The fourth round of The 2018 Hackaday Prize has concluded and we have our winners! These projects represented the best of what the community had to offer in the field of Human Computer Interfacing (HCI).
For a full list of the winners, check out the article over on Hackaday. At the end of this round, we had not one, but two Tindarians take home a win! Let’s find out which projects were recognized, shall we?
Two Tindarians Emerge Victorious in The HCI Challenge
As a quick refresher, the goal was to create a new and innovative way for humans to talk to machines or vice versa. As a side effect, the project should also make using technology more intuitive, fun, and natural for people of all skill levels. We had two amazing Tindarians take home a win in this challenge:
SHE BON
Our first winner is none other than Sarah Petkus, who runs the Robohemian store on Tindie. We’ve featured her Anthropomorph-EYES before on the blog, but SHE BON is something a little (correction: a lot) different.
SHE BON Is a platforming for detecting and indicating human arousal. The idea behind it involves breaking down the taboos we have in society about intimacy and sexuality. It’s meant to remove barriers in communications by providing wearables that output visual or auditory signals in response to excitement. Sarah is already hard at work on several devices to connect to the main platform, but the project is designed to inspire others to create add-ons of their own as well.
It’s about time we as a species stopped shying away from something so basic, and putting people down for trying to express themselves in this way. SHE BON is a big step towards the goal of being more open and honest with each other.
Electronic Barrette Hub
You don’t see much electronic jewelry, mostly because it’s difficult to make into a form that is small enough to wear comfortably. The Electronic Barrette hub from ꝺeshipu takes the classic hair clasp and gives it a new lease on life.
The concept involves using the barrette as a hub to provide power and control accessories on your head. It contains a rechargeable battery, a microcontroller that you can program with CircuitPython, and accelerometer, a light sensor, and a microphone so you can have it react to both movement and sound.
It also includes a dozen sockets for plugging in additional accessories. As wearable technology continues to grow and evolve, it’s creations like this that will bring them to life and give them a foundation for people to express themselves through electronic fashion. Check out Radomir’s stroe on Tindie.
There you have it! Two Tindarians took home a win. They join 18 other finalists who will all be moving on to the final round. They’ve also each received a $1000 cash prize. Stay tuned to find out which Tindarians take home a win in the next challenge!
