw this is definitely working, as teams showed up with ornithopter-based quadcopters, robotic dinghies, forest fire sniffers, and high-jumping rovers.

With such an open ended approach, individual entries have a tendency to vary wildly, running the gamut from autonomous vehicles to assistive technology. No team feels pressured to pursue a project they aren’t truly invested in, and everyone’s the better for it.

Given such lofty goals, Hackaday was proud to sponsor the 2019 Cornell Cup. Especially as it so closely aligns with the product design focus of this year’s Hackaday Prize. Designing something which solves a real-world problem is definitely part of the formula when the goal is to reach large scale production. And after seeing the entries first-hand during the Finals at Kennedy Space Center, we think every one of them would be a fantastic entry into the Hackaday Prize.

I don’t envy the judges who ultimately had to narrow it down to just a few teams to take home their share of the nearly $20,000 awarded. Join me after the break for a closer look at the projects that ended up coming out on top.

First Place: S.S. MAPR

Developed by a team from the University of Pennsylvania, the S.S. MAPR impressed on multiple fronts. It was the only autonomous vehicle to make it into the Finals, and also the only watercraft. Its imposing eight-foot length was also hard to discount in a room largely dominated by tabletop demonstrations. Given its size, there was unfortunately no way for the autonomous boat to show off its moves indoors, but videos recorded during a previous expedition to Pennsylvania’s Schuylkill river were on display for the judges to view.

The team’s goal with S.S. MAPR was to make performing water quality samples faster and cheaper than sending a human out to do it, which in turn helps authorities identify and respond to ecological threats to drinking water sources. Operators provide the locations and depths they want to sample, and the craft uses a submersible pump to bring samples aboard. The 250 mL sample containers are held within a novel rotary mechanism, and there’s a provision for purging the pump and lead hose before sample collection to avoid cross-contamination with the previous sample.

Initially, the team planned to manufacture their own hull, but eventually found it made more sense to use a commercially available inflatable boat as a starting point. For propulsion, they used Blue Robotics T200 thrusters capable of delivering 5.1 kilograms of thrust each; more than enough to get the lightweight inflatable craft where it needs to go. The considerable energy requirements of the craft did prove to be something of a challenge, and the team eventually settled on an onboard 700 watt gasoline generator after finding that pure battery power didn’t deliver the necessary endurance.

Second Place: TerraNova

Not all of the problems tackled during the Cornell Cup were of Earthly origin. It’s theorized that caves on the Moon would make an ideal starting point for a future human outpost, but up until this point, they’ve gone completely unexplored. In lieu of relatively sure-footed human explorers, it would take an exceptionally nimble rover to descend more than a few feet into these caves.

Enter TerraNova. This rover design is not only able to handle rough and uneven terrain, but it has a secret weapon: a spring-loaded vertical leap capability designed to get it out of trouble. On the Moon, the team estimates their system should be able to propel TerraNova one meter into the air without expending any fuel. With the addition of gas thrusters, this ability could potentially be expanded to performing the sort of long-distance horizontal “hops” required by the unclaimed Google Lunar X Prize.

As impressive as the rover is, Team TerraNova has no illusions about their machine actually going to the Moon. But then, that was never really the goal. The hope is that the research and engineering done during the development of their leaping rover could prove useful to NASA or other entities performing future lunar missions. Of course, knowing you don’t have to design your vehicle to operate hundreds of thousands of miles from home has its advantages; namely the ability to use consumer-grade components and swapping out a complex semi-autonomous control system for an Xbox controller hooked up to a laptop.

Third Place: FWMAV

Last but certainly not least is the Flapping-Wing Micro Air Vehicle (FWMAV) from the University of California, Irvine. Essentially, the team took the traditional quadcopter design we’re all familiar with and replaced the spinning propellers with four sets of ornithopter wings. The amalgamation of these two vastly different styles of flight results in a vehicle with the maneuverability of a quadcopter but without the noise and hazardous blades which thus far have been considered part and parcel with small UAVs.

It’s one thing to understand the physics of how it flies, but it’s quite another to see it in the air. The FWMAV doesn’t just fly, it zooms. A side-effect of the ornithopter wings is that the craft is capable of very nearly horizontal flight, but with the hovering ability and pinpoint landing accuracy of a helicopter. We’re told that the team received special dispensation from NASA to fly the FWMAV around the conference center, a decision which was surely appreciated by all those in attendance.

Without the spinning blades, the FWMAV is much safer than traditional UAV designs. You can put your hand against the flapping wings and cause no damage to yourself or the aircraft. While it’s still far from silent, the movement of the wings makes for a far more organic noise than you might expect. Seeing it buzz and flit around the room, it seems more like a giant insect than a mechanical device.

Incredibly, every piece of hardware used in the FWMAV is an off-the-shelf component. From the flight controller to the ornithopter mechanisms, they’re all parts you can buy right now. The trick was combining them in a novel way. According to the team, the hardest part was modifying the flight controller’s open source firmware to handle the new propulsion system.

People’s Choice: Vulcan IoT

While it didn’t get selected by the judges, Vulcan IoT impressed the Cornell Cup attendees enough that it picked up the “People’s Choice” award at the end of the Finals. This project uses a network of low-cost sensors to try to predict when wildfires will occur by analyzing variables such as air temperature and soil moisture. Comparing real-time data from the sensor network to decades of historical records, the team believes their system can preemptively alert authorities to an imminent fire threat.

The success of the system essentially depends on having a large network of reporting nodes, so looking ahead, the team wants to drive the sensor cost down as low as possible. At this early stage they’re still using CNC milled PCBs and 3D printed enclosures, but those will give way to professionally fabricated boards and injection molded cases as the sensor network expands.

Right now the prototypes are using Particle Electron microcontrollers, which they feel is overkill for the final hardware. As the design progresses towards higher production rates, they’ll look into finding a MCU that’s more closely honed to their specific needs. In the future, the team says an open API could even allow sensors built by other manufacturers (or even individuals) to push data into their system, ultimately paving the way for Vulcan IoT to offer fire detection as a service.

More than a Competition

We wanted to specifically showcase the entries that came out on top at this year’s Cornell Cup, but the event is really so much more than a handful of winning projects. Everyone we talked to said the true value of the Cornell Cup wasn’t the prize money, but the chance to network with other teams and see how the various problems were being solved. As every project is tackling a different problem, the teams see themselves less as competitors and more like colleagues; allowing for a freer exchange of information than you’d likely see if all the teams were working towards the same end goal.

In the hopes of capturing a little bit of the energy and camaraderie that events like the Cornell Cup foster, we’ve put together a video that features some of the passionate students and staffers we talked to during the two day event.

Tags:  contests  

The 2019 Hackaday Prize, which was announced last week, is very much on everyone’s mind, so much so that we’ve already gotten a great response with a lot of really promising early entries. As much as we love that, the Prize isn’t the only show in town, and we’d be remiss to not call attention to our other ongoing contest: The Flexible PCB Contest.

The idea of the Flexible PCB Contest is simple: design something that needs a flexible PCB. That’s it. Whether it’s a wearable, a sensor, or a mechanism that needs to transmit power and control between two or more moving elements, if a flexible PCB solves a problem, we want to know about it.

We’ve teamed up with Digi-Key for this contest, and 60 winners will receive free fabrication of three copies of their flexible PCB design, manufactured through the expertise of OSH Park. And here’s the beauty part: all you need is an idea! No prototype is necessary. Just come up with an idea and let us know about it. Maybe you have a full schematic, or just a simple Fritzing project. Heck, even a block diagram will do. Whatever your idea is for a flexible PCB project, we want to see it.

To get the creative juices going, here’s a look at a few of the current entries

Click to view slideshow.

The Flexible PCB Contest goes through May 29, so you’ve got plenty of time to get an idea together.

Tags:  contests  

What prosthetic limbs can do these days is nothing short of miraculous, and can change the life of an amputee in so many ways. But no matter what advanced sensors and actuators are added to the prosthetic, it has to interface with the wearer’s body, and that can lead to …read more

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The now-humble PCB was revolutionary when it came along, and the whole ecosystem that evolved around it has been a game changer in electronic design. But the PCB is just so… flat. Planar. Two-dimensional. As useful as it is, it gets a little dull sometimes.

Here’s your chance to break …read more

Tags:  contests  

Circuits are beautiful in their own way, and a circuit sculpture takes that abstract beauty and makes it into a purposeful art form. Can you use the wires of the circuits themselves as the structure of a sculpture, and tell a story with the use and placement of every component? Anyone can exercise their inner artist using this medium and we loved seeing so many people give it a try. Today we announce the top winners and celebrate four score of entries in the Hackaday Circuit Sculpture Contest.

Let’s take a look at twelve outstanding projects that caught (and held) …read more

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Trying to make a hemispherical surface out of a PCB is no easy feat. Trying to do that and make the result a working circuit is even harder. Doing it with one solid piece of FR4 seems impossible, right?

Not so much. [brainsmoke] came up with a clever way to make foldable, working PCBs that can be formed into hemispheres. The inspiration for this came from a larger project that resulted in a 32-cm diameter LED-studded sphere, which a friend thought would make a swell necklace if it was scaled down. That larger sphere was made somewhat like a PCB …read more

Tags:  contests  

Drop what you’re doing and get thee to thy workshop. This is the last weekend of the Hackaday Circuit Sculpture Contest, the perfect chance for you to exercise the creative hacker within by building something artistic using stuff you already have on hand.

The concept is simple: build a sculpture where the electronic circuit is the sculpture. Wire the components up in a way that shows off that wiring, and uses it as the structure of the art piece. Seven top finishers will win prizes, but really we want to see everyone give this a try because the results are …read more

Tags:  contests  

This stunning piece of art is [Emily Velasco’s] take on the Atari Punk Console. It’s a freeform circuit that synthesizes sound using 555 timers. The circuit has been around for a long time, but her fabrication is completely new and simply incredible!

This isn’t [Emily’s] first rodeo. She previously built the mini CRT sculpture project seen to the left in the image above. Its centerpiece is a tiny CRT from an old video camera viewfinder, and it is fairly common for the driver circuit to understand composite video. And unlike CRTs, small video cameras with composite video output are easily …read more

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With the high availability of low-cost modular electronic components, building your own little robot buddy is easier and more affordable than ever. But while the electronics might be dirt cheap thanks to the economies of scale, modular robot chassis can be surprisingly expensive. If you’ve got a 3D printer you can always make a chassis that way, but what if you’re looking for something a bit more artisanal?

For his entry into the Circuit Sculpture Contest, [Robson Couto] has built a simple robot which dumps the traditional chassis for a frame made out of bent and soldered copper wire. Not …read more

Tags:  contests  

[Paul Gallagher] has spent years separating his tasks into carefully measured out blocks, a method of time management known as the Pomodoro Technique. If that’s not enough proof that he’s considerably more organized and structured than the average hacker, you only need to take a look at this gorgeous Pomodoro Timer he’s entered into the Circuit Sculpture Contest. Just don’t be surprised if you suddenly feel like your own time management skills aren’t cutting it.

While [Paul] has traditionally just kept mental note of the hour-long blocks of time be breaks his work into, he thought it was about time …read more

Tags:  contests  

Whether or not you chose to believe our claim that we planned it this way, the holidays happen to fall right smack in the middle of our ongoing Circuit Sculpture Contest, which challenges hackers to build circuits that double as bona fide works of art. It’s become almost too easy to spin up your own PCB, so why not try your hand at building in three dimensions and without a net? The holidays are a perfect time for it as it’s not only a reprieve from the work, school, or forced labor camp that usually ties up our waking hours, …read more

Tags:  contests  

Some of the most satisfying projects of all are the ones that do something visual. All the network routers, data loggers, and thermostats are great. But we are visual creatures and even a humble blinking LED is enough to give you a little rush even compared to finding a large prime number. We wanted to see what our community could do visually with a Raspberry Pi so we challenged you with the Visualize it with Pi contest.

As always, the competition was brisk, with a lot of great projects. This contest showed off the trend towards using LED modules and …read more

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We were contacted by [morbo] to let us know about a project on the AdaCore blog that concerns programming a PicoRV32 RISC-V softcore with Ada. The softcore itself runs on a Lattice ICE40LP8K-based TinyFPGA-BX FPGA board, which we have covered in the past.

The blog post describes how to use the Community edition of the GNAT Ada compiler to set up the development environment, before implementing a simple example project that controls a strip of WS28212b RGB LED modules. There are two push buttons changing the animation and brightness of the lights.

The source can be found at the author’s …read more

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One of the things that always attracts our eye in old movies is how many kinds of displays you see on old gear both real and imaginary. Really old stuff usually had meters or circular recorders. But slightly newer movies often had some kind of exotic digital display with Nixes or Numitron tubes. One of the really exotic display devices was a Dekatron. While these are pretty rare, you can make a stand-in using modern LEDs and [Dave] did just that in an entry into our square inch competition.

These were gas-filled tubes with ten positions. You had to reset …read more

Tags:  contests  

No, we’re not talking about spooky feats of General Relativity. But you should know that the Return of the Square Inch Project just got its deadline extended.

If you missed the call the first time around, our favorite user-contributed contest on Hackaday.io is up and running again. Hackaday.io tossed in some good money for prizes, and folks started thinking about what functionality they could cram inside a 25.4 mm x 25.4 mm square. But while one constraint can help bring out creativity, adding a tight deadline to a tight squeeze caused a number of our entrants to ask for an …read more

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You can plug in a Raspberry Pi, and you can blink a LED. You can visualize data, and now there’s a contest on Hackaday.io to show off your skills. Right now, we’re opening up the Visualize It With Pi contest on Hackaday.io. The challenge? Visualize data with LED strips and panels. Is that ‘data’ actually just a video of Never Gonna Give You Up? We’ll find out soon enough.

The goal of this contest is to combine a Raspberry Pi and its immense processing power and the blinky goodness of LED strips and panels to visualize and interpret data in …read more

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We all love reading about creative problem-solving work done by competitors in past DARPA robotic challenges. Some of us even have ambition to join the fray and compete first-hand instead of just reading about them after the fact. If this describes you, step on up to the DARPA Subterranean Challenge.

Following up on past challenges to build autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots, DARPA now wants to focus collective brainpower solving problems encountered by robots working underground. There will be two competition tracks: the Systems Track is what we’ve come to expect, where teams build both the hardware and software of …read more

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Want to play a game? Your challenge is to do something incredible with a printed circuit board that measures no more than one inch by one inch. It’s The Return of the One Square Inch Project and it’s going to be amazing!

We can’t believe that it’s been three years! The original One Square Inch Project was a contest dreamt up by Hackaday.io user [alpha_ninja] back in 2015, and we thought it was such a great idea that we ponied up some prizes. The entries were, frankly, the best we’ve ever seen. So we’re doing it again!

Last time around, …read more

Tags:  contests  

Here’s a challenge for all you hardware hackers out there. Peter Jansen has opened up the Hot Camera Contest on Hackaday.io to use a thermal imaging camera in a battery-powered project.

The challenge here is simple. Use a Flir Lepton thermal imaging camera module in a battery-powered configuration. There’s a catch, though: this is a project to use the Lepton in radiometric mode, where the camera spits out an actual temperature value for each pixel. Yes, this is a documented feature in the Flir Lepton module, but so far very few people are using it, and no one has done …read more

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Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. It’s a quote from the Wizard of Oz but also an interesting way to look at our interactions with electronics. The most natural interactions free us from thinking about the ones and zeros behind them. Your next challenge is to build an innovative interface for humans to talk to machines and machines to talk to humans. This is the Human-Computer Interface Challenge!

The Next Gen of HCI

A Human-Computer Interface (or HCI) is what we use to control computers and what they use to control us get information to us. HCIs …read more

Tags:  contests  

Engadget has decided to give this whole crowd-funding thing a try with a competition called Insert Coin. This is part of an upcoming event called Expand that is supposed to let us get inside information on gadget construction and conception. This actually sounds refreshing compared to the giant commercial that other tech conferences can be [...]

Tags:  thing try engadget gadget crowd contests  

The 7400 Logic Competition has drawn to a close. The winners were announced and there are quite a few of them. There were fifteen first place winners named, nine second place, and nineteen third place projects. The bounty of quality entries is a testament to the popularity of the contest. It helps to have a [...]

Tags:  competition place logic quality-entries place-winners competition-winners contests  

Seeed Studios has launched a contest centered around the DSO Quad. In case you’re unfamiliar with the hardware, the DSO Quad is a low-cost standalone oscilloscope. It’s got four channels, two of which are analog, and includes an ARM Cortex-M3 processor as well as an FPGA. Why are we recapping the hardware with the contest announcement? [...]

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Here’s a challenge tailored to our community if we’ve ever seen one. You know those delightful unsolicited prerecorded calls you get from time to time? They might be political, but they also come from companies trying to sell you vinyl siding, or promising improvements in your business. Well they’re against the law in many cases, [...]

Tags:  way prize time promising-improvements vinyl-siding contests  

The Open 7400 Logic Competition is being held again this year. Start thinking about your entries, they’ll need to be finished and submitted by October 31st. As motivation, Digilent has put up two of their Analog Discovery kits as prizes. They can be used as a dual channel oscilloscope, function generator, or 16-channel logic analyzer. Last [...]

Tags:  competition open logic channel-logic-analyzer discovery-kits digilent contests  

In case you missed MB Labs’ demo of their project for the Red Bull creation contest last Sunday night, the page describing their build is up and is giving us at Hackaday a run for our money. The Morphield consists of a piece of fabric stretched over a frame, itself hiding 135 solenoid-controlled balloons that move the field [...]

Tags:  morphield mess wiring hot-mess solenoid last-sunday contests  

North Street Labs really brought their ‘A’ game to the build finals for the Red Bull Creation contest. Behold the Centrifury, their spinning hell of a game. You can’t really make it out (because of the spinning) but the game consists of two bucket seats positioned opposite of each other on a merry-go-round type deck. [...]

Tags:  spinning-hell game red north-street type-deck bucket-seats red-bull contests  

Go Vote Now!  update: looks like the vote button opens a popup to a Facebook app. this is required to vote :( Full information on what we built and video after the break. As you can see above, our entry into the contest was a set of giant dueling mazes. We took the idea of a [...]

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Tonight at 6pm pst, the people at RedBull will be announcing the theme for the 72 hour build-off. We’ve cleaned our space, set up the cameras, and tried to get a good night’s sleep.  We’re all ready to kick some ass and would love it if you would join in to watch and even chat [...]

Tags:  tonight hour pst 6pm sleep cameras contests  

For all you old-school console hackers out there, there’s a homebrew coding competition being held by NeoTeam for all the retro (and not so retro) consoles of yesteryear. If you’ve ever programmed for the NES, GBA, PC Engine, N64, or even the Dreamcast, now’s your chance to write a game or app and hopefully win a [...]

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We are quite happy to announce that we’ve made it into the next round of the Red Bull Creation contest.  Our entry was fairly simple, but just amusing enough to get us by. I’m assembling my team here in springfield missouri at Squidfoo as well as setting up some full time Skype sessions with writers [...]

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This entry in the Red Bull Creation contest uses a laser to charge up a glow-in-the-dark message board. The concept is something we’ve seen several times before. Since light can excite a phosphorescent surface, moving pixels of light over that surface leaves a fading trail. Most recently we saw a spinning ring message board. This [...]

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The Raspberry Pi was originally conceived as an educational platform. Much like the BBC Micros and Apple ][s of yore, the Raspi is designed to get kids into programming by giving them a very tiny but still useful computer. Truth be told, we haven’t seen any educational hacks involving the Raspberry Pi, most likely because makers and tinkerers like [...]

Tags:  raspberry raspi Programming bbc-micros educational-platform useful-computer contests  

Challenge your friends to a little mental Tug of War thanks to the Omaha Maker Group’s Red Bull Creation contest entry. The power struggle is all in your mind, and can only be won if you’re able to concentrate deeply and quickly. The headsets worn by each competitor monitor brain waves over a ten second window. [...]

Tags:  tug mind war brain-waves tug-of-war mind-man contests  

If you have a quadcopter and are looking for a beer delivery device, HobbyKing is putting on a beerlift competition The rules for the HobbyKing beer lift are pretty simple: lift the most beer with a quad/hex/octo copter and win a HobbyKing gift card. There are 3 classes: Unlimited, which means a vehicle of any size [...]

Tags:  quadcopter beer hobbyking beer-delivery delivery-device hex contests  

The Harford Hackerspace in Baltimore, Maryland just went public with the zen garden they built for the Red Bull Creation contest. It’s a CNC creation that will help ease your frustration with that DIY 3d printer that you just can’t seem to get calibrated correctly. On the hardware side the base of the machine serves [...]

Tags:  zen creation cnc maryland baltimore zen-gardening zen-garden 3d-printer contests  

How does one take a game of Simon and make it extremely awesome? The folks at the North Street Labs — a Hackerspace in Portsmouth, Virginia — have found the secret and it’s all in the execution. They turned this chair-desk into a coin-operated Simon game that hides a huge surprise. We suppose you should [...]

Tags:  execution game hackerspace simon portsmouth virginia north-street portsmouth-virginia simon-game contests  

[Tom Bourke] wrote in to show off the game of chance which was built for this year’s Red Bull Creation contest. The project was completed with the help of the Wausau Collaboration Center, a Hackerspace in Wausau, Wisconsin. He does a great job of showing off the game in the clip after the break. Near [...]

Tags:  chance game red tom-bourke wisconsin wausau collaboration-center game-of-chance wausau-wisconsin contests  

Once we got our official entry into the red bull creation contest finished and submitted, we figured we might as well kick things up a notch just for giggles. We set up a firing range in the basement at Squidfoo and positioned “herbert”, a mannequin that was left over in the building from a previous [...]

Tags:  firing-range red-bull mannequin contests  

We had tons of ideas, but the one that seemed most feasible, and had the least probability of causing mortal injury, was this. We created a red bull launching mortar system. The cans are launched and a parachute deploys to bring them down to the eager people below safely. I was the one in charge [...]

Tags:  day bull hack red-bull parachute mortar contests  

As you’ve already seen, we’ve been invited to participate in the Redbull creation contest. While we were deep into our work today, hacking things apart and soldering things together while trying not to blow ourselves up, we received a second package! It had a hand written note explaining that this was the last of its [...]

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When I returned from MakerFaire Kansas City I was very pleased to find a Bullduino waiting on my doorstep! Hackaday has been accepted into the first round of the Redbull Creation Contest. I’m doing the physical building while the other writers are consulting for this round. I’m also pulling people from around me here at [...]

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We get bombarded with press releases daily. Our inbox overflows with brand new iPhone cases and cheap LED manufacturers in china. We generally have no interest in sharing obvious product advertisement with you. However, some people understand what we’re interested in. Redbull gets it. They’re embracing hackers and running contests that promote DIY/hacking. Last year, [...]

Tags:  redbull contest creation product-advertisement led-manufacturers contests  

Most people we know had at least one phase where they dreamt of working for NASA. That dream may have faded for many of us, but it could suddenly be a real possibility again with a tournament NASA is holding. The goal is to sift through all of the data that they have collected; roughly [...]

Tags:  phase terabytes nasa contests  

Although some might note that [Jamie]‘s creation could mistaken for a Velociraptor or even Allosaurus, his giant T-Rex costume/model is quite a feat of artistry. It stands at over 14 feet tall and 10 feet long. For comparison, the room that you see in the picture above measures 25 x 25 feet. If you happen [...]

Tags:  haloween t-rex giant rex jamie rex-costume velociraptor artistry contests  

The results of the Full Spectrum Laser contest over at Build Lounge have been announce. The top prize of a 40 watt deluxe laser cutter goes to [Grenadier] for the portable x-ray machine we saw at the beginning of the month. We think this is an excellent choice for top prize because, come on, this [...]

Tags:  grenadier laser cutter laser-cutter ray-machine full-spectrum contests  

A few months ago, Buildlounge and Full Spectrum Laser started a contest to win a 40 Watt laser cutter. The only requirement? Submit a project that uses light in some way. The deadline is now over and voting is open, right on the buildlounge.com page. First place gets a 40 Watt laser cutter provided by Full Spectrum Laser. [...]

Tags:  laser cutter buildlounge watt-laser laser-cutter full-spectrum contests  

Pull out your old Fritzing designs, or churn out a new one, and you might be able to win one of these prizes. Fritzing is looking for the top three designs which will receive these prizes. On the left is a Fritzing super upgrade kit with goodies like a Character LCD, DC motor and driver [...]

Tags:  fritzing stuff win character-lcd dc-motor upgrade-kit contests  

[Nathan], a member of the DangerousPrototypes forums, was looking for a project he could use to enter the 7400 logic competition they are holding. His kids had a small ride on police car, but the light bar on top contained no lights, and the car made no sounds when his children were in pursuit of [...]

Tags:  delight toy car nathan toy-car police-car sirens contests  

The dollar store is always a great place to find some weird stuff, so when [jethomson] found a flickering Jack-o’-lantern, he thought it would make a great project for the 74xx logic competition. Instead of using the flickering incandescent lightbulb that came with the blinking pumpkin, [jethomson] decided to rebuild a blinking circuit around a [...]

Tags:  incandescent-lightbulb jack-o-lantern dollar-store contests  

If you’re between the ages of 14 and 18, or have a child who is, here’s a chance to put a project into space. NASA is partnering with YouTube, Lenovo, and a few other entities for a contest that challenges participants to dream up low-gravity experiments. You can enter as an individual or in teams [...]

Tags:  hackers space project gravity-experiments space-nasa low-gravity contests  

[Emily Daniels] recently snagged a free iPad in the Instructables “Play with your food challenge” with an interesting way to work with LEDs. Growing up, most kids attempted to make, or at least have seen rock candy be produced. [Emily] thought it would be interesting to mix LEDs with the stuff to see what she [...]

Tags:  treat leds candied emily emily-daniels rock-candy play-with-your-food ipad contests  

Buildlounge and Full Spectrum Laser have decided to give away a laser cutter to whoever comes up with the best project involving light. The contest is in part sponsored by  adafruit industries. The focus of the contest is light – just design something around light, submit it, and you’re in the drawing for your own [...]

Tags:  laser contest cutter laser-cutter full-spectrum adafruit contests  

The guys from Bloomington’s Fraternal Order of Lock Sport (FOOLS) sure know how to throw a party! At this year’s DerbyCon event down in Louisville, the group put on an awesome event that combined lockpicking and drinking – what could be better? The Rumble Challenge is lock picking game where six people compete head to [...]

Tags:  competition hackerspace event bloomington louisville lockpicking fraternal-order how-to-throw-a-party contests  

Launching high-altitude balloons to take pictures of the Earth from space is great fun. Heck, even credit card commercials are now suggesting you cash in your rewards points to organize a space balloon adventure for you and your friends. Capturing snapshots of the Earth from space is such a good time that Workshop 88, a [...]

Tags:  workshop balloon space heck high-altitude-balloons balloon-adventure earth-from-space contests  

If you’ve always wanted a 3D printer, here’s your chance to win one. Makerbot Industries wants the Internets to design a new mascot for them. The contest winner will receive a Makerbot Thing-o-matic. Don’t worry about a chicken or egg situation with this contest. You don’t actually need to print your design (although printability is [...]

Tags:  print makerbot contest don 3d-printer o-matic contest-winner contests  

Here’s another chance to ply your hacking skills for cash and prizes. Dangerous Prototypes has just announced the Open 7400 Logic Competition. First prize is $100 and a bunch of hacking goodies. But even better is that since it was announced, more sponsors have stepped up to increase the kitty, and the number of entries [...]

Tags:  logic paper graph discrete-logic graph-paper cash-and-prizes contests  

[John] wrote in to tell us about this contest hosted by Avnet. All one has to do is upload a video of their design to Avnet’s Youtube page.  There are four categories to choose from including: Solar, Communications, Transportation, and Entertainment. Four contestants can win an iPad2. The only catch, if you can call it [...]

Tags:  design contest avnet john solar-communications youtube contests  

72 hours of hacking came to a head with the completion of the Red Bull Creation. This years challenge was to build something out of junk that moves a human. It’s hard to pull all the aspects of the event together in one place, so here’s some links you’ll want to check out if you [...]

Tags:  bull creation red contest-results red-bull contests  

The crew over at the HarfordHackerspace used their wits and creativity to land a spot at the final round of Red Bull’s Creation challenge. The team arrived in Brooklyn just yesterday, ready to take on all comers in the 72-hour hacking challenge which kicked off earlier this morning. Like any other hacker convention, the Red [...]

Tags:  bull challenge red brooklyn hartford hacker-convention hacking-challenge comers contests  

Throw down your mad skills and you might win some cash while you’re at it. [Zeta] tipped us off that Freescale just announced a new challenge. They call it the Make It Challenge and it centers around their 32-bit Kinetis microcontrollers. These are ARM Cortex-M4 chips and if you’re selected to compete they’ll offer their [...]

Tags:  ARM challenge freescale mad-skills new-challenge contests  

Rube Goldberg machines are always a fan favorite around here. They truly embody the concept of over-engineering, and are an entertaining departure from what we normally cover on Hackaday. Back in February, engineering students from two on-campus professional associations at Purdue University teamed up to construct a world record-setting Rube Goldberg machine. Their entry in [...]

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It’s been nearly two months since the official entry portion of the 555 timer contest came to a close, and the judges have been busy poring over the 200+ entries since. Now that the votes have been tallied, it’s just about time for the official results to be announced. The results will be live streamed [...]

Tags:  tonight contest entry contest-winners timer contests  

Ludum Dare 20 is only 10 days away! Great, what the heck is Ludum Dare? Well its only the most awesome video game creation contest on the internet, thats what. While originally for the hardest of the hard core, it has recently been split up into 2 events so everyone gets to have some fun. [...]

Tags:  dare ludum april game-creation what-the-heck hard-core contests  

[Todd Harrison] recently wrote in to tip us off on his submission to the Tektronix oscilloscope contest – using a scope to tune a piano. In his video he demonstrates how a Fast Fourier Transform can be used to determine the fundamental frequency of the note being played. This is a quick and easy way [...]

Tags:  piano tuning oscilloscope todd-harrison tektronix-oscilloscope piano-tuning contests  

[Joey] likes to dabble in laser projection, building his own hardware and writing the software that drives it. One way that he tests his setup is by replacing the laser assembly with an analog oscilloscope. This allows him to ensure that the driver board is receiving data from the software, and translating it into the [...]

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Many of the robots we feature here are driven by some sort of microcontroller, whether it be an Arduino, Launchpad, Picaxe, etc. Rarely do we see a robot however, using analog circuits to perform higher-level functions typically relegated to those more complex controllers. Instructables user [hasn0life] built such a robot recently, which he entered into [...]

Tags:  analog robot workshop analog-circuits arduino level-functions contests  

[Brett] has had Nixie tubes on the brain ever since being introduced to them by a good friend of his. He decided that building a Nixie-based key chain would be the best way to familiarize himself with the technology, while also giving him a project to enter in the 555 Design Contest. He dug up [...]

Tags:  display nixie pint-sized design-contest key-chain contests  

Toppling dominoes is great fun for about 30 seconds at a time, when you are not busy setting them up for another run. [Randy] thought it was about time they got an electronic makeover to allow for constant, immediate gratification. Armed with a few simple electronic components, he has created Le Dominoux. These LED-based electronic [...]

Tags:  dominoes fun time randy endless-fun immediate-gratification contests  

[Jeri Ellsworth] sent us a video walkthrough of a hack she did a few years ago using a toy chicken with a motor operated mouth. She wired up a Bluetooth headset’s audio output to a LM386 audio amplifier, which drives the speaker she added to the chicken. The output of the audio amplifier was also [...]

Tags:  amplifier output chicken lm386-audio-amplifier jeri-ellsworth bluetooth-headset contests  

[Dino] recently sent us some info on his latest project, a 555 timer-based slider synthesizer. The synth was built to emulate the sound made by playing a slide whistle, and also as an entry into the 555 Design Contest, which is quickly coming to a close. If you’re not familiar with a slide whistle, just [...]

Tags:  slide synth fun dino slide-whistle fun-slide design-contest contests  

[Bob] has been busy lately putting the finishing touches on three different projects that he plans on entering into the 555 Design Contest. His first entry is a low-power H-bridge, which can be used to drive small servos. While he admits that it is a bit odd to build use a 555 timer to construct [...]

Tags:  design trio timer bob h-bridge 555-timer-projects design-contest contests  

We were sent [Dr. Offset’s] most recent project, a kid’s toy that is half sculpture/half noisemaker, but 100% cool. The device uses several 555 Timers and is his entry into the 555 Design Contest, which wraps up in just a few days. To really enjoy his creation, you need to suspend disbelief for a moment, [...]

Tags:  alien toy life dr.-offset 555-timers noisemaker alien-life contests  

[BadWolf] sent us a device called the “Bacon Beacon“, which is his 555 Design Contest entry. In short, it’s a life-saving device that emits an S.O.S. signal in Morse code over both the AM and FM bands. The device uses five 555 timers to get the job done, each of them dedicated to a specific [...]

Tags:  beacon bacon device morse s.o.s 555-timers morse-code fm-bands contests  

[haqnmaq] admits that he suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and on occasion, can be found washing his hands up to 20 times an hour. Very distrustful of cloth towels, he exclusively uses paper towels to dry his hands, to the tune of 2-3 rolls a day. In an effort to lessen the impact his OCD [...]

Tags:  ocd air diy obsessive-compulsive-disorder cloth-towels paper-towels contests  

Several years ago [Michael Davis] built a charge controller for his wind turbine and published his construction plans online. This build became quite popular, especially among people that live in remote regions. He states that he is flooded with email each day with questions about his charge controller from people trying to troubleshoot its construction [...]

Tags:  construction controller charge michael-davis charge-controller wind-turbine timer contests  

[FightCube] wrote in recommending a very helpful piece of circuit simulation software for those of you still constructing entries for the 555 design contest.   LTSpiceIV, available from Linear Technology, allows you to construct moderately complex 555 driven circuits including common components such as capacitors, resistors, diodes, FETs, and more.  Once you have constructed your [...]

Tags:  simulation circuit Software circuit-simulation-software timer-circuit linear-technology contests  

Google has announced that it will be sponsoring a $20,000 prize at the 2011 CanSecWest Pwn2Own Contest. $20,ooo will be given to the first person to escape Chrome’s sandbox through Google-written code in the first day. If researchers are unsuccessful on the first day, then days two and three will be opened up to non-Google-written [...]

Tags:  chrome own pwn sandbox ooo first-person contests  

This is just a friendly reminder that our Santa-Pede challenge will be ending soon. Please send your submissions to us by emailing them to bbb@hackaday.com or by posting them in the projects section of our forum (did we mention we have a forum now?) by the end of January to be considered. We don’t care [...]

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Sure, microcontrollers are useful, easy to apply, and ubiquitous, but where is the fun in the easy route? Well, for those of you out there with a little imagination and a 555 timer sitting around, there could be rewards in store. Brought to you by such famous personalities as Jeri Ellsworth and Chris Gammell, the 555 [...]

Tags:  design contest win chris-gammell jeri-ellsworth famous-personalities little-imagination contests  

Teen hackers get ready to compete for cash and prizes. Google, the big G itself, is sponsoring a Science Fair but it’s not in a town near you, it’s online (no surprise there). Project entries will populate the content of a new corner of the Googleverse, with contestants 13-18 competing alone or as a team. [...]

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We are going to give the Santa-Pede Challenge another try. This time, you have till the end of January to do something (make it walk/crawl/scoot) with a dancing santa (or dancing musical holiday toy).  As you can see in my example, it doesn’t have to be complicated or efficient in any way. Here are some [...]

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At the end of October we announced the Buy, Break, Build series kick off with “The Santa-pede Challenge“.  The goal was to get your hands on one of those annoying dancing santas, tear it apart, then use its parts to build something that walks. We got our hands on some cool prizes and even got [...]

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Inspired by the successful Kinect bounty put out by Adafruit, [gallamine] of the RobotBox community has posted his own $200 $400 bounty for the first person who can hack the scanning LIDAR from Neato Robotic’s XV-11 vacuumbot. This sensor would be particularly useful to any robotic makers out there, because even the full retail price of the vacuum [...]

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It seems that we have caught Design Contest Fever here at Hackaday. After covering some other design contests, and asking readers to send in more, we heard from a couple tippers about Renesas’ challenge. Like many of the other contests, entrants can submit their ideas, and possibly receive a free development board to get them [...]

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  Some robots aspire to greatness, revolutionizing our humanoid behaviour in ways we struggle to understand. They have traveled in space, photographing the stars like celestial paparazzi or snatching Martians up like interplanetary bed intruders. Some robots are happy to perform their everyday functions with dignity and grace, scrubbing our floors and thanking us for [...]

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Last week we announced a Germany based design contest only accepting applicants from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Unfortunately, this left out one of the larger segments of our readers. After doing some scrounging around (and a helpful tip from [Flash Gordon]), we managed to find a similar contest run by STMicroelectronics, the makers [...]

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Are you an independent inventor? It might just be your lucky day. The fine folks at Independent Inventor TV, a new show currently filming for Revision3, is looking for home and garage based inventors to present their inventions for the camera. Currently they are based out of San Francisco, CA and are looking to film [...]

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Full of video and audio sensors, the newly released Kinect is Microsoft’s answer to Nintendo’s Wii MotionPlus and Sony’s PlayStation Move. Now there is money up for grabs to hack it. Adafruit is offering up a one thousand dollar prize to open source the driver for the Kinect. What do they want this driver to [...]

Tags:  driver kinect prize dollar-prize wii grabs contests  

EBVElectronik of Germany is hosting a design contest based around the STM32F microcontroller. They are inviting engineers and inventors to come up with the best general purpose design ideas, with prizes including a Harley Davidson Motorcycle and a 1000 euro Apple voucher. Even better, they are offering a free STM32 Discovery Kit to anyone who [...]

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Welcome to the first Buy Break Build at hackaday,  sponsored by Adafruit Industries and Make. This challenge will be focusing on dancing Santas, or what is inside them. We’ve seen them everywhere, and may even have one or two in an attic somewhere. These annoying little guys should have enough bits and pieces inside to [...]

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We are proud to introduce a new contest here at Hackaday. Buy Break Build will be regular event where we challenge you to make something from something else. We want to work out your hacker brains to come up with inventive ways to use limited parts. We may have a specific product or genre in [...]

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We’ve always felt that the hacker community is a unique one. Make reader [Gnomic] is reinforcing that feeling by running his own contest with unused equipment. [Gnomic] is offering a free Robot lawnmower to someone, as long as they send the completed project writeup to Make.  The mower is a Robomower RL 850 and you [...]

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You have until December 1st to get your entry into the Trossen DIY robotics contest. Unlike the last Trossen contest we told you about, this one has no clear theme. The goal is simply to make an awesome robot. Registration is free, and entries will be judged on Ingenuity, Originality, and presentation/documentation. There are prizes [...]

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The NY based hacker group named Ithacka has posted an interesting challenge. Buy a box of junk and build something with it following their guidelines. Document it and submit it for voting.  There are some rules that allow you to use a few pieces that don’t come from the box, but the list is short. [...]

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Who is ready to win some tickets to the PUSH N900 Showcase? The showcase is an event where all 5 teams from the Push N900 competition are going meet up in London and present their N900 hacks. Including N900s that fly, skate, Etch a Sketch(TM), and more. We also hear there is going to be a [...]

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