Category Archives: 2017 Hackaday Prize

The Hackaday Prize: Exoskeletons for the Masses

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While medical facilities continue to improve worldwide, access to expensive treatments still eludes a vast amount of people. Especially when it comes to prosthetics, a lot of people won’t be able to afford something so personalized even though the need for assistive devices is extremely high. With that in mind, [Guillermo Herrera-Arcos] started working on ALICE, a robotic exoskeleton that is low-cost, easy to build, and as an added bonus, 100% Open Source.

ALICE’s creators envision that the exoskeleton will have applications in rehabilitation, human augmentation, and even gaming. Also, since it’s Open Source, it could also be used as …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: A BSTRD Preamp

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For this year’s Hackaday Prize, [skrodahl] is building a beautiful tube preamp. It’s a masterpiece of glass and free electrons, it already works, and it sounds great.

This circuit is a modified version of the Bastard, an amp published in the Danish magazine Ny Elektronik nearly 20 years ago. The original amp was a true bastard, with a transistor phono stage, a valve line stage, and an input selector that used relays. [skrodahl]’s version only uses the line stage, but part of the name remains as a nod to the original design.

The design of this amp uses octal 6J5 …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: A BSTRD Preamp

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For this year’s Hackaday Prize, [skrodahl] is building a beautiful tube preamp. It’s a masterpiece of glass and free electrons, it already works, and it sounds great.

This circuit is a modified version of the Bastard, an amp published in the Danish magazine Ny Elektronik nearly 20 years ago. The original amp was a true bastard, with a transistor phono stage, a valve line stage, and an input selector that used relays. [skrodahl]’s version only uses the line stage, but part of the name remains as a nod to the original design.

The design of this amp uses octal 6J5 …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Powered Running Stroller Keeps You Running

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Types of strollers called ‘running strollers’ exist to make it possible to bring your toddlers along for your run but try it with two four-year old, 38 lb young ones, against the wind, and up enough hills and you’ll quickly lose steam. [Andrew Clink]’s and his wife’s solution? Modify the stroller to be a self-powered roadrunner.

[Andrew]’s hackaday.io build logs are detailed, including design, calculations, schematics, 3D printing files, fails and retries, and more. Power is provided by a bank of lithium-ion batteries that drive a brushless motor. The motor turns the stroller’s front wheel using a toothed belt around …read more

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Hackaday Prize Best Product Finalist: PewPew

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This year for the Hackaday Prize, we’re doing something very, very cool. We’re encouraging hardware entrepreneurs to come up with the next big electronic thing. We’re giving the Best Product in the Hackaday Prize $30,000, and an opportunity to work in a lab filled with tools to turn that prototype into a marketable reality.

Last week, we announced the twenty finalists of the Hackaday Prize Best Product competition. There’s still a lot of work these hackers and tinkerers need to do before the final judging round, but until then we can start taking a look at what are already some …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Low Cost KVM

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Back in the old days, when handing someone a DB serial cable when they asked for a DE serial cable would get you killed, KVM switchers were a thing. These devices were simple boxes with a few VGA ports, a few PS/2 ports, and a button or dial that allowed your input (keyboard and mouse) and output (video) to be used with multiple computers. Early KVMs were really just a big ‘ol rotary switch with far, far too many poles. Do you remember that PS/2 wasn’t able to be hot plugged? The designers of these KVMs never knew that. …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: A Six Axis Robotic Arm With Fingertip Control

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If you were a child of the 1980s whose fascination extended to the contents of your local Radio Shack store, you may remember the Armatron robot arm as a particular object of desire. It was a table top robot arm operated not by motors or a microcontroller, but by a clever set of gears directed manually from a pair of joysticks. If you took a look at it with an eye to control from your 8-bit home computer you were likely to be disappointed, but nevertheless it was an excellent toy.

The Armatron may be long gone, but if you …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Pi-Driven Google Glass

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[Ricardo Ferro] didn’t want to buy a Google Glass, so he made his own.

The Raspberry Pi Zero Prism consists of a 3D-printed headset the side-pieces of which hold a variety of electronic components, including a Pi Zero running Raspbian Jessie, a Pi Noir IR camera, a WiFi/Bluetooth module and a whole mess of SMD tactile push buttons. Video output is provided by a Kopin 922K display module. This module is usually used in smart goggles and uses a prism to reflect information into the wearer’s field of view.

One application [Ricardo] envisions for this Open Source Google Glass is …read more

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These Are The Twenty Finalists For The Hackaday Prize Best Product

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Hackaday is hosting the greatest hardware competition on Earth, and we’re giving away thousands of dollars to hardware creators to build the next generation of electronics. This is the Hackaday Prize, and already we’ve selected dozens of projects, one of which will win $50,000 USD.

Like last year, this year’s Hackaday Prize is very special. We’re supporting entrepreneurs building the Next Big Thing. This is the Best Product competition of The Hackaday Prize, and these are the products that will shake up an industry.

Now, it’s finally time to pick the finalists. These twenty projects will move onto the final …read more

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These Twenty Wheels, Wings, and Walkers Won $1000 In The Hackaday Prize

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Today, we’re excited to announce the winners of the Wheels, Wings, and Walkers portion of The Hackaday Prize. We were looking for the next generation of robots, drones, machines that make machines move, and hackers who now know far too much about inverse kinematics. The results were spectacular.

Hackaday is currently hosting the greatest hardware competition on Earth. We’re giving away thousands of dollars to hardware creators to build the next great thing. Last week, we wrapped up the third of five challenges. It was all about showing a design to Build Something That Matters. Hundreds entered and began …read more

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