HackSpace So, the Hackaday Prize then: what is it, and who is it aimed at?
Stephen Tranovich Hackaday.com started about 14 years ago, and is now the largest online editorial for hardware hacks. Then about six years ago, Hackaday.io formed, which is the community page – a place where people can fill out projects that they’re working on, share open hardware information among the community, and people feed back on each other’s projects. Right now, we have over 35 000 projects currently hosted on Hackaday.io.
We have this community of really talented and dedicated professional and hobbyist electronic engineers. The Hackaday Prize was really born out of the idea, or the question: how can we use this talent for good? So we created the Prize, to give direction for people, to give goals, deadlines, motivations to do their project. It’s now the world’s largest open-source hardware competition.
HS Right, because plenty of people need a lot of extra motivation to get off the couch and get building.
ST Exactly. It’s extremely helpful. I’ve had conversations with engineers, and when you ask what the biggest thing that the Hackaday Prize has done for them, the answer is: it gave me a deadline; it gave me a time by which I had to finish my project so that I actually motivated myself to put something together, even though I didn’t think I could win it.
HS The Prize’s aim is to change the world using open hardware. Have any of your previous entrants succeeded in changing the world yet?
ST Absolutely. Have you heard of Open Bionics [absolutely we have — they were featured in the first issue of HackSpace Magazine]. So they were our second-placed entrant overall in 2015. They’ve gone on to create clinically tested and medically certified prosthetics at a vastly lower cost than was previously possible.
Some other ones you may have heard of are the Vinduino, an open-source device specifically designed for reducing water usage in vineyards. In the first year they were able to cut their water use by about 25%, and have been taking that all over the world, doing a lot of talks, and getting a lot of awards for it.
Another huge one, Eyedriveomatic, a system which allows people with ALS [also known as motor neurone disease] and other types of limited mobility difficulties, to drive a motorised wheelchair with just their eyes. That has turned into a whole foundation, which is working to get that technology into the hands of as many people as possible. It’s absolutely incredible, and a number of the developers on that have ALS. It’s been incredible to watch it come to life.
HS What sort of balance would you say is needed between mechanical and electrical engineering? Your website has a person wearing a Nikola Tesla head, which makes me think electronics are the primary focus.
ST Absolutely, it definitely has a heavy lean towards electronics. The mechanical portions always have to play well with electronics. We do have a couple of the challenges that reward the mechanical side, but we’re heavily into electronics
HS I noticed in the rules and the FAQ, that you place a big importance on documentation. It’s an obvious question, but why is that?
ST Open-source is the future. That’s what we believe, that’s what it comes down to, especially hardware vs. software. Software, you can write terrible documentation, upload your code, and it will cause tons of headaches for the people who are trying to build off your software. But your software will at least be able to build. You should always document, but if you don’t, at least people will be able to run it, even if they don’t get the best use out of it.
With hardware, we’re not yet at the point that you can upload your design files and have someone else create it with no instructions. Yes, you can have Gerber files, but if I have a physical contraption in front of me, I have to share the design and all of the information that went into creating it so that other people can create a similar thing. That’s why the documentation is so heavily a part of the competition.
When we say ‘change the world’, when we talk about changing the world, we mean ‘build something to help someone else’. That is definitely part of the Hackaday Prize.
We’re pushing the open hardware movement. Creating more and more amazing, accessible information… Creating more and more empowering things. That’s why the documentation is important, that’s how you create open-source, and that’s also how you create community, through conversations and sharing information.
If you’re going to change the world, you’ve got to change the world, not just that portion of the world that has access to the latest version of AutoCad, or whatever other piece of proprietary software is the latest industry standard.
HS Do you see any of that attitude when Hackaday Prize entrants get to the seed money stage? Do any investors bring a reluctance to sharing or working with open-source formats?
ST The world of open-source technology and the world of seed capital… they almost feel like two magnets that are pushing in opposite directions, trying to overlap in their fields. Definitely, venture capitalists are very reluctant to touch anything open-source. A lot of startups and a lot of individuals love open-source, because it allows them to become a big part of something, and allows them to have resources that they wouldn’t otherwise have. Smaller stage companies really embrace open-source.
If you look at non-open-source tools, especially when you look at information, where information doesn’t cost anything to reproduce, essentially the cost of that piece of information is directly dependent on how scarce it is. In order to keep high prices on information, you have to actually systematically under-utilise that information. I think that that systematic under-utilisation is negative for humanity. I would love to live in a world where we’re utilising all the information we have, rather than holding back.
HS That sounds like the sort of thing Corey Doctorow would say, about information wanting to be useful, rather than free… We’ve strayed a long way from making cool things.
ST Normally the people who are entering the Prize are either individuals or groups that are already into open-source. Or they are non-profits, or they’re very early stage startups. And all four of those groups generally embrace open-source. If you’re a not-for-profit, you’re not trying to hold information back, you want to share it. The early stage startups are just trying to get every edge they can to get off the ground, and open-source definitely provides that.
HS Apart from the money, what other glittering prizes are on offer?
ST Another thing this year, that is brand new, is that we have added achievements to the prize. These don’t have any money attached to them, they are just like achievements in video games. For example, you have the Sonic Screwdriver Achievement, which is for a hack that does everything; or the Ender’s Achievement, for young entrants. We also have the MacGyver Achievement, for achieving something amazing with commonplace parts. There is also the Cyber Punkster Achievement for music that’s ‘out there’. Lots of really fun cultural references that are attached to actually doing something with your hardware.
We have given away roughly a million dollars to open-source hardware projects. I think that’s pretty incredible.
HS Apart from documentation and open-source, what makes a winning Hackaday Prize entry?
ST I think it’s an intersection of innovation, solving a real problem, documentation, and implementation. Right now, we have four equally weighted judging criteria. It has to be a unique way to solve a problem – you might build a really incredible thing and, if it’s not actually solving anything, it doesn’t have a chance of winning the prize. Documentation, we’ve covered that. It has to be implementable by other people. And, it has to be complete.
HS Could you tell us your role within the Hackaday Prize?
ST I’m not the only one working on the project, but I definitely am the main person working on the project. I’m the only person where this is my beat. So I’ve collected all of the judges for the Hackaday Prize. I make sure that all of the logistical pieces fit together in time, that the actual judging process happens on time. I’m not a finalist judge, but I do take part in the judging process a lot.
I work directly with participants, make sure that they’re getting their things in on time and answering all of their questions, helping their projects.
I do tons of media for the prize, going to talks, I did a talk at a Maker Faire at South by Southwest about the Prize… I’m always on the lookout for cool projects that are already existing, that should be part of the Prize.
HS If anybody’s reading this who has missed out on the open hardware design challenge and the robotics challenge – and by the time this goes to print, they’ll have missed the power harvesting challenge – that leaves the human-computer interface challenge, and the musical instrument challenge that are still open to our readers. Do you have any tips, or can you give away any insider information about what the fields are looking like there?
ST We haven’t received any official entrants yet, but I have had some really really interesting conversations with people about the human-computer interface challenge. I know there’s going to be a solid handful of particularly stellar projects, which I’m really excited we can give a platform to.
The musical instrument challenge is exciting because I think it’s going to bring in a whole different group of people, a different sort of energy. Another thing I’m really excited about is how the products in the human-computer interface challenge go on to become musical instruments. I’m really excited for that.
A good thing to keep in mind is that 20 projects from each of those categories win $1000, and then go on to the finals, so we still have 40 projects that are going through. Even if you don’t think your project is going to win, even if you think your project is in no way ready, just entering makes you a member of a really incredible online community. I’ve written a few emails to people who were like, “What? I never thought that was going to happen! Thank you, thank you, thank you”. So, you really never know.
HS And that big prize money, is that in the form of seed money to get the product on the market, or can the winners just take the cash and go home?
ST People can take the money and go home and never work on it again, if they are so inclined. Normally if they’ve put in enough energy to actually make a project worthy of winning the top 20 round, they’re pretty dedicated to the project and to taking it forward, so I would be surprised if that happened.
The top 20 projects are always impressive. I’m always impressed by them. Someone who’s put that much care into their project and got to that stage – they’ve got more to do. Engineering – there really is no end to it.
What we have seen is people who have a more or less complete prototype, take the money, and then try to use that money to solidify it for manufacturing and make it manufacturable. On our list of success stories, there’s a very long list of people who left the prize and had very successful crowdfunding and Kickstarter campaigns to set themselves up.
HS Is there anything you’re hoping to see from the entrants this year? Is there anything that you’d like to see come into existence, but that hasn’t been invented yet?
ST I am particularly excited about the human-computer interface challenge, because I am so tired of looking at my computer all the time. I have just been very generally disappointed in wearable technology and IoT so far.
HS The Apple Watch – what problem does that solve? It solves the problem of you putting your hand into your pocket, and taking your phone out. That’s rubbish.
ST Exactly. And I feel like that’s the most useful wearable device we’ve come up with. And that’s a joke, completely a joke.
What I really want to see is not a smartwatch that just pushes notifications from my phone to my arm; I want to see a new way of interfacing with technology, of being productive and being connected to the world around me that doesn’t involve this giant array of pixels in front of my eyes. It’s just not working for me. I want interaction more naturally and more effectively.
I want to see a ring that gives us information by sending safe and varied electrical currents through our finger. Our bodies can tell different electrical stimuli much more easily than they can variations in vibration. Sending varied electrical stimuli through our fingers could give us incredible information without the need for any screens. How you get notifications, and information about the world around me without me having to stop what I’m doing, reach in my pocket and pull out some device. That’s what I really want to see.
