Supercon: The Things You Brought, and a Few You Forgot

Posted On Dec 23, 2019 By admin With Comments Off

Part of the recreation of Supercon is that there is so much available in one place. For the price of admission, you’re surrounded by expertise, influence, and soldering irons. Digi-Key generated several sizable constituents bins substance full of everything from passives to LEDs to microchips for people use in spoofing away on their medals. But one thing that makes the whole experience really special is the stuff parties bringing. We don’t merely aim development projects you brought to show off, we represent the stuff you bring to enhance your Supercon experience, whether it be tools, bits and bobs, or other enjoyable nonsense to play with.

This year was my firstly Supercon, and you never forget your firstly. I had a great time, and was overwhelmed by how much awesomeness was going on in one place. I wish Supercon was a simulation I could feed over and over again so I could listen to every talk, attend every workshop, and spend time talking to everyone about the things they created and the cool things they’re doing with their time and badges.

Awesome Stuff Hanging Off of People

Hanging around every neck was a Hackaday or Adafruit badge( or both !) in various stages of hacked-ness. But we want to give a shout-out to some of the second thing parties were wearing around like the medals of honor they are.

I was so glad that I encountered[ Amy Qian] and her amazing regalium of flexure lessons.[ Amy ], a mechanical engineer by date, sacrificed a workshop on these flexible mechanisms she designed, including one that offices as a feline feeding schedule. Those lucky enough to attend got to make their own gripper mechanism out of laser-cut Delrin.

By wearing this board full of precedents around the Supercon village,[ Amy ]’ s contact extended to anyone curious enough to ask about them.

[ Craig Bishop ]’ s big, beautiful Gameslab stopped me in my trails, as I’m sure it did everyone who laid gazes on it. This labor of love started coming to life when[ Craig] was able to source a handful of huge, expensive FPGA chippings for a great deal less than customary. Here are some pictures of the beautiful v1. 0 bowels.

Last fall, we proved you[ Tim Trzepacz ]’ s Stylish !, a sweetened little synth that looks like a cyclops with a Cheshire grin. Back then, we could only show you the render.

[ Tim] primarily designed this as a short run of fee swag stamps for MAGWest, each in a lovely handmade wooden bag, and he was walking around with one of these rare devils clipped to his waist like a cowboy loop fasten. It was super cool just to see it in person, but then[ Tim] kicked it up a notch and gave us a screamin’ demo.

A Carnival of Amazing Things

Besides the equipment being shabby on a lanyard, there was a continuous parade of items drawn out of backpacks, motored in on go-carts, or driven into Supercon under their own power. Some were even source from local gathering supermarkets and thrift shops, playing into excellent things I ensure and/ or played with.

I like large-hearted button spoofs and I cannot lie.[ RobotGrrl] invest her time in the medal spoofing field exerting everything from the swag purse poster tube to plastic utensils to six-packs of snack crackers to build a tree-planting robot driven by her Adafruit edge badge. In autonomous state, the’ bot will search for well-lit locales to flora its warhead. Once it experiences a arrange in the sunlight, the robot seeks evidence from a human, who would respond with a yes or no via Tensorflow voice commands.

Elsewhere in the Hacker Village,[ Chris Gervang] was piloting a very different vehicle. After taking the logic noise synthesizer workshop hosted by[ Elliot Williams] he turned the Verilog tricks he learned toward the IRDA transceiver on the badge. Of direction with infrared wreaking he craved something to controller and pointed out that in the form of this large remote-controlled shark balloon sourced at a regional gathering supply supermarket. He and[ Thomas Sarlandie] was working and before long, started driving the shark around with a Supercon badge. With stamp hacks like these, you’re gonna need a big venue.

[ Josh ]’ s BeagleBone-based stenography keyboard will not play the topic from Jaws, unless he turns it into a MIDI device. What it will do is support a assortment of different glossaries for different contexts thanks to an SD card slot. If it could do both, it would be the keyboard of my dreams.

To drive home a sense of the eclectic visualize at every turn, check out this quadruplet of oddities.

LEDs, Guides Everywhere

It seems that our affection for Guides will never dim, really burn brighter with each step forward in blinky technology. Here are just a few of the projects that lit up the balmy November nights of this year’s Supercon.

Every time I find [ Greg Davill] and his dazzle LED polyhedra, a mob was gathered around to marvel at their intricacy. Sure,[ Greg] have had an opportunity to abused pre-made LED boards, but picking and locating each one by hand is a sure route to mad respect and collections of internet degrees. How does he get back under the hood? The last committee attaches to the metal enclose with magnets. This image is from a particularly awesome meeting of the thick-witted LED committee memories.

[ Kristin Paget ]’ s Pixel Flinger lit up the tents of the Hacker Village where everyone was busy pushing their buttons to the limit. It’s made of a whole assortment of RGB LED bodies that are networked together with six ESP8 266 s. These out of sync rainbows indicate some sort of a network issue that might have been caused by interference.[ Kristin ]’ s hopes for it never dimmed, and neither did ours. Since we live in the future, she was able to throw money at the problem, and had a new router delivered directly to Supercon last-minute the working day. The router mixture succeeded so well that[ Kristin] was able to show Finding Nemo on it.

Saturday night after the Hackaday Prize ceremony concluded, it was time to get down. There were rented arcade closets and a DJ, but the biggest draw inside the Design Lab was the game[ John McMaster] contributed — a colorful marriage of Minesweeper and DDR. Step on a tile’s lamp-style switch, and if you’re lucky, it comes up blue, light-green, or red. And just like the computer version, blue-blooded stands for 1, lettuce for 2, and red for 3( it maxes out at 3 ).[ John] had a big pocket of champagne poppers on hand for explosions.

The Stuff You Wish You’d Brought

I extended around questioning parties what they wish they’d fetch, and I have to agree with most of the answers. The number one answer centered around that great intangible resource: go. Countless people wanted more time to prepare for Supercon, and basically everyone craved much more time at Supercon.

Some parties pleased they had brought their current project to work on, and that’s totally relatable. After all, what better place than this roundup of great international thinkers is there to squash the glitches?[ Joshua Vasquez] told me he would like to he’d introduced more nails, and the Digi-Key guys craved a way to get extras of the more popular areas in their bins.

Some people wanted to have their own soldering iron and implements, but there is only so much luggage a person can carry. Yours truly would have jam-pack some short-spokens, because that California sunshine is no joke, even in November. Now I’m back in the melancholy Midwest, dreaming of next year.