Category Archives: 2016 Hackaday SuperConference

Awarding the 2016 Hackaday Prize

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Saturday evening at the Hackaday SuperConference is reserved for the Hackaday Prize Party. Our engineering initiative each year, The Hackaday Prize, starts in the spring and ends in the fall. What happens in between is magic: thousands of engineers and engineering enthusiasts focus their skills on building something that matters. The top entries take home some pretty amazing prizes. At this year’s prize ceremony (seen below) we announced the five top entries which took home $200,000 in addition to the $100,000 already awarded to 100 final projects.

Check out the presentation which includes appearances by several of our amazing judges, …read more

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Tiniest Game Boy Hides in Your Pocket

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This is likely the world’s smallest fully-functional Game Boy Color, able to play all of the games using the tiny direction pad and buttons, with onboard display and battery and in the original form factor. This is an incredible hack which presents a tour de force in hardware and software. This will easily rank in the top five hacks you’ve seen this year.

I’m sure that many of you have fond memories of your first handheld games. This will be Game Boy for most, and we admit they had fairly decent portability and battery life that puts many smart phones …read more

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A Tale of Electronic Manufacturing

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What does it take to go from concept to dropping a finished product into the hands of the end user? Gather ’round for a story that pulls people and parts from around the world to make one killer piece of hardware art.

Hosting a conference about hardware creation presents an excellent opportunity to build a hardware badge. But the bar is set pretty high — everyone looking at it will notice all the telltale signs of design choice, component selection, and manufacturing process. Luckily we had a great team working on the Hackaday SuperConference Badge and it turned out magnificently. …read more

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Showing Off the Badge Hacks from SuperCon

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Since the Beginning of Time* humans have been irresistibly attracted to the blinking of an LED. At first there was one LED and it was good, but eventually there were many working in unison and the matrix was formed. Badge hacking at the Hackaday SuperConference challenged everyone to do something interesting with the display matrix and other yummy hardware on this year’s badge and we were in awe of what people managed to pull off.

We named three winners, and recognized the first hacker to solve the Crypto Challenge. Check out the presentations in the video below and then …read more

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Solving Hackaday’s Crypto Challenge

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Although I’ve been to several DEF CONs over the past few years, I’ve never found time to devote to solving the badge. The legendary status of all the puzzles within are somewhat daunting to me. Likewise, I haven’t yet given DefCon DarkNet a try either — a real shame as the solder-your-own-badge nature of that challenge is right up my alley.

But finally, at the Hackaday SuperCon I finally got my feet wet with the crypto challenge created by [Voja Antonic]. He developed a secondary firmware which anyone could easily flash to their conference badge (it enumerates as a USB …read more

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Visual Guide to the Best Hacker T-Shirts

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Head out in the normal “civilian” world and look at the shirts around you. I don’t want to be too nasty about about it, but let’s face facts — the T-shirts you see will be boring and uninventive. Now compare that to your favorite hacker cons. We wear our shirts like they’re oil paintings.

Going into the weekend of SuperCon I had no intention of writing this post. But then I saw a really awesome shirt and already had the camera in my hands so I asked if I could snap a picture. A bit later that day it happened …read more

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Tiny Game Boy (That Plays Witcher 3) and Other Things That Blew My Mind

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For years Spite_TM has be my favorite hacker, and yet he continues to have an uncanny ability to blow my mind with the hacks that he pulls off even thought I’m ready for it. This weekend at the Hackaday SuperConference he threw down an amazing talk on his tiny, scratch-built, full-operational Game Boy. He stole the badge hacking show with a Rick Roll, disassembled the crypto challenge in one hour by cutting right to the final answer, and managed to be everywhere at once. You’re a wizard Harry Sprite!

Here’s what’s crazy: these are the antics of just one person …read more

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The Fastest Path to SuperCon Badge Firmware Hacking

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Hackaday SuperConference begins tomorrow and every ticketed attendee will get their hands on this sexy piece of hardware which is the conference badge. Yes, it looks fantastic hanging around your neck, you can play a wicked game of Tetris on it, and it runs a crypto challenge. But badge hacking is a thing and this post is the most concise information you’ll find on hacking on the firmware. Whether this is your first time blinking an LED, or you cut your teeth on PIC assembly, you can make this badge do your bidding with minimal effort.

The IDE/compiler:

To run …read more

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After The Prize: Vinduino

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In my opinion, the best projects in the Hackaday Prize are the weirdest. Building a computer from sand is an admirable goal, and polar coordinate 3D printers are awesome. These projects obviously have limited utility, and there’s no accounting for taste, anyway. The real proof of how successful a project is, is the degree to which it can be spun out into a product. There’s a social proof in selling something, and last year we introduced the Best Product competition into the Hackaday Prize. The idea is simple: build something other people would want, and you’ll win a residency in …read more

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Hacker’s Wishlist: What Must-Have Components Let You Build Anything?

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We’re putting in a parts order at the end of the week, yet we don’t have a specific project in mind. Trying to wrap your noggin’ around a bill of materials to build anything is tough, but that’s the gist of stocking components for a hackathon.

So we put it to you: what components can’t you live without when you roll your sleeves up for some good old fashioned hardware hacking?

What Can You Build in Two Days?

This parts order is for the badge hacking at this year’s SuperCon. What we saw last year was amazing considering the parts …read more

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