Hackaday Design Challenge - yes, a contest!

Posted Nov 15th 2006 8:00AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: contests

So, you guys want to show off your skills? We're giving you the chance. [If you don't like it, blame Limor - she came up with the original idea]

The Challenge:
Design our next give-away: a business card sized PC Board. We're not telling you what to make the circuit do, just make it something handy for hacking. Me, I think a PIC programmer/proto board would be handy.

The board must have:

The Hackaday logo
business card dimensions (90mm x 55mm)
reasonably easy to construct
A useful circuit (programmer, interface, whatever.)
Assembly instructions
Parts list

Through hole components are a good idea (Of course, if you can do it with SMD cheaper, and keep it easy to build... Surprise us) Maybe we could surface mount the CPU before we give them away, or we might put together parts kits, but it depends on the winning design(s).

You can put whatever circuit you like on it. PIC
programmer, JTAG interface, flux capacitor... but it has to work!

We want to have a board house make these up for us, so we'll need the design in a format we can work with. We suggest EAGLE. It's free and runs on just about everything. (But it limits you to two layers - which should be plenty)

Some hints to help you get the winning design:
Bonus for extra functionality
Clever incorporation of our logo
Completeness - include solder mask, drill info, everything we need to make the board.

The Prizes:
Fabienne is putting up her black 2gb iPod nano engraved with "hackaday.com" "one fresh hack each day" - It's been used a bit, and opened up a few times so it's got some scratches, but hasn't been modded... yet.

We'll send you some of the boards of course. I've got more good stuff in the works, and I'll announce more prizes as we get them confirmed.

Submissions: When you've got your design ready, Put it online and let us know about it on the tip line. (Or send in a tip and we'll tell you where to email it if you don't have anywhere to host it.)

The Deadline: December 25th. Plenty of time to get your design cranked out. Everyone needs a winter break, but We'll try to have a winner chosen within a week or two of the deadline.

Reader Comments

(Page 2)

21. I don't know if Hack A Day has a board shop in mind, but I can tell you that coming from a board shop, any board shop will WANT to use a pick and place machine to keep costs down, assuming the volume is more than a couple hundred boards.

If the design does not use very fine pitch components, the board shop could get by with automated solder paste dispensing which would negate the need of an expensive stencil.

I would say use any type of part you like because if it goes to production, any board shop should be able to build it cheaply.

Posted at 8:02AM on Nov 16th 2006 by eflyersteve

22. December 25 sounds like a good deadline to me. For those of you who are too busy to hit that deadline, save your ideas and see if they'll do it again in March.

Posted at 11:39AM on Nov 16th 2006 by Robotguy

23. robotguy:
25th of December is very tight. I have a ton of ideas, but I doubt that I could pull anyhing that would be considered as tested by then. I would imagine that there are plenty of people out there with great projects that will be re routed and submitted as entries.
Hopefully you are correct and there will be another comp.

Posted at 11:44AM on Nov 16th 2006 by Barry Carter

24. Does the design need to be tested?

Posted at 11:55AM on Nov 16th 2006 by halftrack

25. Just a suggestion to someone who can do this... i don't have time... anyway... how about a taser the size of a buisness card?.... just a thought...

TGBM

Posted at 12:09PM on Nov 16th 2006 by TGBM

26. I like this idea alot!

There are some extremely simple but useful circuits that could be put on this space!
I'm all for complexity, but a series of these with the right projects on them could really speak to the hacking masses!

Thanks for igniting my interest, hackaday!

Posted at 12:32PM on Nov 16th 2006 by strider_mt2k

27. _again_

Posted at 12:34PM on Nov 16th 2006 by strider_mt2k

28. Didn't they say it might be released to the public as a kit?
Thats why the hesitation on SMD parts. Not everyone has the skill or tools to build something with many SMD parts. That said they did say they could possibly get the harder SMD things already put on the board for you. So that could help.

It is a short timeline but I think its possible. They did not say it had to do anything too difficult.

Posted at 1:44PM on Nov 16th 2006 by mage2

29. I'm working on making a Gerber copy of the Hack-a-day logo. I can have it finished by tonight. (I have an old program that will convert 2-bit Bitmap, .BMP, images to a Protel PCB. Once I get Protel up and running I can convert it to Gerber.) a Gerber format should be able to import in to ANY cad program.

could you E-mail me a bmp image of the HAD logo? I converted the one on the web sight but it looks a little Jagged, but will work...

Thanks,
Morgan

PS. I don't have a project Idea but I design PCB by trade and would LOVE to help with this project.

Posted at 1:54PM on Nov 16th 2006 by Morgan

30. I already have my idea ready. It's just a matter of being able to learn Eagle in time.

The "hackable" option sounds great, my entry will have PC connectivity and I can't write decent windows software.

Posted at 5:08PM on Nov 16th 2006 by Jason

31. Eagle can import bmp files already, its the import-bmp.ulp ULP. works good.

Posted at 5:46PM on Nov 16th 2006 by ladyada

32. Cool I did not know that. I need to play around with Eagle. I'm only used to Protel 99SE, Protel DXP, and Mentor Expidition Flow.

Posted at 7:08PM on Nov 16th 2006 by morgan

33. Just completed my first prototype of a business card sized pic programmer. Just have to get the firmware updated and perhaps test it out first. Here is a sneak peek
http://homepage.usask.ca/~avl094/minihack.pdf

Posted at 8:22PM on Nov 16th 2006 by Albert

34. Nice prototype. I'm glad to see you didn't use much board space. Mine using through-hole components doesn't really fill the board much, I thought it looked too simplistic.

Posted at 9:59PM on Nov 16th 2006 by Jason

35. > This is a great idea, but I think you really need to move the deadline back to about.. March.

I agree!

Give use more time to make a great design!

We are human too and we have a life, school, Xmas is coming soon, party, etc. Push it back so we can work on it more this winter. I just got a great idea but I have some robots to build, prepare for my final year project (micromouse) and some robot sumo for march!

thanks

Posted at 10:38PM on Nov 16th 2006 by JErome

36. albert!

don't put resistor for your leds! The pic give out 25mA per pin, you really don't need limiting resitor. I like the idea of a proto board for pic.

Posted at 10:56PM on Nov 16th 2006 by JErome

37. Jerome

Hey thanks for the advice. You also have a good eye. I'm not driving the leds off the pic though. Anyways, taking another look at the board since all except the header is surface mount it is probably too hard to make by hand. So back to the drawing board for me.

Posted at 11:32PM on Nov 16th 2006 by albert

38. Don't delay the contest. 5-6 weeks is plenty of time, and I already want to see what people come up with.

You can always do it again in March.

Posted at 11:38PM on Nov 16th 2006 by Jason

39. Heres a start:
http://robotguy.net/HAD_PCB.jpg

Not all of the parts are on yet (like a battery), but only a couple more. The BOM is coming along also:
http://robotguy.net/BOM.xls

I'll post hackaday.lbr tomorrow with at least one silkscreen image of the logo.

Did anyone start a wiki? Or should we keep the discussion in the comments section here?

Posted at 1:54AM on Nov 17th 2006 by Robotguy

40. robotguy

Excellent work :). I didn't have the patience to actually draw out the logo. So I used a program to convert a dxf of the logo into a eagle script. but the problem with that is i can't move the logo around that easily. I decided to play around with my previous prototype some more. here is another look.
http://homepage.usask.ca/~avl094/minihack.png

Posted at 11:48AM on Nov 17th 2006 by albert

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