VentureBeat » hardware hacking

You’re invited: Facebook’s first-ever hardware hackathon

Jolie O'Dell — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 18:53:52 +0000

Facebook’s Open Compute Project, a huge effort to create and promote open-source hardware, is hosting its first-ever hardware hackathon.

The hackathon will take place next month in Santa Clara, Calif., at the OCP’s Open Compute Summit. The hackathon’s goal is to create a set of open-source computer hardware building blocks — kind of like Lego for computing. These blocks would eventually be applied to real-world use cases in large data centers in ways that would boost energy efficiency, make repairs simpler, and reduce overall data center costs.

Hackathon participants will be limited to just 100 people, and hardware hackers will spend between 6 and 10 hours working on the project during the two-day conference. Hackers will work in teams and will present their results at the end of the Summit.

The hackathon is a joint project between the OCP and Upverter, a DEMO-launched open-source hardware startup we’ve been keeping tabs on since it launched back in September 2011. Upverter founder Zac Homuth told VentureBeat via email that hackers in the upcoming event will be using Upverter’s software tools for the hackathon. Upverter will also be giving participants plenty of reference materials, tutorials, and one-on-one guidance throughout the event.

The Open Compute Summit will take place at the Santa Clara Convention Center on January 16 and 17, 2012. You can register now for the hackathon and the Summit. The ideation phase — which Upverter will also help with — starts as soon as you register.

Top image courtesy of Smileus, Shutterstock

Filed under: Dev

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Get to hardware hacking from the comfort of your web browser with Circuits.io

Jolie O'Dell — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 17:11:47 +0000

Hardware hacking is super trendy right now, and Circuits.io is the latest trend-surfer to ride that wave.

The simple web-based tool lets you design and share circuits from inside a web browser. The site has been around for a couple months but has started to pick up steam since the team’s trip to New York for Maker Faire.

Circuits.io was created earlier this year by Karel Bruneel and Benjamin Schrauwen, two academics and tinkerers specializing in electronics design. The general concept behind the site was to make hardware/electronics design as easy as making software.

Ergo, Circuits.io’s goals are threefold: To help you design circuits based on pre-designed electronics modules; to hide the software’s complexity behind simple, easy-to-use interfaces; and to fully embrace the open-source hardware movement.

Here’s a quick video clip:

Circuits.io may launch paid accounts in the future, but for open hardware projects, the service will remain free of charge.

The open hardware movement has picked up quite a bit of steam lately, thanks in no small part to Open Compute, a Facebook-led crusade with tons of industry support from hardware vendors and web titans alike.

Other online hardware-design tools do exists; one of our favorites is Upverter, a one-year-old company that’s focused on collaborative and open hardware design.

Image courtesy of Mark, Vicki, Ellaura and Mason

Filed under: Dev

Tech materials of the future (and how you can make them yourself)

Jolie O'Dell — Wed, 16 May 2012 20:13:19 +0000

Flexible screens, wearable computers, conductive ink, wires that move like muscles: These are the materials that will make up the gadgets of the future, and they’re being dreamed up and developed in do-it-yourself hacker labs and garages all around the world.

Sure, large manufacturers are working on these kinds of materials, too, but openMaterials co-founder Catarina Mota says the real innovation is coming from the bottom up as makers, hackers, and DIY enthusiasts figure out how to do “the future” for themselves in their own home labs.

Smart materials have one or more properties that can be changed by external stimuli, such as temperature, moisture, a magnetic field, or an electric current. And these kinds of materials are changing how we think about hardware and what hardware is able to do.

At a hardware-hacking workshop sponsored by Make magazine today in Silicon Valley, Mota said she and a partner began looking for these kinds of smart materials for an art installation, but they ran into more hurdles than expected.

“We quickly realized the materials we wanted weren’t available in quantities or prices for makers like ourselves,” she said, noting that when they could get their hands on the materials, they couldn’t figure out how to use them, nor did they receive any instructions from the manufacturers, who were used to dealing with large-scale OEMs.

So, Mota concluded, she’d have to make the materials she wanted by herself.

“The only way to go about this was trial and error,” she said. “We’d make our best guess and change one thing at a time until we got the material to do what we wanted it to do.”

Eventually, the art installation fell by the wayside as Mota and her cohort became more and more fascinated by making and using these materials of the future. openMaterials is the result of their efforts, which include research and workshops on DIY smart materials.

Mota said that in 2009, she was only able to track down two or three manufacturers of smart materials. Today, there are many manufacturers of all sizes — and better still, the web is replete with information, instructions, and community resources for makers.

Here’s a gallery showing handmade smart materials and where you can find out more about them (or even learn how to make them yourself):

Top image courtesy of luxorphoto, Shutterstock

Filed under: Dev