If you’re hear a rushing noise, don’t be alarmed — that’s just the rapidly approaching 2024 Hackaday Supercon. As hard as it is to believe, a whole year has gone by, and we’re now just a few days away from kicking off our annual hardware hacking extravaganza in Pasadena. Tickets just sold out over the weekend — thank you procrastinators!

For those of you who have tickets to join us this weekend, we’ve got a few last minute announcements and bits of information we wanted to get out to you. As a reminder, you can find the full schedule for all three days on the official Supercon site.

New Events Added!

For those who’ve attended a Supercon before, you know we like to cram as much content as we can into the weekend. But there’s always room for more, and this year we’ve managed to squeeze in a couple extra activities that we’re very excited about.

Halloween Hacker Happy Hour

It just so happens that Halloween is the night before Supercon officially kicks off, and that seemed like too good of an opportunity to pass up. So we’ll be throwing a pre-event party at the nearby KingsRow Gastropub where costumes and all manner of blinking LEDs are very much encouraged. Officially we’ll be hanging out from 7:00 to 10:00 PM, but don’t be surprised if you find yourself still talking to Hackaday folks at last call.

You don’t need tickets for this event, but we’d like to have a rough head count, so if you could RSVP through Eventbrite we’d appreciate it.

Tina’s Junk Challenge

We’ve always wanted to introduce some kind of swap meet aspect to Supercon, but the logistics have always been a challenge. This year though, we’re finally going to get the chance to test out the idea. Former DesignLab Resident Tina Belmont is in the process of moving out of the country and needs to find a new home for her electronic bric-a-brac.

Everything is free, so attendees are encouraged to take anything they think they can make use of. Naturally, an influx of interesting hardware could provide for some very unique badge hacking possibilities. If we can get enough people to graft these second-hand components onto their badges, we just might be able to turn it into a proper category come Sunday night.

A table where folks can offload their electronic bits and bobs has worked well at other hacker cons, so we’re eager to see how it goes at Supercon. If this is something you’d like to see more of, or would potentially like to participate in next year, let us know.

Krux’s Side Quests

Let’s be honest, most of us are already taking our marching orders from the computer in one way or another. So why not turn it into a fun interactive game?

The idea is simple: use the mysterious retrocomputer oracle, and it gives you a quest. Maybe you’ll have to find a hidden item, or solve a riddle. Krux has a run a variation of this game at Toor Con in the past, but the challenges spit out by the computer this time will be tailored to Supercon.

Windows Through Wires Exhibition

You may recall that we asked the Hackaday community if they had any unusual display technology they’d like to show off during Supercon as part of an exhibit.

Well, as you might have imagined, the response was incredible. From gorgeous vintage pieces to completely custom hardware, there’s going to be a wide array of fascinating hardware for attendees to study up-close.

While getting a chance to see various display technologies throughout the years would have our attention as it is, what’s really exciting is that many of the custom-built devices in the exhibit are either projects hosted on Hackaday.io or ones that we’ve covered at some point on the front page.

Considering how gorgeous some of them have looked in photographs, we’re eager to drool over them in the real world — and we bet you are to.

Workshop Technical Difficulties

Hopefully we’ve provided enough good news that we can slip in a bit of the bad. Unfortunately, we’ve had to cancel the “Hands on with an Electron Microscope” workshop that was to be hosted by Adam McCombs and Isabel Burgos. Everyone with tickets will of course be getting a refund, and you should be receiving an email to that effect shortly if you haven’t already.

While we’re just as disappointed by this news as you are, it’s one of those situations where there simply weren’t any good solutions. Long story short, the scanning electron microscope that was small enough to bring to Supercon is down, and there’s just not enough time to get it up and running at this point. An attempt was made to find another small-ish electron microscope on short notice but…well, that’s just as tricky to pull off as it sounds.

Send Us Your Lightning Talks!

To end this update on a high note, we want to remind everyone that this year we’ll once again be going Lighting Talks on Sunday morning. If you’ve never given a talk before, the shorter seven minute format is perfect for getting your feet wet. Or maybe you’ve got something you want to talk about that doesn’t take a whole hour to explain. Either way, the Lightning Talks are a great way to share what your passionate about with the Supercon audience.

If you’d like to give a Lightning Talk, simply fill out this form. You can upload slides if you’ve got them, but they aren’t strictly necessary.

China has a space station — it’s called Tiangong, the first module was launched in 2021, and it’s all going quite swimmingly, thank you very much. That’s essentially what we know about the orbital complex here in the West, as China tends to be fairly secretive when it comes to their activities in space.

But thanks to a recently released video by the state-funded CCTV Video News Agency, we now have an unprecedented look inside of humanity’s newest orbital laboratory. Shenzhou-18 crew members [Ye Guangfu], [Li Cong], and [Li Guangsu] provide viewers with a full-blown tour of the station, and there’s even baked-in English subtitles so you won’t miss a beat.

The few looks the public has gotten inside of Tiangong in the past have been low-resolution and generally of the “shaky cam” variety. In comparison, this flashy presentation was clearly made to impress an international audience. But let’s be fair, if you managed to build your own crewed station in low Earth orbit, wouldn’t you want to show it off a bit?

So what did we learn about Tiangong from this tour? Well, admittedly not more than we could have guessed. The layout of the three-module station isn’t entirely unlike the International Space Station or even its Soviet predecessor, Mir.

One module contains a common area where the crew meets and eats their meals, as well as the sleeping berths for crew members. (The small portholes in each berth are a nice touch.) Then there are the multi-purpose laboratory modules with their rows of rack mounted experiments, an exercise area, and finally an airlock that can be used to either bring cargo onboard or expose experiments to space.

Even though it’s much smaller than the ISS, one can’t help but notice that the inside of the Tiangong appears a bit less cramped. The modules of the Chinese station have a slightly sleeker internal look, and overall, everything seems less cluttered, or at least, better organized. Some online commenters have equated it to the comparison between the SpaceX Dragon and Russia’s Soyuz capsule, which given the relative ages of the two stations, isn’t wholly inaccurate.

China’s space program has been making great strides over the last several years, but from an outsider’s perspective, it’s been difficult to follow. It’s been doubly frustrating for us here at Hackaday. We’d love to provide the same sort of in-depth coverage we do for American and European missions, but often it’s a challenge to find the technical data that requires. Here’s hoping this video means China is looking to be more transparent about their off-world activities going forward.

With the 2024 Hackaday Supercon looming large on the horizon, Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi start this episode off by talking about this year’s badge and its focus on modular add-ons. From there they’ll go over the results of a particularly challenging installment of What’s that Sound?, discuss a promising DIY lathe that utilizes 3D printed parts filled with concrete, and ponder what the implosion of Redbox means for all of their disc-dispensing machines that are still out in the wild.

You’ll also hear about custom macropads, lifting SMD pins, and how one hacker is making music with vintage electronics  learning kits. Finally, they’ll reassure listeners that the shifting geopolitical landscape probably won’t mean the end of Hackaday.io anytime soon, and how some strategically placed pin headers can completely change how you approach designing your own PCBs.

Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Download in DRM-free MP3.

Episode 294 Show Notes:

News:

• The 2024 Hackaday Supercon SAO Badge Reveal

What’s that Sound?

• Congrats to [I can see the sounds] for guessing the HAARP.

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• A 3D Printed, Open Source Lathe?
  • Precision CNC With Epoxy Granite
  • Experiments In Creating The Best Epoxy Granite
• Redbox Is Dead, But The Machines Are Kind Of Hanging On
  • Redbox hack reveals customer info. from 2K rentals – Ars Technica
  • Foone: “the unit I’ve got an image for has records going …” – digipres.club
• Libre Space Foundation Aims To Improve Satellite Tech
  • Flying The First Open Source Satellite
  • 32C3: So You Want To Build A Satellite?
  • Open Source CubeSats Ease The Pain Of Building Your Own
  • How To Build A CubeSat
  • SatNOGS – Global Network of Ground Stations
• Keeping Tabs On An Undergraduate Projects Lab’s Door Status
• DIY Air Bearings, No Machining Required
  • Learn 40 Years Of Mech Prototyping At Lightspeed
  • High-Precision Air Bearing CNC Lathe And Grinder
• I2C The Hard Way

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  • 3D Printed Tires, By The Numbers
  • Zero To Custom MacroPad In 37 Easy Steps
  • Make Your Own Remy The Rat This Halloween
• Tom’s Picks:
  • Give Your SMD Components A Lift
  • 75-In-One Music
  • Figuring Out The Most Efficient Way To Reuse Bags Of Desiccant

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• Will .IO Domain Names Survive A Geopolitical Rearrangement?
• Hacker Tactic: Building Blocks
  • Power Supply PCB Redesign

Starting a hacker con is hardly what anyone would describe as easy — but arguably, the truly difficult part is keeping the momentum going into the second year and beyond. For the first year, you can get away with a few missed opportunities and glitches, but by the time you’ve got one event under your belt, you’ll have set the bar for what comes next. There’s pressure to grow, to make each year bigger and better than before. All the while, making sure you don’t go broke in the process. Putting on a single hacker con is an achievement in and of itself, but establishing a long-running hacker con is a feat that relatively few groups have managed to pull off.

With this in mind, the incredible success of the second annual JawnCon is all the more impressive. The Philadelphia-area event not only met the expectations of a sophomore effort, but exceeded them in pretty much every quantifiable way. From doubling attendance to providing a unique and immersive experience with their electronic badge, the team seized every opportunity to build upon the already strong foundation laid last year. If this was the make-or-break moment for the Northeast’s newest hacker con, the future looks very bright indeed.

But before setting our sights on next year, let’s take a look at some of the highlights from JawnCon 0x1. While you can watch all of this year’s talks on YouTube, the aspect of a hacker on that can’t easily be recorded is the quality time spent with like-minded individuals. Unfortunately, there’s no way to encompass everything that happened during a two-day con into a single article. Instead, this following will cover a few of the things that stood out to me personally.

If you’d like to experience the rest of JawnCon, you’ll just have to make the trip out to Philly for 2025.

Creating New Traditions

For returning attendees, certainly the most striking thing about this year’s event was simply how many people showed up. In the closing ceremonies, we learned that attendance had more than doubled since last year, and you could absolutely feel it. The rooms never felt cramped, but they certainly felt full. 

But the growth of this year’s event wasn’t limited to the ticket holders. The local chapter of The Open Organisation Of Lockpickers (TOOOL) was there, equipped with picks and transparent padlocks for anyone interested in an impromptu lesson in lockpicking. You could also try to get yourself out of a pair of handcuffs and other forms of restraints.

This year also featured a “Free Table” where attendees could leave interesting items for others. We’ve all got some piece of hardware that’s been gathering dust for just a bit too long. Maybe it was for some project that you’re no longer interested in, or you just don’t have the time to mess around with it. Instead of tossing it in the trash, a table like this is a great way to re-home some of those technical treasures.

The table was constantly being refreshed as more attendees showed up and added their contributions to the pile. There was only one rule: if your stuff was still there at the end of the con, you had to take it home. But as things started wrapping up on Saturday evening, there were just a few oddball antenna cables and a couple mystery PCBs left. It was especially gratifying to see how many reference books were picked up.

Another highlight this year was a informal competition inspired by the old IT adage that digital subscriber line (DSL)  broadband service could be run over a piece of wet string. With all the hardware necessary to establish a DSL connection on-site, attendees were invited to bring up various objects that would fill in for the telephone line. The medium that provided the fastest confirmed Internet connection would be crowned the winner.

Two pieces of spaghetti ended up taking the top spot, with a link speed of 10 Mbit. A section of carbon fiber tube — dubbed “hard-line coax” for the purposes of the competition — managed second place with around 6 Mbit. As you might expect, the failures in this competition were perhaps just as interesting as the successes. A line of “energy gel” was apparently not conductive enough, though some flickering of the indicator LEDs on the modem seemed to indicate it was close. While it came as no surprise that a line of hackers holding hands wasn’t a suitable link for the experiment, the audience did appreciate the irony that the hardware indicated it couldn’t progress past the handshaking stage of the connection.

Living History for Hackers

Attendees had already gotten a sneak peek at the JawnCon 0x1 badge a few weeks before the event, so the fact that they’d all be getting tiny modems to plug into their computers (and indeed, wear around their necks) wasn’t a complete surprise. But still, I don’t think anyone was fully prepared for what a unique experience it was really going to be.

For the younger players, there was an obvious learning curve. But the veterans in attendance were all too happy to explain the relevant AT commands and get them dialing away. Once you’d figured out how to connect up to the network and start exploring, it added a whole new dimension to the event.

Not only were there various puzzles and Capture the Flag (CTF) challenges that could be accessed through the modem, but it also acted as a gateway to games, chats, and other features that functioned within the con’s infrastructure.

For example, running a command within the modem’s onboard menu system would print the current talk taking place on the stage downstairs, and tell you who was up next.

It was actually a bit surreal. Walking around you’d come across a table of 20-somethings, all with look-alike Hayes modems plugged into their shiny new MacBooks or high-end gaming laptops. It’s hard to say how many of them came away from the event with a new respect for the old ways, but there’s no question they had learned a hell of a lot more about the early Internet than they would have from just watching a YouTube video about it.

While the badge was certainly the star of the show, there were also vintage serial terminals dotted around the chill-out area that you could interact with. By default they showed the talk schedule in a glorious shade of either amber or green, but hit a key and you’d be dumped into the terminal. Nominally, jumping on the terminals and executing various tasks was part of the CTF, but it was also a lot of fun to turn back the clock and sit down at a real serial terminal and interact with some *nix box hidden away elsewhere in the building.

Long Live the Jawn

Any event that manages to double its attendance from the previous year is clearly doing something right. But if you don’t know how to handle the growth, it can become a problem. Luckily, the JawnCon staff are on the case. It sounds like next year they may opt to use a larger space within the same building at Arcadia University. The University is a great fit for the event, so the fact that there’s room to grow is great news for everyone involved.

Of course, it takes more than simply securing a larger room every couple years to make sure an event like this stays on the right track. You also need intelligent and responsible folks at the wheel. Here again, JawnCon is well equipped for the future. The staff and volunteers that worked tirelessly behind the scenes to bring this con to life are some of the most passionate and welcoming individuals I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. They represent the very best qualities of hacker culture, and armed with a genuine desire to bring that sense of exploration and inclusion to the next generation, they’re the catalyst that will keep JawnCon growing and evolving over the coming years.

With the 2024 Hackaday Supercon just a couple weeks away, we’re pleased to announce that the official site for the three-day event is now live!

On the brand-new Supercon page, you can find a listing of all of our fantastic speakers, the hands-on workshops, and perhaps most importantly, the schedule of when everything is happening. As always, Supercon is jam-packed with incredible content, so you’ll want to consult with the schedule to navigate your way through it. Don’t worry if it ends up that two talks you want to see are scheduled for the same time — we’ll be recording all of the talks and releasing them on the Hackaday YouTube channel, so you won’t miss out.

If you’re still on the fence, we do have a few tickets left at the time of this writing. All of the workshops are full at this point, but you can still get on the waiting list for a few of them just in case a spot opens up.

When [Press Play on Tape] entered their game Prince of Arabia into the Arduboy FX Game Jam, we bet they had no idea that they’d be taking home a prize quite like this — designed by Arduboy creator [Kevin Bates], this gorgeous new variant of the handheld system brings some exciting new capabilities to the platform. Plus, it looks awesome.

The system, which is made up of a stacked pair of PCBs, has been designed to resemble an audio cassette. Thanks to the full-color silkscreen service offered by PCBway, it certainly looks the part. But it’s also a fully functional Arduboy, which means it has access to all the games already written for the 8-bit system.

It would have been impressive enough if this new handheld was just a “classic” Arduboy, but instead, [Kevin] made it a considerable upgrade over the version of the system that’s already on the market. If you squint just right, you might even catch a glimpse of what the future of the Arduboy might look like.

For one thing, the system features six capacitive touch pads for the directional and action buttons. This capability has been implemented by pairing each pad with its own dedicated touch IC, which means existing software doesn’t have to be modified to take advantage of them. It’s also got a 64 MB flash chip, which makes the 16 MB used in the Arduboy FX look like…well, a cassette tape. Under the hood there’s also some new RGB LEDs, an IR transmitter, and a real-time clock. In a particularly clever move, [Kevin] has taken over a few pins of the USB-C connector and tied it to the chip’s I2C lines, which lets a standard USB-C cable link two of the handhelds together.

The finished product looks and works great, which has [Kevin] considering doing a small run of them so folks other than the FX Game Jam winners can get in on the action.

ARM single-board computers like the Raspberry Pi are great for some applications — if you need something that’s energy efficient or can fit into a tight space, they’re tough to beat. But sometimes you’re stuck in the middle: you need more computational muscle than the average SBC can bring to the table, but at the same time, a full-size computer isn’t going to work for you.

Luckily, we now have options such as the LattePanda Mu powered by Intel’s quad-core N100 processor. Put a pair of these modules (with their associated carrier boards) on your desktop, and you’ve got considerable number-crunching capabilities in a relatively small package. Thanks to [Jay Doscher] we’ve got a slick 3D printed rack that can keep them secure and cool, complete with the visual flair that we’ve come to expect from his creations.

While you might be able to get away with leaving a Raspberry Pi naked on your workbench while it hosts your MQTT server, Mini-ITX boards like the LattePanda Mu carriers used in this project need a bit more protection. Even if you didn’t want to print out the whole rack, you could run off just one of the individual “Compute Unit” cases that [Jay] has designed and made freely available. Complete with stylish handle, the brutalist box will do nicely to keep gerfingerpoken und mittengraben at a minimum.

But if you do have a pair of these x86 beauties at your disposal, going all the way and printing the skeletonized rack the cases lock into looks like it would be well worth the investment of time and filament. The open design and 140 mm Noctua fan mounted in the bottom keeps airflow at a maximum, to the point that [Jay] says he doesn’t even need to run individual fans on the LattePanda boards.

This design is something of an evolution of the N100 Obelisk that [Jay] created back in May, which was able to hold more mini computers and used a more chimney-like approach to heat management. Though you can start to see the origins of his unique visual style, which combines sci-fi and militaristic elements, much earlier than that.