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Hackaday Prize Hack Chat

Entering the Hackaday Prize? Thinking about it? Join previous Hackaday Prize winners and judges to discuss how you can place!

Friday, March 23, 2018 12:00 pm PDT Local time zone:
Hack Chat
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Join this Hack Chat by clicking on the JOIN HACK CHAT button. 

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Alberto Molina, 2016 Prize winner, and Elecia White, 2015 and 2016 Hackaday Prize judge, will be co-hosting the Hack Chat this week. Stephen Tranovich, Technical Community Leader at Hackaday.io will answer any and all questions about entering the 2018 Prize.

This Hack Chat is at noon PDT, Friday, March 23rd.

Time Zones got you down? Here's a handy count down timer!

Now in its fifth year, The 2018 Hackaday Prize is the Academy Awards of Open Hardware, a grand competition where thousands of hardware hackers, makers, and artists compete to build a better future.

This year's theme is Build Hope. With all of the issues facing our society today, we encourage all of you to put your amazing ideas and creativity to use and Build Something that Matters.

Elecia White, Hackaday Prize judge in 2015 and 2016 will join us to discuss what makes a standout entry from a judging perspective. Elecia is an embedded software engineer at Logical Elegance, Inc, author of O’Reilly’s Making Embedded Systems, and host of the Embedded.fm podcast. She enjoys sharing her enthusiasm for engineering and devices. 

We also welcome Alberto Molina, winner of the 2016 Hackaday Prize with Dtto, a search and rescue robot, an open source project that is continuing to be worked on. Alberto Molina is an Electronic Engineer who works to design the next generation of robots, the ones that will rule the world. Believes in the open-source technology as a way to empower people. He loves motorcycles and cats.

Stephen Tranovich, Technical Community Leader at Hackaday.io is working hard on the Prize this year. Stephen will answer any and all questions about entering the 2018 Prize.

In this chat, we'll discuss:

  • What was the Prize judged on?
  • New challenges in the 2018 Hackaday Prize 
  • Achievements
  • Questions and answers!

  • Hackaday Prize Hack Chat Transcript

    Lutetium03/23/2018 at 20:14 0 comments

    Stephen Tranovich says:12:05 PM
    Let's get started! A big welcome to @Elecia White and @Alberto! Could you both take a second to introduce yourselves and tell us about your relationship to the prize? I'll do the same!

    Kevin says:12:06 PM
    The lighting by the workbench wouldn't be that good and it would have to be a camera for a Pi as that is the only computer there.

    ðeshipu says:12:06 PM
    it doesn't have to be good

    Elecia White says:12:07 PM
    Hello! I was a judge for the first two years and then advisor judge for one year. I'm not judging this year so I can give you any hints I have.

    Aman Garg says:12:07 PM
    @Kevin i think any good mobile camera works which can capture the working prototype

    Kevin says:12:07 PM
    @Stephen Tranovich I suppose it depends on how many rounds there are. I got through the first (or second?) round but I didn't have a video so that was as far as I got. Didn't expect to win as my projects are a bit too specialized.

    Stephen Tranovich says:12:08 PM
    Hey everyone! I'm Stephen, and I work at Hackaday! I run the Prize, and do other community related things (you'll be seeing me more and more around these parts) along with hacking on my own projects!

    Stephen Tranovich says:12:08 PM
    I will be one of the judges for the earlier rounds, and not for the finals.

    Jeremy says:12:09 PM
    Hi guys

    wynhoff, james says:12:09 PM
    @Elecia White , I posted my question on the discussion page, but I'm curious your tips for making an easily readable project log, I have a terrible habit of only documenting successful parts of the project, and do you like to see project logs of the failures and pitfalls as well?

    Elecia White says:12:09 PM
    I sympathize a lot with the video difficulty, make sure it is on Stephen's list! There are lots of ways to solve the problem.

    Vishnu M Aiea says:12:09 PM
    So the 5 rounds have separate judges.. Hmm. I thought otherwise!

    Michael Barton-Sweeney says:12:09 PM
    Hi all!

    Elecia White says:12:10 PM
    I think the first five rounds have Hackaday judges but the last round (final) have the celebrity judges (what a silly name).

    Stephen Tranovich says:12:10 PM
    Let's get rolling! First let's get started answering some of the existing confusion around judges and around videos.

    Mike Szczys says:12:10 PM
    I certainly consider @Elecia White a celebrity

    Josh Starnes says:12:11 PM
    Ok so what all is expected in the videos? and length

    John Schuch says:12:11 PM
    Yes, @Elecia White is a celeb.

    Elecia White says:12:11 PM
    First, the video doesn't have to be fancy. A web cam or a phone is good.

    Stephen Tranovich says:12:12 PM
    Correct @Elecia White, the first 5 rounds are judged by technical members of Hackaday staff and their associates. All of the winners of those first 5 rounds can then enter the finals, which are judged by the separate group of celebrity judges

    Elecia White says:12:12 PM
    You don't have to edit it if you want to take it all in one well-rehearsed blob

    Elecia White says:12:12 PM
    You don't have to talk, the Raman Pi project (flatcat?) got to finals without ever showing his face and he use a voice synthesizer

    Elecia White says:12:13 PM
    So if you don't want to show your face or you hate your voice, don't let that stop you.

    Kevin says:12:13 PM
    celebrity judges? Makes you think of some TV reality show. :)

    Stephen Tranovich says:12:13 PM
    Video is only required for entering the finals. So you can enter the first 5 rounds, even win some, and never have to make a video.

    Elecia White says:12:13 PM
    A powerpoint that you narrate would ok. A video of your hardware that you narrate would be better.

    Stephen Tranovich says:12:13 PM
    Agreed!

    Josh Starnes says:12:14 PM
    Does your project being published in a magazine hurt or disqualify your entry?...

    Read more »

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Alan Cohen wrote 03/21/2018 at 22:31 point

As a person who designs medical devices for my day job, my thought for building hope is to develop an open-source medical device - but would this somehow be a non-starter with regard to the rules, or an otherwise dead-end proposal? For example, the rules state that videos must not "Depict any activity, or imply any activity, that... involves drug [use]" Does this only apply to _illegal_ drug use, or would this knock out the submission of an open-source insulin pump or pill dispenser?

The intent here is not be be clever about publishing plans with a pro-forma "Kids, don't do this at home (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)!"  statement. Medical devices normally won't work as home-built projects, since they should be manufactured in a suitably-controlled way. However, open-sourcing the _design_ of medical devices, for subsequent commercial manufacture by multiple sources, could lead to a better world through safer, lower-cost, and potentially more-innovative products.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Simon Merrett wrote 03/21/2018 at 17:05 point

For Alberto, what did he learn about making the most of the prizes and opportunities that winning brought - particularly the Supplyframe residency? 

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