Embedded - 194: Something For Something

Episode Date: April 6, 2017

Shulie Tornel (@helixpea) joined us to talk about the 2017 Hackaday Prize (@hackaday and @hackadayio). Hackaday World Create Day is April 22nd, let them know if you want do a meetup so they can add you to the calendar. Elecia gave away all of her potential ideas, trying to figure out which one would work best for entry. It was probably Maxwell except for its lack of novelty (Embedded shows #17 and #54and there is a SparkFun Tutorial). Are you entering? The first phase (until May) is community driven (popularity contest). Post your entry here or tweet to us (@embeddedfm) and we'll like it. Also, it was Shantam Raj's Self-sustained Ultralow-power Node that we discussed in the show. Neon Demons (trailer) Embedded blog contributor Chris Svec was on the CodeNewbie podcast talking about robots and chip design. The following week Saron invited Elecia to record an episode about getting into hardware and embedded software.

Before we get started, I want to let you know that recently our blog contributor and friend, Chris Feck, was on the Code Newbie podcast talking about embedded systems and chip design. That was super interesting, but more exciting to me is that I got to be on the Code Newbie podcast and talk about getting into embedded systems. So if you know somebody who's new at this, wants to get more into software development, check it out. The show will be in the links. Hello, I'm Elysia White, and you are listening to Embedded. Christopher White is my co-host, and this week we are going to talk to Shuley Tornel about the 2017 Hackaday Prize. Hi, Shuley. It's good to talk to you today. Hello. Could you tell us about yourself?

Yes. So I studied marketing and international business when I went to college and I got a double major. Wasn't really sure what I wanted to do about that, but I recently worked for a small startup here in Pasadena and they're called New Matter. They make an affordable, easy to use mod T3D printer. And since then I've kind of dived into the maker hacker world. And I've kind of fell in love with this community. So since then, I've moved on to supply frame. And so I'm the community leader at hackaday.io. And yeah, so that's kind of my journey so far into makers and hacker community and in my spare time I like to play video games and I do crossfit pretty often so that's kind of what I do truly in a nutshell yep well we're going to ask you more about Hackaday and maybe a little bit more about marketing,

since it's something engineers tend to think, oh, that's easy. And I suspect it's not as easy as we think it is. But first, we have lightning round, where we ask you short questions and we want short answers. And if we are behaving ourselves, we don't argue about the answers or ask you why or go into long stories in detail. But that's for us. So, shall we get started? Yes. Favorite movie or book or other piece of entertainment, I would say, which you encountered for the first time in 2016?

2016. I think I'd have to say the most interesting movie I saw was Neon Demons. It was a beautiful art film and the colors and stuff was just amazing. So Neon Demons. Cool. Cool. Have not heard of it. Writing it down so I can look for it later.

Mine's easy. Do you like chocolate? Kind of. I. Mine's easy. Do you like chocolate? Kind of. I know it's strange, but I'm more of like a fruit candy type of person. Don't judge me. Alright, we'll move on

from that. Preferred type of weather? Some people like snowstorms. I don't know. I would say 60s. I don't know. I would say 60s. Not cold, not hot. Raining. Not raining. Sun?

Cloud? Maybe a little cloudy because it's kind of nice to just kind of crawl up at home and hang out. What is your favorite time period in history? My favorite time period in history? My favorite time period, probably the 60s. Probably the fashion.

1760s? The 1960s. Maybe just like that style of fashion, I suppose. Favorite animal? Sloth. Yes! Yes! Sloths.

Yeah, they're very cute. Have you ever touched a penguin? No. What? What? I haven't even seen one in real life. So I've only seen videos, pictures. This is some sort of weird quest of Alicia's to find somebody who's, yeah.

What do you listen to on your commute? If you have a commute, if you listen to anything, the answer can't be no. I have a commute. I take the train to work, so it's easy for me to listen to my iPod. I listen to a lot of punk rock. Good. Yeah. Dead Kennedys, that kind of stuff.

Cool. If you could magically or like Matrix style learn one skill, just one skill overnight, what would it be? Karate. Cool. All right. Let's get on to the real questions. Supply Frame.

Supply Frame owns Hackaday. Hackaday is a site where there's lots of articles about hacking, I guess, is the shortest way to put it. You've done your research. A few years ago, they created Hackaday.io, which is sort of like a project log and a place to put all of your information and tell people how to build stuff.

And it's sort of like instructables or a tutorial. And now they are once again doing this Hackaday Prize. What is the theme of 2017's Hackaday Prize? So the theme is kind of the same each year. It's really about building something that matters. That's kind of the motto that we revolve really about building something that matters that's kind of the the motto that we revolve around with the hackaday prize and it's really just about making something with a purpose um you know it's not something you just want to hack your keyboard so it does

really cool stuff it's really more about making something for social change, thinking about someone in need, something that really has an issue and striving to solve that problem. So that's kind of the theme or big picture of the Hackaday Prize. That seems like a pretty high bar. I mean, how can anything I build in my garage really matter? It seems too hard. What do you say when people say that to you? Yeah, it's hard to think about things that would really make a global impact. It's definitely really hard, but we like to ask people to think about things like poverty or environmental issues, climate change, disabilities. from Parkinson's disease, they might want to create something like maybe a pair of gloves that help with the tremors or help to analyze the tremors. And so something like that would also be impactful.

So we're not looking for an overnight change like, oh, this better solve climate change tomorrow. But as long as we see that you have the intent and the purpose and the drive to help the world solve some problems, that's really what we're looking for. And it's really that passion to really create something that is not just, you know, to make your house really cool or, you know, that you want to, you know, make a garage door open or open whenever you want. So we're looking for things like that, that is really helpful for the world. That's still a high bar, but if I can make it be something that's helpful for my neighbor or my grandma or somebody I know, that's more attainable. Right, right. So one of my favorite projects,

which is actually the winner of the 2015 Hackaday Prize, is called the Eye-Controlled Wheelchair. And it's called the Eye-Drivomatic. And so this is an open-source project that a team of people came to create. It's essentially a wheelchair that is driven by analyzing your eye movements. So someone loses their ability to move their muscles. They can't use their arms to roll a wheelchair or even to control it. This is a really great way. It's a low-cost way, open source, that people can use, and it's affordable.

So things like this, just to make someone's life easier, something like this is impactful. And it may not be a global impact, but it can really make someone's life a lot better. I was a judge for that series. And it was tough because that project was not technically difficult. It was... It really wasn't. Because they had screen readers so they already had the eye control

and they had some wheelchair control. They just needed a piece to go in between. And they used an Arduino to go in between and it wasn't huge. That's funny because I was about to say that sounds

really like a difficult project and to me seeing just hearing about that project i know i've read about it a while back but i've forgotten about it uh just hearing about that project oh well that's that's a big deal that's that's a hard thing to do um right you know that might be intimidating for somebody who says well i have some experience with arduino and i can put some things together but i can't make anything like that now you're telling me yeah actually you can you can do that. And that's, you know, it was not that complicated. It was just conceptually novel. And it was that the creators had the problem of wanting to be able to drive their wheelchairs. Yeah. And so they built this solution and there were off the shelf solutions that cost

far more, but they could make this solution and they did. And that was what was so impressive. It wasn't that it was 90,000 lines of code packed into an AT tiny 85. It wasn't, it wasn't an impossible project. It was just one that had a big impact, an obvious, understandable impact on their lives and the lives of their whole community. So who won last year? So last year we had a winner. His name is albert perez uh he's actually um i think he's in spain but his project is uh

actually pretty interesting his his idea was actually not a original idea it it was his own iteration from a 2005 project and it came from japan actually So he took this idea, he made some improvements to it, made some changes and it's called the Ditto and it's a explorer modular robot. And it's versatile, flexible. Think of like a worm-shaped robot and what makes it so impressive is that it's actually a great robot to use for search and rescue operations.

You know, think of like a collapsed building. This is the type of robot that has sensors and can actually worm its way into small crevices and, you know, kind of like search for missing people, that kind of stuff. So this was a really interesting project. And a lot of people were really impressed with the changes that Alberto had made to this project. So that was the winner. And he is actually joining us at the Design Lab in Pasadena in the next couple of weeks. And so that was part of the prize that he won. He won a monetary prize to help drive his projects forward. And he also gets to come to the Pasadena Design Lab, which is by SupplyFrame. And he gets to work out of this lab for the next couple of weeks to work on his project with other colleagues. Yeah, we did a show about your design lab with Dan Hinch and Magenta.

Right. And it sounded pretty cool, sort of like a tech workspace, hacker space with all of these wonderful, amazing tools for cutting metal and people around that knew what they were doing. And it just sounded pretty cool. Right. Yeah. There's a lot of really cool people there.

And Dan, he's a great mentor to everyone there. And so he really teaches everyone how to use the machines properly. But you noted that last year's winner, Alberto, didn't do this originally. It's not that he made this from scratch. He built on an existing design. I think that's something people don't understand, is that it is okay not to invent your project from first principles. Right. That's something that we really believe in.

All the projects that go on Hackaday.io must be open source. And because of that, we really drive people to really make improvements on already existing projects. If you see that there's a way to make this more affordable, faster, smaller, if you want to add more features to it, that's something that we highly encourage. And so to be a winner of the Hackaday Prize, you don't have to completely build something from scratch. We really encourage that.

As long as you put enough changes to a project, we just don't want you to be blatantly ripping something off. So as long as you make improvements, make changes, so yeah. Okay, so having been a judge, I have to admit that the judging criteria is one of the fascinating parts to me. Perhaps not to anybody else, although it should be interesting to everybody else. Because what happens is you take the judging criteria and then you score it on one to 10. And you said open source. There's a lot of gradation of open source. There's open schematics, there's open code, there's open Gerbers, which is better. There's having a bomb that is buyable. And so as a judge, I certainly looked at all of the pieces of, is it open source? But there are the other criteria. Have you looked through them? Yes, I have.

And so how thoroughly has the entry requirements been completed? That one's easy because there's a list of, you have to have a video and you have to have so many project notes. And so that's, you could just easily check those off. In fact, I heard rumor that you might be getting a robot to check those off and I hope so. So the judging criteria firstly is obviously, is this project based on something that would bring social change? Again, we're looking for something that would really impact someone's life, make the world kind of a better place. And the other thing that we're looking for is the open source documentation. We want people to share how they made it from beginning to end.

And so we allow people ways to link to their GitHub account, post all the source codes, show videos, logs. What we really want to see is the story of the project documentation. So we want to see your fails, your fail videos, how you mess something up. We want to see your successes. And so that's why we require a number of logs from you starting your project until the end. And so we're looking for at least four logs in your project. And most of the people that enter a Hackaday Prize project have way more than four. They have up to 20 sometimes. And they don't have to be long.

We're just kind of looking for updates to see if you're actively working on your project. Okay, so that covers three of the criteria, the entry requirements, the benefit society, and the well-documented. Although you mentioned open source and the criteria is well-documented and can this be replicated, which was an odd thing

because I was sitting there going, okay, you did this, you did open source everything, but you didn't make make files, you didn't make project files, so I can't really replicate this without a whole heck of a lot of work. That's important. Is it open source and is it well documented? But also, can somebody else who is reasonably familiar with the state of the world replicate it? And that's why they choose the judges the way they do, is because they are the people who might be able, who should have the skills to replicate things. That's a tough question too, right? Because, like you said, it depends on who's trying to replicate it. Yeah. I mean, for the ones that were very hardware-ish, I definitely sort of kind of gave them a more median score and could be more harsh on the, or less harsh on the software that could be replicated. Right. And that also brings up a really good point that we're not expecting everyone to work on projects alone.

We actually encourage people to come together and work as teams. And so you don't have to know both hardware and software. We see a lot of people work together on projects. So some people might be experts on one thing while another works on something else on the project. Yeah, the winners of the first Hackaday Prize were Satnogs, and that was a pretty big team, actually. Right. Let's see these other criteria. Is the project creative, original, functional, and pushing boundaries? And that's all one question.

So that's all 10 points together. And it's kind of a conglomeration of things. But I think part of it is, is this the project you entered last year? Because you're not getting points for that. No, no. I know it was good last year. But you just said we could build on something that we've already done. But I want progress. I don't just want, well, last year. But she just said we could build on something that we've already done. But I want progress.

I don't just want, well, last year I got a community award. I'll just reenter all the same stuff. Copy over my project logs. It'll be good. No, don't do that. Yeah, we actually tell people not to do that. We say, you know, you can only enter your project, again, if you've made vast improvements

to it, if you didn't win last year, maybe this year, there's something that you added to it, you completely reworked it. And so we tell people to show us how different it is. So they may be able to enter it, but they probably won't make it to the final levels if we see that it's just a copy and paste. Okay. And you really want version two, not version 1.1. But you can continue on your project. You just have to show this is substantially new and different.

Right. Okay, one of the last judging criteria I want to talk about is does this project address the current challenge? Because you have different challenges. It's not just build something that matters And so all we really want to see is if you have a really great idea. image for your project page and just a short description of what you're hoping to build. And so this round, we require the least amount of documentation. It's just really a description of what you want to do. And the other themes that we have... Wait, wait, I want to talk more about this one. Oh, yeah.

And I totally want to talk about all the themes, but this one is really just getting started. And you're giving away money in part based on people liking projects? Yeah, yeah. So think of it like a community voting process. We actually reserved $4,000 to give away for people to kind of bootstrap their project. You can get up to $200 for each like equals $1. So the more you kind of share about your project, get people behind your idea, the more money you'll get. And so there's a cap of $200 that you could get for

your project. But that could be, I mean, that's enough to buy a few boards there. Yeah. And are there going to be different prizes or other prizes in that round? Or is it just about the community likes? That's just about the community likes in the, in the first round design your concept. But each round that we have, we have, we pick 20 finalists from each round. And so only the first design your concept round has the community voting aspect to it. So on Twitter,

I asked if there were ways we could get people to join into Hackaday Prize and what's stopping them and what do they need. And one of the people who responded, Shantam Raj, is a student who's building a very low-power widget and he doesn't know how to measure his micro and nano-amp current draw with his voltmeter and occasional access to an oscilloscope. And this is a really tricky technical problem, but it's exactly the sort of problem that if he puts up everything he wants on the project pages and maybe does a little bit of popularity things, like joining hack chats to ask people what they think it is and going on Twitter and saying,

I built this, please like it. That's how he can get money to buy some of the tools that he needs. Is that right? Right, exactly. Okay. And sometimes those hack chats may lead to, well, you can use a precision resistor and here's how you do it, but here are your disadvantages. And, oh my God, burden voltage is so confusing. Sorts of technical details because the goal is collaboration to some extent.

Even if you aren't joining a team, you're still participating in the community right uh so in the hack chat we currently have probably almost 2 000 members now and um i check in there at various times throughout the day and it seems like there's always someone there and they're either just chatting about projects or some of them have become friends and they live halfway across the world so it's really cool to pop in there and see who's in there bounce ideas off of get feedback ask for help or you can even offer help as well. So Hack Chat is a really great place for people to go if they're looking to kind of build some feedback about your project. So, yeah, it's a great place to be.

It's interesting. I do like it. It's too much constant stuff happening for me to hang out there, but I could totally see if I didn't have 97 other Slack windows and emails open, that might be a great place to hang out. Yeah, it's definitely there for the intent of working on various projects and asking people for help. So We see that happen a lot in Hack Chat. People popping in asking a question. It's great. To answer

the Twitter question, yes. Join now. Maybe get some money. Or maybe get some advice. That ends May 1st. What ends May 1st the the first the first round the the get your design started and a little bit of a popularity contest with the likes and then then we start round two internet of useful? That doesn't sound possible. Yeah, so we wanted to play around with the title a little bit so that people understood we're not looking for the internet of tea kettles. So we're looking for Internet of

Useful Things, something that you think would make an impact on maybe your community or someone who's disabled. So these kind of things are what we hope to get out of the hacker community. So we see a lot of Internet of Things projects on Hackaday.io. So unfortunately, some of them might not make it to the finalist round. So yeah, we're looking to the community to come up with a bigger idea for IoT projects. Okay, so I did what can only be called an IoT project, personal project, where it was Maxwell and Hugh Manatee. And they were small, off-the-shelf electric imp modules, although now SparkFunThing, ESP32,

ESP8260, any of the IoT modules could be used. And I would give it to someone I was worried about, an elderly neighbor, a parent, or even a child away at college, and they would pad it every day. And that was their proof of life. And if they failed to pad it for one day, it would text me or email me or tweet me or whatever. I was using Twilio, so there was lots of options. And it was just this, I'm still alive. And I know you're thinking about me.

And maybe we didn't talk on the phone today, but I'm okay. You don't have to check on me. I'm fine. And I really liked that. And I know a number of people liked the idea of it. And even there were some attempts at productization, not in my form, but various ones that I've seen at conferences and haven't yet seen in the marketplace. Is that the sort of thing you want? Or are you looking for something bigger? That would definitely count. What we're looking for is something that really drives you. And

we are looking for projects that have a personal meaning to it. And so that is a great example. And that one had a very, very personal meaning to it, which I'm not going to rehash. You can just go listen to those episodes. Okay, so I have an idea for a website that would tell me where the nearest sunshine is because I personally require sunshine to function. And when it gets too cloudy, I become unhappy. And I was thinking about using Weather underground and some geolocation stuff, and I really have no idea how to do this.

But it doesn't have a hardware aspect. It's all just internet of internet. Would that fit, or are you pretty focused on wanting some component of hardware? So we do require some hardware component to it. We're not really looking for just an app on your phone. Yeah, that's something that we would prefer to have a hardware aspect to it. And so some people are actually worried about that part because a lot of people who only do coding or software come to us and they say, you know, I don't really know that much about hardware

or I'm not an electric engineer. So that's when we ask people, that would be great if you could collaborate with the teams. And so that's where the Hackaday.io community comes into play. That's fair. And I mean, I suppose I could add a light that indicated something about this and hook it up to a Raspberry Pi. Although my idea was better before I cluttered it with hardware. So sometimes you just have to accept it needs to have a hardware component.

Okay, so I have another project to run by. I have been wanting to do a clothespin that I could put on my hat that had a UV sensor and a BLE connection to my phone. So this doesn't go straight to the internet. It just goes to an application on my phone, but it does have hardware and it has embedded software that I programmed to listen to the UV sensor and communicate via BLE. That would be a reasonable project, right? Yes, definitely. Right. Even though a couple of years ago you had in your best product category, one of the finalists was in fact a UV sensor.

But as long as I'm doing it, you know, kind of originally thinking about how I want it and using newer technology than they had access to, this is still a viable project. Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah. So what we have seen in the past is we have seen similar projects, but the way you go about programming it or using the different hardware definitely comes into play. And so as long as you're not, you know, as long as we see that it's not, you know, a ripoff of someone else's exact product, like, we don't want to see you copying the code over and just

plugging it into a project page. So as long as it's something that you've worked on yourself, it's definitely qualifiable. Okay, so that's round two. And that ends june 12th and so you'll get however many entries you get and then you will judge them down to 20 yes uh each round we get 20 finalists and these finalists each win a thousand dollars and these 20 finalists they make it into the final round, which at the very end of the Hackaday Prize, we pick five winners, like the top tier winners of the entire Hackaday Prize. And so at the end, these 120 projects will kind of go through a final judging round at the very end. And that's where your judges really come into play.

Right. Happily, I remember being quite thankful that I didn't have to judge all of the entries. I only had to judge the ones that got past the internal Hackaday folks. And okay, so you get 20 and then those win $1,000 if you're in the top 20 for each challenge. So it's a good idea to start early and enter often. Right. Okay. So the next round after Internet of Things was wheels, wings, and walkers.

If I have something that walks and has an Internet of Things component, can I enter both rounds? Yes, you definitely can. Sweet. Can I win $2,000? Yes, you can. What about boats? I'm sorry. Sorry. That was one of my ideas, was robot boat to take environmental measurement.

I guess I could put some feet on it. I mean, you could call a propeller a water wing. You could call the whole project water wing. I just want to make sure there's a loophole. No, we called this round wheels wing and walkers just because it sounded cool um but definitely this round is really about mobility seeing something um take flights and seeing something jump around so it's definitely something that we want to see kind of kind of in a way, but it doesn't exactly have to be robotics.

And so that's why we really wanted to call it an open-ended round. But yeah, I would definitely think robotics in this round. Chris has been wanting to do a little boat that wanders around the Monterey Bay and monitors pollution, salinity. Pollution? All right. I don't know how to do that. Well, we can measure oil. I worked on those oil sensors, so we can definitely measure oil.

And temperature and all these things, and to phone at home. So he has a robot in mind, and we can definitely say that's environmental, and so that's definitely something that matters. You can enter. I'm not sure I can enter, but I think you can. Yeah. At least, of course, you can. You can.

I was a past judge. Last year, I couldn't enter. So we'll see. It's been two years. It's been two years. Well, except last year, I was technically a judge, so we'll see. My only idea for this was that I've been wanting to build robot hands, like actuated fingers, and now I have that spiffy board so it totally can control big robot motors, and then I want it to type on my laptop. Possibly, not my laptop because that would be expensive. Maybe on a keyboard because it would probably type very hard and destroy it. And then I would add voice commands so that I could talk and it would type.

And it would be really awesome. But I don't think this... I don't think it helps anybody. It helps people who can't type. No, it doesn't. Because you skip that whole robot typing part. I don't think it helps anybody. Okay, Chris is disqualifying this.

I mean, unless you count lifting people's spirits. In which case, you know, you're opening it to a whole lot of things you probably don't want to. Yeah, so hilarity doesn't count, does it? Well. In which case, you know, you're opening it to a whole lot of things you probably don't want to. Yeah. So hilarity doesn't count, does it? Well. I don't see challenge five as comedy, right? Yeah. I mean, I'm sure one of our judges, Simone, she would probably disagree with that, that it does matter.

Oh, Simone would give me full credit for that. Yeah, she would. Right. I do remember when I was a judge, there was at least one person who had a whole project log about how wonderful my book was. They were clearly pandering. Yeah, I don't think that's wise.

It did not work. Although I loved it anyway, but it didn't work. Especially thinking about the other judges having to read that. Okay, so it's like we have one of these a month. It's exactly like that. Well, actually, I think it's five weeks. Oh, right. End of June, all of July is robots. And then the next one is assistive technology, which is one of those things that's really hard to understand. But basically, it's assisting someone. Usually, a disabled person, refreshable Braille display is pretty cool.

Utensils for people with shaky hands. Those are things that are coming out or have come out in the last few years that make sense. But there's other stuff that you can think about to assist for disaster recovery. Or what other ideas do you have, Shuli? So something that we find really fascinating here is exoskeletons. And so something like that, it seems really complicated, I mean, at least to me. But we do have some projects on Hackaday.io that's just, it just looks really cool. And I can't believe that people actually make this. And so it can be as novel as 3D printed or as professionally made with like metals. And, but those, those really impressed me a lot. I'm like, wow, that's really cool. Because it can either be used to assist someone who's disabled or it can just assist your daily work life, you know, lifting things and transporting things over.

So things like that are really fascinating to me. the self-driving arm episode and where we talk about robotics and machine intelligence and how nothing can possibly go wrong once those are combined with the human body. Right. But this may be a good place for my robot arm. I mean, even if I didn't, if I got over it typing, I could maybe make it lift things for people. And then it all ends in October with Anything Goes. And Anything Goes can be like anything, but in the end you're still judged on it having an impact.

Right. So your project may not fall in line with the other themes, and so we kind of wanted for anyone to kind of put in their projects in the last month. And I just want to make sure, I could technically put it in a project that did all of these things and maybe be a finalist in all of them if my project was like the bestest ever.

Right. And so a part of that is you'll be judged with other projects in that round. And so your project may not be as impressive as the other ones, but it was a great project in assistive technology. And so round five, it gets a little crazy in that round, But it's a good one. And we like to end with that round. Yes, but people should enter early because then your chances are better. Yeah. Okay.

How do people enter? So you make an account on Hackaday.io and you create a project page for yourself. And all you really need to do is add an image to your project page and you add a description and you're well on your way. There are a couple of places where you can link to different accounts, like your GitHub account. You can add videos. You can add source code. We have a special place for that. And we have a separate section on the project page

for your documentation and your logs. And so we really want to see kind of the progress that you make throughout making your project. Okay. It's really not hard. And then to enter the contest, there's a pull down something and you just pull it down and you click on it. It's very easy. Yeah.

There's a contest category called Hackaday Prize 2017. And so you just select that and you're entered. Okay. You've heard some of my crazy ideas, but I am a busy professional and I don't have a whole heck of a lot of time. Talk me into entering. So I know most of us,

we can't even find time to do our daily chores and stuff, but that's why we really encourage collaborating with a team of people. You may not be able to work in a project, but someone else might be able to, and you can come together with your different ideas. And so a lot of the projects that we see on Hackaday.io, these people may not even live in the same city, in the same country, but yet they're still able to work on the project together because you can add team members to your project page. And so all they have to do is have to have a Hackaday.io account, and you can just send them an invite and they just accept it. And so we really if I have to deal with other people. I mean, I appreciate that Hackaday makes that easy, but no. Oh God, no.

I mean, the money is nice. A thousand dollars is a lot and it gets to be a lot more if you get into the higher levels. I would do it because it would force me to finish something. That was what I was going to say. As you might have noticed, I had a long list of projects. The embarrassment of dropping out of a contest is a good motivator. The guilt.

We hear that a lot, actually. Like, oh, you know, I just really want to work on this project. I just haven't had time but you know this is the time to do it now because there's um it's a really great thing to be a part of to build something that matters um to be to be contributing to something like this um I feel like it's it's really worthwhile and so you're part part of this journey and you get to see all these really cool projects. You get to see if you made it to the finalists. And so at the end, there's not just one big grand prize at the end.

We also have small awards to give out. Like I said, the 120 finalists of each of the rounds, they all get a thousand dollars each. And, um, this year we actually have something different is called the best product round. And that one's, um, while the other rounds, they, they run one after the other, the best product round runs throughout the year. And so it started when the Hackaday Prize started, and it will go to the very end of the Hackaday Prize. And so that one, we have a grand prize of $30,000. And then the grand prize of the Hackaday Prize is $50,000.

And so, I mean, in total, we have over $250,000 to kind of award these like really great projects. And so, I mean, if that's not motivating enough, I mean, I don't know what will so. Well, the community, the cash, and there's a good chance if you start soon that you will get some of that cash just because the persistence factor is pretty high. And if you are working on it, you know, you're spending three hours every weekend. Yes, you do make progress. And I have to admit, occasionally crossing something off the list is good. Oh, but I have another project because I wanted to ask more about the hardware piece. I don't do hardware and I know I could collaborate, but that's not

going to happen. And I can buy my hardware off the shelf. I mean, I can buy an Arduino, I can buy an embed, I can buy any dev board and wire it however I want. And that counts as for the hardware. And I can write nifty software. Right? Yes. Yeah, of course. Yeah, you definitely can. The Hackaday team, we work very closely with DigiKey and Microchip. And so we like to turn to them to share parts that would be useful for the different rounds. And so they are sponsors of the Hackaday Prize. And so we actually see quite a bit of people using off-the-shelf hardware, lots of Raspberry Pis, Arduinos. But we also see quite a bit of entries where people actually make a small batch

of customized boards, like, like say from Osh Park. And so it's really, you know, Osh Park makes it really affordable and easy to make, to customize your own boards. And so no, it doesn't have to be made completely from scratch, but it's really up to you to see what's best for the purpose of your project. Well, that's one of the things that going back to earlier in the show, you mentioned that you get software people saying, oh, I just want to make an app or I don't know anything about electronics.

You can do a lot with these modules without knowing anything about electronics with a Raspberry Pi or with Arduino. So if you had a sensor or something and a really kick butt app. Well, and there's lots of good tutorials for integrating those sensor modules and things. And if you had a sensor or something and a really kick-butt app, then yeah. There's lots of good tutorials for integrating those sensor modules and things. So I think people should be encouraged if they have an idea that's sort of mostly software, you can still do it because the hardware part for certain things is not that hard. And go out there and look stuff up and I think you'll find that's true.

Anyway. Cool. Great. not that hard and go out there and look stuff up and i think you'll find that's true anyway cool okay so the other group of people who really should consider entering i think are students um this is well while a thousand dollars or or fifty thousand000 would be a lot. For a student, that's life-changing. Even $1,000 can make a pretty big difference to quality of life over the summer. So you do let students enter, even high school students, right? Right, yes. We really encourage students to sign up for these.

Supply Frame, which is the parent company of Hackaday, we strongly believe in driving forward education technology. And so we actually work with a lot of programs around Pasadena that are aimed towards elementary school students and through high school. And so we really enjoy sharing these projects with students because they can learn a lot from these open source projects. And sometimes it's okay to use your class project as a bouncing off point. I mean, if your robotics team is building an awesome robot and you can use it to demonstrate and log some assistive technology, all right, yes, write me a log. The judges will really appreciate hearing how it works and why it works and why you think that this matters.

And if you are a student and you're broke, there are some lovely $2 boards out there. It doesn't have to be expensive. If you can just find a niche, yeah, SupplyFrame is willing. They're a good company. They want to give you money. Oh, which reminds me of the next question. What does SupplyFrame is willing. They're a good company. They want to give you money. Oh, which reminds me of the next question. What does SupplyFrame do? Because I have never heard a description that made any sense at all. So SupplyFrame has a number of different products. Oh, yeah. This explanation.

Yeah. So I don't know. Do we have another hour so I can explain this? So there's no real short elevator pitch that I could tell you, but most of the products that SupplyFrame has are geared towards businesses. And so Hackaday, Hackaday IO are both kind of the consumer facing products. And so that's why you might not have heard of the other products. And so these are more programs, software,

SaaS programs that manufacturing companies use for their business. And so that's why a lot of people might not have heard of SupplyFrame before. But I think now that people are starting to hear more about the Hackaday Prize, about Hackaday.com, and the design lab in Pasadena, people are kind of starting to understand what SupplyFrame is doing more now. No, people are understanding how SupplyFrame gets rid of all that extra cash that they have.

I'm still not sure how they get the extra cash, but I'm okay with that as long as they're giving it out so freely. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, the CEO of SupplyFrame, Steve Flagg, he's really driven by the technology aspect and the, I guess, the spirit of making. And so that's why he really strongly believes in the Hackaday Prize. And so he really wants to see people making and creating and innovating for the future. So basically where we're heading with this is while there's a big company behind it, they don't really need to advertise to you. You're not really their client, their customer.

You don't get a whole bunch of spam from Hackaday. At least I never have, and I do have an account. Yeah, that's something that we take pride in. We want to make sure that it's not a very spammy place. Hackaday.com, which is the tech news site of Hackaday, is we don't do paid editorials. All of the content that we write are from our Hackaday writers and they're really solid content, news, tech news,

projects that may have came from Hackaday.io. And so that's something that we really take pride in. Hackaday.com comments are occasionally abrasive, but the Hackaday.io community, I haven't seen it be abrasive. And I think that if it was insulting or derogatory, that somebody at Hackaday would step in and say, no, that's not cool. Oh, yeah, it's happened in the past. And we definitely in Hackaday.io, we really want it to be a welcoming community, especially if there are students looking at the site, you know, trying to learn. Teachers are on there trying to find new projects for their class. And so, you know, Hackaday.com, it might be a little, yeah, you're right,

it might be a little abrasive, but Hackaday.io, we really strive to make it a learning community and welcoming. And so we like to nip that stuff in the bud. You know, you said that there were teachers on the site looking for projects. That is something that matters. If you can build something that a teacher can use, all right, that would qualify. So I just want to keep pointing out that build something that matters doesn't have to be eye-driven wheelchairs because that's a high bar if you don't know anybody who needs things like that. But most of us do know some kid somewhere who has some teacher somewhere who needs something for something. And yeah, so the bar can get lower if you look around.

Yeah, no, it's true. One of my favorite projects that is made by a friend of mine, Joan Horvath, she created a curriculum which consists of 3D printed pieces for teachers of disabled students. And so that was actually one of the finalists of the 2016 Hackaday Prize. And so that was a really great project. And so she's continuing to look for 3D printing enthusiasts and designers to create shapes and curriculum for teachers. Yes. So that's a really great project. Beyond Yoda heads and looking at what ears actually look like, what hearts look like.

Right. What gears can do and sandwalkers and all these things that can get the lights to go on behind kids' eyes as they realize that science is cool, like really, really cool. Right, right. Yes, Christopher? Nothing. Yeah, we're back to making. I heard you smirking over there.

Okay, so I want to go back to my twitter questions and make sure i answered the questions that i got ronald has been toying with an idea for a telescopic beam structure for space habitats my god he needs to carve out time to prototype and validate one key element but he's not sure this fits into what the solutions to get it into solutions to address a problem facing humanity today. And I have to say, Ronald, if it's half as cool as it sounds, I think you can argue that space habitats are an important direction for humans to go.

You take a couple of paragraphs, maybe you reference seven eves or something to, to scare us into not staying on this planet forever. And then you go and you say, this is a piece of that. So don't get stuck on the, build something that matters. As long as it's in a direction that matters,

the judges are pretty liberal, especially if you're tech. I mean, it's one of those where you're, if your technology is super cool and, and what matters is like 50 years away it's better than if what matters is 50 years away and your technology is not as cool that sounded cool let's see uh yan said he wanted it to not be hacker, maker, wearable, or steampunk themed. Okay. Done.

That's fair. You don't have to have any one of those. It is hackaday, so we all think hacker, but most of these projects are not things you take apart, which is what I usually think about hacking. They might be maker, but I don't really know what that word means. If you'd prefer tinkerer or engineer, I'm cool with it. Well, if you are making a project where you're making something already existing better,

you do kind of have to take it apart to reconfigure it. So a little bit of hacking.. So a little bit of hacking. Yeah, a little bit of hacking. But you don't have to. Yeah, no. You don't have to. All right. Those were, I think we covered everything I got from Twitter

about what would help people want to do this because I do think it's a good idea. I don't know that I'll enter for myself for this year, but I do put projects on Hackaday at least occasionally. Last year, I offered to pre-read people's entries to tell you if I was a judge, what would you get? And I guess I'm offering, although last year I also ended up not doing one of the people who asked because I ran out of time. So I felt kind of guilty. But again, if you want help on the Hackaday Prize, you can email me. How much help you get depends entirely on how much time I have.

But I'm not planning on entering because I don't think it's fair yet. Maybe next year. And now one more question for you, Shuli. And this one's sort of off topic. You work with engineers, you work with software engineers, you meet a lot of hackers and makers and engineers. And yet your degree, your two degrees are in marketing right um yeah it um it can be a little difficult because i i may not be um savvy with hardware electronics um i never i never thought i'd work for a company that works um with these type of products but I think the aspect that really drove me to be the community leader for Hackaday is just the drive that people want to make their own things, like the maker community. And before I worked at my previous company, I had never done 3D printing before. And after being there for a couple of months, I had my own 3D printer.

I was printing my own things. I was designing my own stuff. And I was like, wow, this is really freaking cool. So I think part of that is just learning something that you never thought you would have learned. And so I think part of that was what kind of drew me to this community. And so people are so enthusiastic about sharing and teaching. And so I think part of that was something that I really enjoyed and seeing a lot of these really cool robotics and what people can make and cosplay stuff it was just

just really fascinating to me and so that's why I feel really inclined to this this community. So what do you wish engineers knew about marketing so that we weren't such snobs? I mean, as somebody who has a podcast, I'm sorry, I thought you'd talk, but let me give you a minute to think. As somebody who has a podcast that I always want to grow, but I'm not willing to do a lot of effort to make it grow. And as somebody who has a book that is doing fine, but I would like to have it continue to do fine. And I have a company, but I don't really need marketing for that. I'm not a great marketer. I mean, I have my Twitter account, but my Twitter account is almost entirely jokes about firmware engineering. It's sort of embarrassing. And so it's not a good vehicle for any sort of real marketing.

Now let me ask this question. What do you wish we knew about marketing? This time I won't interrupt you. I think the thing that I wish engineers knew was that there's a human side to marketing. And it may not be an easy equation to just put X, Y, and Z, and you'll have a great product. You really have to think about the end user and think of them as a human being. And there's kind of like a psychology part of it. And so I think that's kind of what really drove me into marketing when I was studying.

I actually went from psychology to marketing. And so I think that aspect of it is just, it's so different for each product that you're marketing to. And so I think you mentioned that you have Twitter accounts and that you tweet just jokes about firmware. But I think part of that is that people are seeing that you're really enjoying what you're doing. And so it's not something that you can just kind of fabricate. So I think people can see that kind of passion from you. It's not something that you're just like, oh, okay, I'm just kind of doing, going through the motions and I'm just trying to put a, you know, put a marketing plan behind this. It's something that you're, that you're really passionate about. And I think that people can see that from, from the, the things that you share and the things that you, the, the projects that you go after. And so I think, yeah, I think, long story short,

I think that engineers need to see that there's like a human side, psychology to marketing. That's fair. Going back to the Twitter feed, what about a Twitter feed that's mostly about hating things? But you do it passionately. Yeah, there's passion behind that. And you do it humorously.

I did do a Twitter advanced search of my timeline with the word hate, and it was a bit distressing. So I may have to retire that for a while. Well, I think we've kept you long enough. Christopher, I believe you have kept you long enough. Christopher, I believe you have a question in the queue. Well, you did mention before we started recording World Create Day in April, and I just wanted to give you an opportunity

to say something about that if you wanted to. Right. So World Create Day is something that Hackaday has put together, and it's a day where you can get out from your normal hackerspace, your garage. You can have a meetup and get people together to create new projects. And this is obviously in line with the Hackaday Prize, but it's something that we want to open up to anyone.

And it's a global thing. If you want to open up your makerspace, if you want to open up your home, your garage, it's really up to you. If you're interested in hosting your own World Create Day meetup, that's something that we'll be sharing on Hackaday.com. So we'll be making some announcements on Monday. And I'm not sure when this is going live. Announcements were made last Monday. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, definitely check Hackaday.com.

We're going to be allowing people to just fill out a form. If you're interested, you could just put in your name, your address, and what type of event that you want to hold on World Create Day, which is April 22nd, Saturday, which is Earth Day. I imagine that if I got it together, we might manage to do something. I'll have to think about that. And the more of you that email me and tell me you want me to think about it, the more likely it is to happen. All right. Well, Shuli, do you have any thoughts you'd like to leave us with

before we close out the show? Nope, I think that's it. Okay. Thank you so much for speaking with us. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a really great pleasure. Our guest has been Shuli Tornell, community leader for Hackaday.io.

To enter your project for the Hackaday Prize, create an account on Hackaday.io and write about your project, tag it with the Hackaday Prize 2017 or just go to hackaday.io slash write about your project tag it with the hackaday prize 2017 or just go to hackaday.io slash prize and read about it there it'll be so much simpler and now is when i get to say thank you thank you to you for listening i haven't you know i've been kind of saying that but i really do like hearing from you and i also like just hearing that you guys are talking to each other.

Some of you. Also, thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. I have a thought to leave you with this one by Neil Gaiman. I just, he just writes so well. People think dreams aren't real because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real, but they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories, and puns, and lost hope.

Embedded is an independently produced radio show that focuses on the many aspects of engineering. It is a production of Logical Elegance, an embedded software consulting company in California. Thank you.