On Saturday we saw a flood of interesting hacks come to life as more than 100 community organized meetups were held for World Create Day. Thank you to all of the organizers who made these events possible, and for everyone who decided to get together and hack.
Students Learning Hardware Design in Islamabad, Pakistan
The students at LearnOBots took on a slew of great projects during World Create Day like a smart medicine dispenser, electronics that control mains appliances, parking sensors, and a waste bin that encourages you to feed it. The group did a wonderful job of showing off their event by publishing several updates with pictures, stories, and video presentations from all the students. Nice work!
Checking out these student projects will plaster a huge smile on your face. LearnOBots got together and worked on a few different electronics projects. The first is an LED matrix that eleven-year-old Daniyal brought to life using Arduino. In the video, he displays each letter of his name on the 8×8 red LED module and then shows his version of the Hackaday logo! What a great way to spark a lot of interest in learning to code for hardware!
Haya and Taha built a water level sensor. Watching their video (you’ll need to crank the volume) it dawns on us all of the great things that are learned in a project like this. First off, presenting your work formally is a great skill to practice and really makes you think hard about all aspects of it. But of course, the engineering skills are many in a project like this. How do you measure the height of the water? How does that interface with the microcontroller, and how should you display that to the user?
It changes your brain in a very good way to tackle challenges like this at a young age, and as we said before, you can’t help but beam with delight when watching this. Kudos to Daniyal, Haya, Taha, and all of the other LearnOBots who got together for World Create Day!
Gas Powered Propellers and Modular Synths at Portland’s PDX Hackerspace
The sign in the image up at the top of this article greeted everyone who got together at Portland’s PDX Hackerspace during World Create Day. It’s pretty awesome to see that someone took the time to hand draw a greeting, complete with our beloved Jolly Wrencher!
Among the presentations of the day is one of our favorite Hackaday Prize entries of yore: Goliath, the gas-powered multirotor (or quadcopter if you prefer). Peter McCloud has continued to work on the project and in his presentation; he was showing off an electric variable pitch rotor he’s been developing.
Also presented was a very interesting modular synth called Halcyon Modular. Built into rugged cases familiar to anyone who has been on the road with a performing arts production. The pair of synths can each output two voices giving this demo some harmony.
Alexa in a Fish and Printable Hands at Madison’s The Bodgery
In Madison, Wisconsin The Bodgery opened their doors once again for World Create Day. Hackaday’s own Bob Baddeley was a hit last year with the WackyDancers costumes he was building. This year he didn’t disappoint, showing up with a Big Mouth Billy Bass to which he had added an Amazon Echo Dot. Yes, Alexa now speaks through a rubber fish!
Ken Bice was working on a serious project during the meetup. Ken founded the Madison chapter of Enabling the Future, an organization that helps match up people who need prosthetic hands with those able to build them. Ken was putting the final touches on a prosthetic hand he built for a five-year-old girl. He had built her one when she was four — turns out kids outgrow these rapidly so we’re glad Ken (and many others) are spending time keeping up with the need.
Check Out More #WorldCreateDay
With over 100 meetups, there’s a ton of interesting stuff that went down on Saturday. Check out the hashtag on Twitter for an overview of these projects. If you were at World Create Day, we want to hear about it. Post your pictures and stories (your Hackaday.io event page is a great place to do this) and make sure to send us a tip about it so we know where to look!