The Hackaday Superconference 2017 was full of people who have a long list of project ideas. And it is also a venue where it's easy to chat people up and ask about their projects.

Here are some highlights from people I had a chance to talk to:

Yesterday's post mentioned Ariane Nazemi's Compaq Portable, the original luggable PC. While he is very obviously skilled at keeping old PC running, he also does some pretty cool modern stuff. The talk was about mechanical keyboards and his Dark Matter keyboard in particular.

[caption id="attachment_15350" align="aligncenter" width="1000"]img_6113 Photo from Atom Computer web site's Project Dark Matter page.[/caption]

I was quite encouraged to learn that making my own custom mechanical keyboards wouldn't be as crazy as I thought they might be. I'm rather particular about the feel of my keyboards, and the encroachment of cheap membrane keyboards meant I had to pay more and more for the mechanical keyboards with the feel I like. I'm now well into the gamer keyboards of the ~$100 range. Which, according to Ari, is to the point where I might as well start building my own. I'll give it serious consideration.

 

I had the chance to chat with Sarah Petkus after her talk about her robotics projects, looking at robots from a refreshingly different perspective than most robot tinkerers I've met. Her projects are "personally expressive", more works of art than functional tool. But they're not just static sculptures! The projects are still real machines built from the same mechanical principles I'm familiar with, but they were born out of very different motivation.

I have not considered robots from her world view, and it was mind-opening to try to see and think about robots in a different way.

And it was a pleasure to meet Noodle in person.

[caption id="attachment_15367" align="alignnone" width="1200"]dodlt9du8aaw85x Photo by Twitter @cameronjblocker[/caption]

Sarah said Noodle doesn't walk very well just yet, and there are a lot of challenges to solve on the way to get there. I have ambition to know about control systems for leg-walking robots, but I'm not there now. Perhaps, if I ever get there, I can help her teach Noodle to walk. (Or better yet, help Noodle learn to walk.)

I was impressed by the Tomu project: an ARM microprocessor that fits mostly in a USB port and costs roughly $10. It is in the very early stage of development and like almost all open source projects, could use the help of more people. The creator was at Supercon to spread the word. As an incentive to join in the effort, people who do something useful and submit a pull request on Github will receive a unit. I'll look into this in more detail later.

The creator of OpenMV was walking around and showing off units and giving demos. This project is at a much more advanced stage than Tomu was. It's a product versus a project getting off the ground. As a result the demo is less a recruitment for the effort and more of a sales pitch. Still, it looks pretty cool and I'm definitely interested in machine vision. Once I learn enough about vision to understand what OpenMV can and can't do for me, I'll evaluate if I'm interested in buying.