After Two Year Hiatus, Hardware Hackers To Descend On Pasadena for Hackaday’s Supercon Starting Friday

The Hackaday Superconference from Nov. 4-6 at SupplyFrame’s DesignLab in Pasadena will bring together computer hardware hackers, builders, and engineers.

Hundreds of engineers and engineering enthusiasts are set to gather for organized talks and workshops along with extemporaneous challenges and talks, that make Supercon the “ultimate” hardware conference, according to the event announcement.

Supercon 2022 lasts three full days, with the conference beginning on Friday at 10 a.m. with workshops and badge hacking.

Drinks and appetizers will be available at the kick-off celebration at Supplyframe headquarters Friday night.

Talks start Saturday morning with doors opening at 9 a.m. Keynote speaker Joe “Kingpin” Grand, called a “hacker’s hacker” will take the stage to kick off a full day of talks and workshops.

On Saturday evening, Jorvon “Odd Jayy” Moss is giving a talk on his adventures in making companion robots, and his latest forays into adding more intelligence into his animatronic and artistic creations. 

Moss, who began building robots about five years ago when he was in college, 3-D printed his own pair of Magpie goggles that he programmed to open and close irises and raise and lower separate eyebrows, using an Adafruit Trinket and two servo motors. The goggles have become part of Moss’s costume and made him his own character. A video of him wearing the Magpie goggles “became a lot more popular than I thought,” he said.

Debra Ansell from SEEED will talk about how she finds creative ways to incorporate tech into projects which usually reflect her motto, “LEDs improve everything.” Workshop participants will build an LED headband based on the “Seeeduino XIAO nrf52840 Sense microcontroller which contains an accelerometer and microphone.” 

Scotty Allen, a hacker-turned-storyteller who runs the YouTube channel Strange Parts, will talk about “Storytelling for Hackers.” He makes videos that merge hacking, technology, and adventure, from building and modifying iPhones in the markets of Shenzhen, China, to visiting factories all over the world diving into the details of how stuff is actually made. He’s spent extensive time living and traveling throughout Asia, and now lives in the mountains outside Denver.

“Hackers are amazing at creating our own incredible adventures, and we need to get better at sharing our own stories and hacks with the world,” Allen said. “I want to inspire and teach you to make great videos – using engineering and hacking skills you already have to tell great stories.”

Bradley Gawthrop, Lead Hardware Engineer for FieldKit, an open source environmental instrumentation platform, will talk about how to “Hack Your Ride: The PEV Revolution Needs You!” and about the world of Personal Electric Vehicles. He’s one of the few people who can claim to have “hacked the Planet” as their actual job description. In 2019, FieldKit won the Hackaday Prize.

A host of other talks and workshops are set to follow, like building a portable directional radio antenna, manufacturing on a shoestring budget or how to go from one to 100 Units without venture capital, and how to make your breath glow inside a wearable glass pendant – without LEDs.

Saturday concludes with the Hackaday Prize ceremony, where the grand prize winner will be revealed, followed by a party late into the night.

Talks and workshops continue Sunday, with the badge-hacking ceremony closing the conference around 6 p.m., and an unofficial afterparty after. 

The organizers said there are seven workshops planned for Saturday and Sunday, each with a ticket price of $15 and attendance limited to 20, so interested people are advised to sign up early through the Hackaday Supercon 2022 signup page, www.eventbrite.com/e/2022-hackaday-superconference-tickets-402410268947.

Supplyframe in Pasadena started Hackaday.io as a project hosting site in 2014 under the name of Hackaday Projects. It has now grown into a social network of about 100,000 members.

In November 2015, Hackaday hosted the inaugural Supercon. Hackaday Supercons 2020 and 2021 were Remoticons – virtual conferences – since Supercon couldn’t be held in person due to COVID-19 restrictions.