The 2022 Hackaday award has already continued to clash with two of the five challenges in the rear-view mirror. While we’re naturally excited about each episode of this year’s competition, we’ve got particularly high hopes for what the community can do with this third challenge: Hack it back.
Here’s a simple formula: find some old and unused gear, spruce it up and put it out of the landfill. But just one aspect of the currency that extends the lifespan of consumer hardware, by making some upgrades and changes instead of buying off-the-shelf replacements, you turn the worldly thing into something unique and personal. But of course, we rarely have to explain to you the advantages of fine people – this is the basic engineering we see on a daily basis at Hackade. The difference is now there are cash prizes on the line.
So if your desk has an old iPod dust collector, now is probably the time to replace it with some modern silicone and teach it some new techniques. Sure a new robotic vacuum might be nice, but you can save some money by picking up a second-hand Rumba and taking an ESP8266 ship. Got a nice piece of experimental tools that precede the simple data export functions we’ve been offering these days? You need to use the atomic option and scheme the desired data directly from the unit’s LCD controller. We can spend the whole day drawing examples from the archives, but you get the picture.
What are you talking about? Are you the type to be tempted by the shiny new features? Others are happy to keep things local while all is off in the cloud? You won’t receive any complaints from us, and that’s why the Hack It Back Challenge also recognizes repairs that return only one piece of gear to service. But don’t be fooled, because fixing something can often be harder than rebuilding from scratch.
When you have to crack the X-ray machine to find all the damaged marks on a decade old PCB, only to tirelessly replace them with microscopic wire wires, you may wonder what you have done? Anger the keeper of Magic Smoke. On the other hand, a lot of gadgets have been disabled because there is nothing more external than a single bad solder joint. In both cases there is a definite feeling of satisfaction when you can return to the literal part of the history of the working condition.
Ready to put your hardware-revitalization skills on display? Just go to Hackaday.io, create a new project page and get hacked. But don’t wait too long, you have until July 24 to enter the Hack It Back Challenge and submit your claim for one of the ten $ 500 prizes.