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Boost Your Game Boy’s Battery Life With GBA Reg and Charge

Perhaps the first question that comes to mind when you’re looking at a portable device is the battery life. Whether it’s a game system, a smartphone, or something else entirely, its usefulness is tied directly to the battery life.

With the GBA Reg & Charge, you can upgrade your Game Boy Color or Game Boy Advance to support a LiPo battery. It features greater than 90% efficiency, charge & play, and even uses the red LED indicator when the battery is low.

When using a Turnigy 2000mAh battery, the battery life lasts between 20 and 24 hours per charge. This is based on a 32-pin backlit GBA running a standard Game Boy cartridge. Since this is a DIY part, you’ll need to solder the battery leads to the board, and the wires from the board to the Game Boy to power it. You’ll also need so solder another connection to a capacitor on the board.

Double-sided tape works well for sticking the board to the battery so it doesn’t slide around while you’re on the go. The product page also offers a How to Install guide for assistance with this process.

Each unit is assembled and tested before shipping. While this newer battery life is comparable to the life you would receive from AA batteries, the inclusion of a rechargeable battery alone makes this a nice upgrade.

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The Hackaday Prize 2018 Grand Prize Winner Announced: Here’s All The Finalists and Winners!

It seems like just yesterday we covered the opening round of the Hackaday Prize 2018. Dexter, an open-source and highly trainable robotic arm, took home the grand prize of $50,000 at the Hackaday Superconference.

Four other winners also took home cash prizes. In total, over $200,000 has been distributed as part of this year’s proceedings. Let’s look back on the incredible year that has led to this ultimate victory for our top five winners.

The Path to Victory: Five Rounds and 100 Finalists

To recap, The 2018 Hackaday Prize was centered around the theme “Build Hope.” There were five rounds throughout the year that generated the finalists who would take home the top five spots:

Twenty entries from each of these five rounds advanced, so we had 100 finalists. Our panel of esteemed judges took this list down to what would ultimately be the top 5 winners. Let’s take a deeper look into the projects that won.

Five Winners Emerge Victorious!

During the Hackaday Superconference, the packed auditorium at LACM eagerly watched as Majenta Strongheart and Steven Tranovich announced the winners of The Hackaday Prize. Standing in the audience, the atmosphere in the room was positively electric.

After an epic drum solo from Tesla himself, the presentation began.

Grand Prize Winner: Dexter

Dexter is an incredible robotic arm design that offers many high-end features in an open-source package.

A combination of highly precise movements, and a trainable solution that can play back motions, rolled into an Open Source design makes this an affordable and approachable solution for makers.

Second Place: Hacking Wearables For Mental Health

This project took a clever approach to building wearables that circumvents costs associated with such devices. By utilizing established products, the creator could focus on customizing both the hardware and software.

This pursuit transformed the devices into wearables that possessed sensor suites ideal for mental health research. For example, it can help patients with compulsive behaviors recognize them and change over time.

Third Place: Portal Point Generator

This project takes the concept of DC motor generators to the next level by providing instructions for how to build the generator in efficient ways.

A winding jig is used to make the coils which sit inside of a 3D-printed housing. Permanent magnets round out the rest of the generator, and while this image showed the device’s wiund-power test in Antarctica, it can also generate power in other ways using things like water wheels.

Fourth Place: Emotiglass

While augmented reality is typically associated with changing or adding computer generated images to the world around you, Emotiglass does the exact opposite.

This technology, dubbed by the creators as the first “Modulated-Emotion Reality” device, explores ways to block or otherwise mask elements of your vision that cause stress or anxiety. The therapeutic applications of this device alone make it an exciting prospect in the continued battle for mental health solutions.

Fifth Place: PR-Holonet

PR-Holonet, was born from the need to communicate after a natural disaster. When infrastructure is down, PR-Holonet is here to save the day with a deployable system that is made from readily available electronics.

It is possible to build and deploy this device without any specialized training. Once active, it provides local devices using WiFi can send text-based messages via satellite to one another, effectively restoring some semblance of communication in any scenario.

What Will You Create Next Year?

The Hackaday Prize 2018 may be over, but it will return next year with a new theme, a new focus, and a new opportunity for members of both the Tindie and Hackaday communities to participate.

Thank you to all the Tindarians who submitted projects!

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Seen in the Flea Market: November 2018

November is upon us, and soon many will flock to local malls and to online retailers to procure presents for friends and family. If you received an electronics/hardware/maker-focused gift that isn’t quite for you, our Flea Market is a great alternative to filling up landfills or letting things fester in a drawer somewhere! For some inspiration on what is on offer in the flea market, here are a few notable items seen this month:

ATTEN AT7016 10 MHz Analog Oscilloscope

While this scope’s size relative to its small CRT display indicates its not a particular new model, its 10MHz spec is still useful for many jobs. It’s listed as having only seen light use, and is in like new condition.

Percent Distortion Meter

This interesting meter was purchased for a project, then saved for later use after seller R0b0BCB couldn’t find a spec sheet for it. Now it’s looking for a new home. The device is listed as being typically used in audio equipment, but one could certainly find all kinds of uses for such a device.

Sound Lab Mini-Synth PCB

This device is a pre-release PCB for a Sound Lab Mini-Synth, adapted into an SMT/Eurorack form. While what’s pictured here looks quite refined, the listing is only for the PCB itself, with no components or front panel included.

Small (SMD) Storage Boxes

Keeping small parts organized can be a challenge, and these little boxes with pop-up lids look like they could be a good solution. Fenix Computers is trying to clean out unneeded inventory, so these 70 boxes could be quite useful for someone else!

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Tindarians Turn Out For Supercon 2018!

The Hackaday Superconference for 2018 was another massive success. As my first supercon, it was amazing to finally meet my fellow Tindarians in person. Not only did we have an awesome Tindie meetup, but several sellers also hosted talks, demos, and even workshops!

Let’s take a look back at Supercon 2018 and see what our fellow Tindarians were up to during this epic weekend!

The Tindie Meetup

During lunch on Saturday, we had a Tindie meetup outside in the alley area behind the Supplyframe DesignLab. There were several products on display, live demos, and more than a few familiar faces!

This was a fantastic chance for the Tindie team to meet some of our Sellers and see their projects in person.  In the photo above left to right: Bart Dring, Adrian Studer, Tommy Pedrick (Tindie Customer Success), Toshiro Kodera, Dave Ploeger, Jasmine Brackett (Tindie Product Manager), Bradley Ramsey (Tindie Writer), Erin Kosewic (Tindie Lead Developer). The only team member absent was James Nixon (Tindie Customer Success) but was covering Tindie support over the whole weekend so we could have fun.

You may have spotted a few other familiar faces in the photo above as well. Toshiro Kodera and Dave Ploeger, both of whom traveled a far distance to celebrate Supercon with their fellow Tindarians.

Toshiro was a finalist in the Hackaday Prize and came from Tokyo, Japan. He’s known for his exceptional experiments with OLED and ESP32 items, plus the delight that buyers get unboxing perfectly packaged products.

Dave traveled from Berlin, Germany, and brought a demo of his ESP8266 Handheld, #LAMEBOY. Dave also brought items from Radomir Dopieralski and a Larsen Scanner from Burgduino, other European sellers who couldn’t make it this year.

Adrian Studer, who brought along several versions of his DaisyAIS Reciever, which he has been selling on Tindie since 2015 from his home base in Seattle, WA.

Joining us from Chicago, Illinois was Bart Dring. Bart hosted the Small Scale CNC/Robotics Workshop where attendees were able to create a functioning CNC badge.

Jason Huggins assisted in the workshop, a fellow Tindarian who has been selling products since 2012. His latest project is Tapster: a robot that automates mobile apps on smartphones.

While Bart is famous for his TWANG LED Game on Tindie, he also brought a new project to the meetup table as well that uses lasers to engrave detailed art onto round pieces of wooden nickels or chips.

It’s not available on Tindie, but perhaps one day. However, Zapp & Hyr0n (AND!XOR of #Badgelife fame) expressed interest in purchasing such a project (hint, hint).

It was great to see Tindarians like Sarah Petkus and Reinier van der Lee, who are responsible for SHE BON and Vinduino respectively.

Sarah came from Las Vegas and delivered an awesome talk on her project, while Reinier traveled from Temecula, California to attend the event and host his own workshop on LoRa Sensor networking.

Ben Hencke, from Santa Cruz, California, also stopped by to demo PixelBlaze, which powered an LED cube and synchronized the lights with music coming from a nearby Bluetooth speaker.

Everyone who came by received a special edition Tindie SMD Challenge kit as well.

Tindarians Assemble!

The Tindie meetup was the highest concentration of Tindarians in one place at Supercon 2018. However, that doesn’t mean you couldn’t find them all over the event:

  • One of the first talks at Supercon was hosted by Zapp & Hyr0n (AND!XOR) on, and I quote, “USIN EMBEDDD SISTEM CHALLENGEZ AN PROGRAMMIN LULZ AS METHOD 2 TEACH HACKIN.” The actual talk was even more amazing than the title. They joined us from Oxnard, California.
  • Arsenijs Picugins came from Riga, Latvia to host a talk entitled “Build Your Own Cellphone: hardware magic, and Linux on Portable Devices.”
  • Piotr Esden-Tempski from Eugene, Oregon, hosted a workshop on FPGA that offered an introduction to the concept for the attendees.
  • Ashwin Whitchurch, 2017 Hackaday semi-finalist came from Bangalore, KA, India to attend the Supercon!
  • Adelle Lin, famous for her UVicorn Necklace, joined us from Brooklyn, New York

Tindie at Supercon 2018

While the meetup was excellent, Tindie popped up in plenty of other places as well. Both Sarah Petkus and Ken Shirriff hosted talks at the main stage. You can check out the full playlist on YouTube if you weren’t able to make it.

Another great moment was Brian Benchoff’s Tindie pad printing demo at the Supplyframe DesignLab:

As part of the demo, the audience was also able to come up to the stage and print their very own KISS Tindies!

There were also three workshops hosted by Tindarians over the course of the weekend. Reinier van der Lee’s workshop introduced attendees to LoRa sensor networking, while Piotr Esden-Tempski introduced people to FPGA. Finally, Bart Dring hosted a small scale CNC/robotics workshop where the attendees built a CNC badge of their own.

 SMD Soldering Challenge

Those willing to test their soldering skills could sign up for the SMD Challenge! The kits were developed by MakersBox featured as An Unfortunate SMD Project on Hackaday.io and are available on Tindie.

The SMD soldering challenge table had its fill of contestants all weekend. Ultimately, these were the victors.

 

The 2018 Superconfence is over, but there’s always next year. Stay tuned for other announcements and opportunities to meet up with your fellow Tindarians around the world!

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Create Your Own Personal Health Center With Aidlab

As technology becomes smaller and more efficient, the functionality of wearable tech continues to increase. While we all know about Fitbit, it’s the work of makers that’s really pushing these concepts forward. From health related gadgets, to piece of electronic fashion, there’s something for everyone.

Aidlab is a wearable and hackable piece of tech that allows you to make use of motion, mood, stress, heart rate, respiration, and even body temperature data to create your own health hub on your person.

The Aidlab SDK allows you to embed it into most devices that run iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS, or Linux. You can even publish your app on mobile, web, or desktop. With bindings for Python, Unity, iOs, and Android, you’ll be able to develop your own health research or integrate it into an IoT device with relative ease.

The device includes a variety of sensors and algorithms for accuracy in measuring bio-signals, along with a great battery life and the latest Bluetooth support. They say your health is the most important thing, and Aidlab can easily keep track of it for you as part of your research, or as your own personal wearable doctor.

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Picosatellites and LoRaWAN with Electronic Cats

This September I had the pleasure of attending the World Maker Faire in New York. Along with a variety of other wonders and interesting people, I was able to talk with Eduardo Contreras, Chief Design Officer of Electronic Cats.

Electronic Cats Members (left to right): Eduardo Contreras, Ignacio Acosta, Felipe Valero, Rocio Rodriguez, and Andres Sabas. Eduardo claims he is not laughing at the other guys’ puny high-altitude balloons!

Electronics Cats, in addition to selling on Tindie, are heavily involved in sending balloons high into the atmosphere for experimental readings and imaging as part of the CatSat 1 program. As such, they have been involved in over 50 high-altitude missions in Latin America, and offer a kit to help get started with this pursuit.

CatSat 1 module includes most everything you’ll need for high-altitude balloon launches.

Their other offerings on Tindie involve LoRaWAN communication, an integral part of the CatSat. This technology, which is able to transmit data at a range of around 50km, is perfect for small balloon-satellites, where relaying simple GPS coordinates and other data at long ranges is more important than bandwidth. This tech is useful well beyond near-earth satellites, as explained in Eduardo’s introductory talk on this subject at WMFNY this year.

Eduardo talks LoRaWAN at Maker Faire

Electronic Cats is based in Mexico, and their goal is to demonstrate the possibility of creating cool and fun open hardware in Latin America with good support and documentation. In fact, they feature the largest collection of Spanish language documentation for picosatellite missions. Eventually they hope to expand to making maker products on a larger scale, similar to companies like Sparkfun and Adafruit.

Currently, 3 engineers work for Electronic Cats full-time, while another 6 are involved on a part-time basis. One of their latest endeavors is called the Meow Meow board, which allows you to hook up everyday objects as inputs, uses capacitive sensing and a powerful SAMD21 microcontroller. Right now they’re pre-selling units on their own site. When the kinks are worked out and they enter production, we hope they’ll decide to list them on Tindie!

Meow Meow: Not on Tindie, but perhaps soon?

Eduardo sees some of the great aspects of Tindie as being able to promote projects through our social networks in conjunction with Hackaday. He also enjoys our nice interface, and the fraud protection offered as part of the Tindie guarantee. On their wishlist for Tindie store features, pre-selling products (as they’re currently doing on their own site with Meow Meow) would be useful to Electronic Cats, as would the option for multiple users and collaborators to work as an organization. It’s an interesting idea, as Tindie tends to be geared towards single-person operations. There are, however, several small multi-person organizations selling here that could likely benefit from a multi-user interface.

All that being said, the real question that you probably have about “Electronic Cats” is why the nombre del gato? When I asked him about this at WMFNY, Eduardo noted that the Internet was invented by cats and for cats, thus the reason for so many cat videos. Given this revelation, it only makes sense to name the company Electronic Cats, and it would follow that the Internet’s cat overlords would push such a company forward toward success. Tindie, our canine mascot, would likely disagree, however we welcome all species to sell on this platform, electronic or carbon-based!

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This Steampunk-Inspired Clock Used to be a Car Compressor

Perhaps the greatest aspect of being a maker is taking something that would otherwise be labeled as garbage, and turning it into a brand new device or work of art. Take a car compressor for example. When it’s no longer needed, it typically goes straight to the junkyard, along with the rest of the car.

Not so with this Industrial Steampunk desk clock! Where most people would see a piece of used junk, one Tindarian saw an opportunity to bring it back to life in another form. Using the inside chamber of a car compressor, this clock comes with two AA batteries and some easy usage instructions.

The turning knob on the back of the device adjusts the time, while the lock module itself is accessibled by removing the clock face from the compressor chamber (which is attached via magnets).

Simple, elegant, but most of all, pretty damn cool.

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Living The #Badgelife at Supercon 2018

Conference badges are no longer simplistic and useless trinkets. They have evolved and grown into artistic, capable, and truly impressive devices. Dubbed badgelife by those involved in the practice, the display above, crafted by Majenta Strongheart, was a powerful monument to the concept at Supercon 2018.

The conference badge provided to all attendees became a canvas for the art of hacking as well, culminating in an awards ceremony that offered cash prizes and Tindie gift cards for the winners.

Embracing Badgelife at Supercon 2018

The badgelife exhibit in the hall between LACM and the Supplyframe DesignLab did not go unnoticed by attendees. Jason Huggins offered up a unique tweet that got us all thinking about the future of art museums:

In addition to the main section, there was also a place for SAOs on the left. Thanks to some clever designs, these add-ons were bright and vibrant throughout the weekend. Some of the badges and SAOs featured are from badge creators that sell on Tindie.

Badge Hacking

There was an entire line of tables in the alley behind the DesignLab and LACM dedicated to badge hacking. With a wealth of tools and components from our sponsors, people went to work making some truly incredible modifications to their badges.

Those who completed their hacks were invited to show them off on stage Sunday evening. There were several categories, cash prizes, and Tindie gift cards for the winners.

The sheer creativity and ingenuity on display here was stunning. We also saw some epic music, software, and BASIC hacks too. Badgelife was alive and well at Supercon 2018!

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An ATmega328 Dev Board and PCB Rules Reminder, All on a Key Ring!

Let’s be honest: most keychains are pretty useless. Yes, they are often witty, perhaps even somewhat fascinating, but ultimately they’re about as purposeful as bumper stickers on your car.

Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of keychains myself, but if I had the option, I’d choose something that has real value if it’s going to be gracing my keyring and stabbing me in the leg while it’s in my pocket. Say hello to this PCB keychain that has the potential to become a basic ATmega328P dev board or a handy reminder of PCB design practices.

One side of the key ring has a routing design based on real components and schematics, while the other side has PCB design rules like “width vs current,” and “clearance vs voltage.” While it doesn’t come with a metal ring for attaching it to your keys, there’s a convenient hole in the corner for it to dangle from.

On the other side, you’ll find everything you need to solder components to the board to use it as a minimal ATmega328 development board. Soldering components like the LEDs, the ATmega328, LDO, and crystal are all fairly simple as well.

If you decide to go this route, use AVRStudio IDE to write and compile the code, along with a programmer like — you could use an Arduino, a µISP, an AVRDragon, etc. — to program the microcontroller with an ICSP header. At the very least, you’ll have a handy little keychain.

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The Ultimate Hackaday Supercon 2018 Roundup

This year in Pasadena, California, I had the immense pleasure of attending my first Hackaday Superconference. It was equal parts inspiring, exciting, energizing, and utterly fantastic. If you haven’t been, then you must make it in 2019, because there is nothing else quite like it.

From the amazing speakers, to the melding of magnificent minds, there was no shortage of things to see and do during the event, which ran from November 2nd to the 4th. While I could easily fill a novel with all the things I saw and did, we’re going to distill this into a concentrated post. Join me as we take a journey through Supercon 2018!

Superconference 2018 Highlights

This year’s conference spanned across three different venues. We began in the Supplyframe HQ on Friday for talks, badge hacking, and the SMD soldering challenge. For Saturday and Sunday, Supercon took over the Supplyframe DesignLab and the Los Angeles College of Music (LACM) next door.

If you weren’t able to make it, I highly recommend you check out the talks, all of which are available in this handy playlist. Of course, all of this wouldn’t have been possible without the amazing work from the Supplyframe team and the 500+ hours our volunteers put in to help it all run as smoothly as it did.

Now, without further adieu, here are some highlights from the event!

We had multiple Tindarians at Supercon, including Sarah Petkus who did a captivating talk on her ongoing project, SHE BON.

In the space between the two venues, an epic Badgelife exhibit adorned the wall, complete with several badges from Tindarians:

Over at the DesignLab, Brian Benchoff also hosted a KISS Tindie Pad Printing demo:

As it turns out, this process is used to print text on all manner of things, including branded pens. After taking a pen from the Vatican, Brian recounted a series of unfortunate events, which led to this amazing quote:

“I learned three things: God exists, he’s catholic, and he uses comic sans.”

As the talks continued, the alley behind the DesignLab was filled with people hacking their badges and participating in the SMD challenge:

Let’s not forget the amazing Tindie meetup on Saturday either:

People wasted no time when it came to badge hacking. After all, there were cash prizes and Tindie gift certificates at stake for the winners of the contest.

Saturday night also played host to the Hackaday Prize 2018 award ceremony, where the trainable robotic arm Dexter took home the grand prize!

On Sunday night, the audience decided who would win the badge hacking awards. The badge hacks did not disappoint! We had everything from a 3D-printed enclosure, to amazing musical renditions, and even a rubber band gun powered by the badge!

When the sun went down, things got really intense. High voltage and explosions galore!

Once again, a huge thank you to all of the people who helped make this happen!

See you in 2019 for the next Hackaday Supercon!

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