Category Archives: 2018 Hackaday Prize

Rewinding Live Radio

Posted on August 20, 2018 by Fernando Gomes

Even though it’s now a forgotten afterthought in the history of broadcasting technology, we often forget how innovative the TiVo was. All this set-top box did was connect a hard drive to a cable box, but the power was incredible: you could pause live TV. You could record shows. You could rewind TV. It was an incredible capability, that no one had ever seen before. Of course, between Amazon and Netflix and YouTube, no one watches TV anymore, and all those platforms have a pause button, but the TiVO was awesome.

There is one bit of broadcasting that still exists. …read more

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Posted in 2018 Hackaday Prize, digital audio hacks, fpga, radio, radio hacks, The Hackaday Prize, TiVo | Leave a comment

Wiring The ESP-32 To Ethernet

Posted on August 19, 2018 by Fernando Gomes

Since its introduction years ago, the ESP-8266 has taken over the world. It’s the chip inside thousands of different projects, and the basis for dozens of different IoT thingamadoos. The follow-up to the 8266, the ESP-32, is even more capable. It has a ton of peripherals inside, including an Ethernet MAC. What’s that? Yes, it’s possible to put Ethernet on an ESP-32, and give an IoT board PoE. That’s what [Patrick] is doing for his Hackaday Prize project, and it’s an awesome idea.

This build began as you would expect, with an ESP-32 module attached to one side of a …read more

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Posted in 2018 Hackaday Prize, ESP, ESP-32, ethernet, PoE, The Hackaday Prize | Leave a comment

When Every Last Nanoamp Matters

Posted on August 18, 2018 by Fernando Gomes

You can get electricity from just about anything. That old crystal radio kit you built as a kid taught you that, but how about doing something a little more interesting than listening to the local AM station with an earpiece connected to a radiator? That’s what the Electron Bucket is aiming to do. It’s a power harvesting device that grabs electricity from just about anywhere, whether it’s a piece of aluminum foil or a bunch of LEDs.

The basic idea behind the Electron Bucket is to harvest ambient radio waves just like your old crystal radio kit. There’s a voltage …read more

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Posted in 2018 Hackaday Prize, green hacks, led, nanoamp, radio hacks, The Hackaday Prize | Leave a comment

Turning Cheap WiFi Modules Into Cheap WiFi Swiss Army Knives

Posted on August 17, 2018 by Fernando Gomes

When the ESP8266 was released, it was sold as a simple device that would connect to a WiFi network over a UART. It was effectively a WiFi modem for any microcontroller, available for just a few bucks. That in itself is awesome, but then the hackers got their hands on it. It turns out, the ESP8266 is actually a very capable microcontroller as well, and the newest modules have tons of Flash and pins for all your embedded projects.

For [Amine]’s entry to the Hackaday Prize, he’s using the ESP8266 as the ultimate WiFi Swiss Army knife. The Kortex Xttend …read more

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Posted in 2018 Hackaday Prize, ESP, ESP-8266, The Hackaday Prize, wifi, wireless hacks | Leave a comment

Rover V2 Handles Stairs as Easily as the Outdoors

Posted on August 15, 2018 by Fernando Gomes

Rover V2 is an open-source, 3D-printable robotic rover platform that has seen a lot of evolution and development from its creator, [tlalexander]. There are a number of interesting things about Rover V2’s design, such as the way the wheel hubs themselves contain motors and custom planetary gearboxes. This system is compact and keeps weight down low to the ground, which helps keep a rover stable. The platform is all wheel drive, and moving parts like the suspension are kept high up, as far away from the ground as possible. Software is a custom Python stack running on a Raspberry Pi …read more

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Posted in 2018 Hackaday Prize, 3d printed, planetary gears, python, Raspberry Pi, robotic, rover, The Hackaday Prize | Leave a comment

Power Generation Modules Mix and Match Wind, Water, and Hand Cranks

Posted on August 13, 2018 by Fernando Gomes

What’s great about the Power Generation Modules project headed by [Cole B] is the focus on usability and modularity. The project is a system for powering and charging small devices using any number and combination of generator modules: wind turbine, hand-crank, and water turbine so far. Power management and storage is handled by a separate unit that acts as a battery bank to store the output from up to six generators at once. There’s also a separate LED lamp module, designed to be capable of being powered directly from any of the generator modules if needed.

The hand crank is …read more

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Posted in 2018 Hackaday Prize, 3d printed, generator, green hacks, hand crank, LED lighting, off grid, The Hackaday Prize, turbine, water power, water turbine, wind power, Wind turbine | Leave a comment

Tiny Solar Energy Module (TSEM) Brings Big Performance

Posted on August 12, 2018 by Fernando Gomes

The Tiny Solar Energy Module (TSEM) by [Jasper Sikken] is not only physically tiny at one-inch square, but it is all about gathering tiny amounts of solar energy — amounts too small to be useful in a conventional sense — and getting meaningful work done, like charging a battery for later use. Elements that make this board easy to integrate into other projects include castellated vias, 1.8 V and 3.3 V regulated outputs that are active when the connected battery has a useful charge, and a low battery warning that informs the user of impending shutdown when the battery runs …read more

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Posted in 2018 Hackaday Prize, AEM10941, battery charger, charger, energy harvesting, lipo, pcb, solar, solar hacks, The Hackaday Prize | Leave a comment

Lily Power Pods Make the Seebeck Effect Look Good

Posted on August 11, 2018 by Fernando Gomes

The Seebeck effect (part of the broader thermoelectric effect) is how a difference in temperature can be directly converted into a voltage, and it is the operating principle behind things like thermocouples and Peltier junctions. Harnessing this effect in an effort to wrangle a useful electrical current out of the environment has led to some interesting ideas, like the Lily Power Pods by [Josh Starnes].

What’s interesting about this particular design is that the artistic angle crosses over with functionality. Electrically speaking, the pods have one side of the thermoelectric generator heated by the sun while the other is cooled …read more

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Posted in 2018 Hackaday Prize, generator, green hacks, peltier, seebeck, solar hacks, The Hackaday Prize, thermoelectric, thermoelectric effect | Leave a comment

This Is The Year Of PCB Inductors

Posted on August 10, 2018 by Fernando Gomes

It’s a story we’ve told dozens of times already. The cost to manufacture a handful of circuit boards has fallen drastically over the last decade and a half, which has allowed some interesting experiments on what PCBs can do. We’ve seen this with artistic PCBs, we’ve seen it with enclosures built out of PCBs, and this year we’re seeing a few experiments that are putting coils and inductors on PCBs.

At the forefront of these experiments in PCB coil design is [bobricious], and already he’s made brushless and linear motors using only tiny copper traces on top of fiberglass. Now …read more

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Posted in 2018 Hackaday Prize, inductor, The Hackaday Prize, transformer | Leave a comment

Big Power, Little Power, Tiny Power, Zap!

Posted on August 9, 2018 by Fernando Gomes

Our Hackaday Prize Challenges are evaluated by a panel of judges who examine every entry to see how they fare against judging criteria. With prize money at stake, it makes sense we want to make sure it is done right. But we also have our Hackaday Prize achievements, with less at stake leading to a more free-wheeling way to recognize projects that catch our eye. Most of the achievements center around fun topics that aren’t related to any particular challenge, but it’s a little different for the Infinite Improbability achievement. This achievement was unlocked by any project that impressed with …read more

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Posted in 2018 Hackaday Prize, Hackaday Columns, peltier, photovoltaic, potato battery, potato cell, solar charger, solar collector, solar energy, solar tracker, sun tracking, TEG, The Hackaday Prize, thermoelectric generator, triboelectric | Leave a comment