FlowIO Takes Top Honors in the 2021 Hackaday Prize

FlowIO Platform, a modular pneumatics controller for soft robotics and smart material projects, took home Grand Prize honors at the 2021 Hackaday Prize. Aside from the prestige of coming out on top of hundreds of projects and bragging rights for winning the biggest hardware design challenge on Earth, the prize carries an award of $25,000 and a Supplyframe DesignLab residency to continue project development. Four other top winners were also announced at the Hackaday Remoticon virtual conference on Saturday evening.

In a year full of challenges, this year's Hackaday Prize laid down yet another gauntlet: to "Rethink, Refresh, and Rebuild." We asked everyone to take a good hard look at the systems and processes that make the world work -- or in some cases, not work -- and reimagine them from a fresh perspective. Are there better ways to do things? What would you come up with if you started from a blank piece of paper? How can you support and engage the next generation of engineers, and inspire them to take up the torch? And what would you come up with if you just let your imagination run wild?

And boy, did you deliver! With almost 500 entries, this year's judges had quite a task in front of them. Each of the five challenges -- Refresh Displays, Rethink Work-From-Home Life, Reimagine Supportive Tech, Redefine Robots, and Reactivate Wildcard -- had ten finalists, which formed the pool of entries for the overall prize. And here's what they came up with.

Grand Prize Winner: FlowIO Platform

We tend to think of robots in terms of rigid frames with electric actuators. FlowIO Platform aims to change that thinking, and kickstart a design revolution in wearables, collaborative robots, and just about any task where a softer, gentler robot would be useful. The key to these applications is pneumatics, and FlowIO makes it easy to connect the pumps, valves, actuators, and sensors necessary to bring pneumatics projects to life. The FlowIO main module has five pneumatic channels, and connects up to other modules that support pumps, sensors, and general IO -- it's like a Lego set for pneumatics!

FlowIO aims to make pneumatics as easy to add to a project as it is to spin up an Arduino and a couple of steppers. The principal on the project, Ali Shtarbanov, came on our Hack Chat a few weeks ago to talk about the applications of pneumatics in soft robotics in general, and the niche in that ecosystem that FlowIO fills specifically. We can say confidently that there's a lot of pent-up interest in pneumatics, which seems to be due to the lack of an accessible, affordable integrated pneumatics platform. FlowIO changes all that, and with a well-earned Grand Prize under its belt, we're looking forward to a spate of projects that show just what pneumatics can do.

• 2nd Place: Stack-chan

Coming in at second place with a $15,000 prize is Stack-chan, an adorable, open-source companion robot. The palm-sized bot is the perfect desktop companion, but since it's completely open and hackable, what you do with Stack-chan is totally up to you. Based on the ESP32 powered M5Stack modular IoT development platform, creator Shinya Ishikawa sees Stack-chan as a jumping-off point for everything from a robot butler to sales and marketing tools, as well as companion robots and robot pets.

• 3rd Place: Flexible Circuit Wind Generator

It's hard not to look at a vast wind farm and its towering wind turbines without feeling both awe at the engineering involved as well as a sense of, "There has to be a better way." Stuart MacKenzie's flexible wind generator aims to explore the possibilities of "aeroelectrostatic" electricity. He uses folded polyester films with conductive decals to make wind-activated variable capacitors that can power small loads when the wind waves them around.

• 4th Place: Raspberry Pi Spectrometer

Easy to build, inexpensive, and open to hacking: those are just a few things to love about Les Wright's PySpectrometer. We featured the Raspberry Pi-based instrument back when it first came out and applauded its simplicity -- at its heart, it's a Pi Cam looking at a diffraction grating -- as well as its versatility. We also like how it puts the power of spectroscopy into the hands of students and hobbyists alike, all on a budget.

• 5th Place: Direct Granules Extruder

Anyone who has had to shell out for 3D printing filament has probably thought of ways to put the vast amount of plastic waste we generate back into use, but Norbert Heinz, aka "Homofaciens" on YouTube, actually did it with his direct granules extruder. The idea seems simple enough: grind up plastic waste, melt it back down, and extrude it directly in a modified 3D printer. But in practice, there are a ton of challenges to overcome. Norbert is working past those issues, and has managed some pretty amazing prints considering his extrusion auger is a modified wood screw. It even prints sugar!

Okay, Now It's Your Turn

As with every Hackaday Prize, the work has only just begun -- we don't sit on our laurels around here! Part of the reason for the Hackaday Prize is to be an inspiration; to set a high bar and expect our winners -- and the rest of the community -- to jump over it. We want everyone to take what the 2021 Hackaday Prize winners -- and all the other entrants -- have done and run with it. Look at each of these projects and find something in it that resonates with you. Take that and use it to improve your projects, or learn a new skill, or explore a fascinating aspect of our world that you never knew about. It's your world, so hack it!

Congratulations to all of the 2021 Hackaday Prize winners, and a heartfelt thanks to everyone involved in running the Prize and judging the entries, as well as to everyone who took the time to enter. We couldn't do it without you!

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Gimballed Omnirotor Goes Over Great Obstacles

What can drive on the ground, hop in the air, and continuously move its coaxial rotor assembly without ever having to reset its position? The answer is [New Dexterity]'s Omnirotor All-Terrain Platform.

Although still very much a prototype, the video below the break shows that the dexterity claimed by Omnirotor isn't just a lot of hype. Weaving through, around, and over obstacles is accomplished with relative ease by way of a coaxial rotor configuration that's sure to turn some heads.

Omnirotor's unique design lends to its agility

While not novel in every aspect, the Omnirotor's strength comes from a combination of features that are fairly unique. The coaxial rotors are fully gimballed, and as such can be moved to and from any direction from any other direction. In other words, it can rotate in any axis infinitely without needing to return to a home position. Part of this magic comes from a very clever use of resources: The battery, speed controllers, and motors are all gimballed as one. This clever hack avoids the need for large, heavy slip rings that would otherwise be needed to transmit power.

Adding to the Omnirotor's agility is a set of wheels that allow the craft to push itself along a surface, presumably to decrease power consumption. What if an obstacle is too difficult to drive around or past? The Omnirotor takes to the air and flies over it. The coaxial rotors are caged, protecting them from the typical rotor-snagging dangers you'd expect in close quarters.

[New Dexterity] has Open Sourced the entire project, with the Omirotor design, Firmware, and even the benchmarking platform available on Github so that others can share in the fun and iterate the design forward even further.

You might also enjoy this tetrahedron based omnirotor, or another omnirotor that knows how to play fetch. Really.

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3D-Printed Braiding Machine Will Show You the Ropes

A maypole braider, aka a circular braider, is a type of horn gear braider that makes braided tubes, like one of those woven finger traps or that lovely bit of gutted paracord that's jazzing up your otherwise boring DIY USB cable. They are called so because the action mimics the motion of a group of maypole dancers bobbing and weaving around each other in an intricate choreography that results in an equally intricate pole decoration job.

Maypole braiders like [kmatch98]'s are responsible for all kinds of ropes, cords, and other braided goods like fly-fishing lines. They use three or more bobbins, each loaded up with a single strand of yarn.

One of the most important parts of braiding anything, including hair, is maintaining tension on the braid as you go. Here, each bobbin rides inside a bobbin carrier, which performs a number of tasks -- it holds the bobbin in place, releases yarn when it's supposed to, and maintains tension on the yarn while skating a figure eight around the track.

This mesmerizing machine consists of spur gears, a frame with a figure 8 track, a pair of horn gears, and a foot -- a guide on the bottom of the bobbin that rides along in the track. Early on, [kmatch98] made a fidget spinner version to visualize the basic function. He studied pictures of commercial bobbin carriers and managed to not only reverse engineer them, but improve the design by eliminating one of the two springs and replacing it with gravity. The remaining spring is used for the bobbin release.

Surprisingly, this isn't the first plastic braiding machine we've featured. Here's one made of freakin' LEGO.

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Here Are the Ten Finalists For the Hackaday Prize Wildcard Challenge

Each phase of the 2021 Hackaday Prize challenged designers to reimagine traditional solutions within various fields, from robotics to assistive devices. But for the Reactivate Wildcard, [the fifth and final Challenge of this year's Prize](https://prize.supplyframe.com/#section-challenges), this theme of Rethink, Refresh, Rebuild could be applied on anything the entrant wanted. Today we're pleased to announce the ten Wildcard projects that have been selected to win $500 and move onto the finals. Who will win the top spot this year? We'll find out during Hackaday Remoticon in just a few weeks!

The MetaSense project is a perfect example of how new technology can be used to rethink what we generally consider to be a solved problem. This project leverages multi-material 3D printing to produce conductive cells which vary their capacitance in response to physical deformation. With some clever geometry, these cells can be chained together to produce single-part devices which can stand in for traditional toggle switches, joysticks, pressure sensors, and even accelerometers.

Speaking of 3D printing, the Direct Granules Extruder project imagines a future were desktop printers are no longer limited to using rolls of manufactured filament. The key is a robust extruder design that can grind up plastic pellets fast enough to feed them directly into the hotend of a conventional 3D printer. This not only means a considerable operational savings, as raw plastic pellets are much cheaper than filament by weight, but would potentially allow for printing with more exotic plastic blends and even recycled materials.

Some of the projects even made us rethink what's possible for the individual hacker. The WiFiWart utilizes a miniature single-board Linux computer that was designed and built from the ground up by a single person, using only free and open source software. Whether it's that this penetration testing gadget has packed a full Linux computer and two WiFi adapters into a box the size of a phone charger, or the fact that it's been done by a dedicated hacker with free tools, you can't help but come away impressed with this one.

Wild For Wildcard

With nearly 100 projects submitted for the Reactivate Wildcard challenge, this was clearly a theme that resonated with the Hackaday community. As always, it was extremely difficult to narrow this down to the ten finalists below:

• MetaSense
• Ozirma - Near Infrared Spectrometer
• Minamil: Minimal CNC Mill
• WiFi Wart
• Direct Granules Extruder
• M4-Breadstick
• Flexible Circuit Wind Generator
• M5Stack Color Maker
• Automatic Ventilation System with CO2 Monitors
• CRYPTOiNK

Whether or not they made the Finals this year, the complete list of Reactivate Wildcard entries contains an incredible array of fascinating concepts that are well worth browsing through. If any of them particularly catch your eye, why not strike up a conversation with the creator in the comments and see if you can't help out? There's always next year.

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Tiny Open Hardware Linux SBC Hides In Plain Sight

There was a time, not quite so long ago, when a computer was a beige box that sat on your desk. Before that, computers were big enough to double as desks, and even farther back, they took up a whole room. Today? Well today it's complicated. Single-board computers (SBCs) like the Raspberry Pi put a full desktop experience in the palm of your hand, for a price that would have been unfathomable before the smartphone revolution increased demand for high-performance ARM chips.

But compared to the tiny open hardware Linux SBC that lives inside the WiFiWart, even the Raspberry Pi looks massive. Developed by [Walker] as a penetration testing tool, the custom computer is housed in an enclosure designed to make it look like a traditional (if a bit large) USB phone charger. In fact, it doesn't just look like a USB charger, it actually is one. The internal power supply is not only capable of converting AC into the various DC voltages required to run the miniature Linux box, but also features a USB port where you can plug in your phone to charge it.

For the infosec folks in the audience, the applications for the WiFiWart are obvious. Just plug this thing in somewhere inconspicuous, and you've got a foot in the door. The dual WiFi interfaces mean you can connect to a target network on one card and use the second to spin up a fake access point or exfiltrate data. Plus with a quad-core Cortex-A7 ARM processor running at 1.2 GHz and a healthy 1 GB of DDR3, you'll have enough power to run many security tools locally.

But of course, nothing keeps you from using the WiFiWart for non-security purposes. That's what has us particularly excited, as you can never have enough open hardware Linux boards. Especially ones this tiny. Removed from its wall charger disguise, the brains of the WiFiWart could be used for all kinds of projects. Plus, not only is the final design open source, but [Walker] made sure to only use free and open source tools to create it. Keeping his entire workflow open means it will be easier for the community to utilize and improve upon his initial design, which in the end, is the whole idea behind the open hardware movement and efforts such as the Hackaday Prize.

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Waterjet-Powered Speedboat For Fun And Research

There are a lot of cliches about the perils of boat ownership. "The best two days of a boat owner's life are the day they buy their boat, and the day they sell it" immediately springs to mind, for example, but there is a loophole to an otherwise bottomless pit of boat ownership: building a small robotic speedboat instead of owning the full-size version. Not only will you save loads of money and frustration, but you can also use your 3D-printed boat as a base for educational and research projects.

The autonomous speedboats have a modular hull design to make them easy to 3D print, and they use a waterjet for propulsion which improves their reliability in shallow waters and reduces the likelihood that they will get tangled on anything or injure an animal or human. The platform is specifically designed to be able to house any of a wide array of sensors to enable people to easily perform automated tasks in bodies of water such as monitoring for pollution, search-and-rescue, and various inspections. A monohull version with a single jet was prototyped first, but eventually a twin-hulled catamaran with two jets was produced which improved the stability and reliability of the platform.

All of the files needed to get started with your own autonomous (or remote-controlled) speedboat are available on the project's page. The creators are hopeful that this platform suits a wide variety of needs and that a community is created of technology enthusiasts, engineers, and researchers working on autonomous marine robotic platforms. If you'd prefer to ditch the motor, though, we have seen a few autonomous sailboats used for research purposes as well.

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This Really Really is Your Last Chance to Enter the 2021 Hackaday Prize (Really!)

Oh, walnuts! How can we already be at the end of the last round? 2021 has been a time warp and now we are staring down [the final day to enter the Reactivate Wildcard challenge of the Hackaday Prize](https://prize.supplyframe.com/#section-challenges). You must enter by 7 AM Pacific time on Wednesday or it's too late!

Of course the good news is that the topic is wide-open. Wildcard is for all the things that didn't fit in the first four entry challenges. If it's a good idea, if it's a build that really matters, it should be entered!

The ten winning projects from this round will each get $500 cash prizes, and be shuttled on to the final round. All 50 finalists will have until November 7th to hone their offerings, at which point [our slate of expert judges](https://prize.supplyframe.com/#section-judges) will pick the most interesting and impactful for the $25,000 grand prize and four other top prizes.

And how, you ask, will you find out who won? The Hackaday Prize Ceremony will be held online on November 20th during the Hackaday Remoticion. So your assignment today is to warm up that keyboard, mouse, and smartphone camera to get your project entered right away! Step two is to grab your ticket to Remoticon for a weekend of wonderful talks, great people, and an inspiring lineup of hardware builds that made this year's Hackaday Prize truly shine.

Wondering what kind of stuff makes a great Wildcard entry? Majenta Strongheart has you covered in her latest video roundup below.

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The Beauty of Dance, Seen Through the Power of Touch

It's nothing short of amazing what trained dancers can do with their bodies, and a real shame that visually-impaired people can't enjoy the experience of, say, ballet. For this year's Hackaday Prize, [Shi Yun] is working on a way for visually-impaired people to experience dance performances via haptic feedback on a special device.

This platform, which is called Kinetic Soul, uses Posenet computer vision to track a dancer's movements. Posenet detects the dancer's joints and creates a point map to determine what body parts are moving where, and at what speed. Then the system translates and transmits the movements to the 32 pins on the surface, creating a touchable picture of what's going on. Each 3D-printed pin is controlled with a solenoid, all of which are driven by a single Arduino.

We think it's interesting that Kinetic Soul can speak to the user in two different languages. The first is more about the overall flow of a dance, and the second delves into the deconstructed details. Both methods allow for dances to be enjoyed in real time, or via video recording. So how does one deconstruct dance? [Shi Yun] turned to Laban Movement Analysis, which breaks up human locomotion into four broad categories: the body in relation to itself, the effort expended to move, the shapes assumed, and the space used.

[Shi Yun] has been user-testing their ideas at dance workshops for the visually impaired throughout the entire process -- this is how they arrived at having two haptic languages instead of one. They plan to continue getting input as they work to fortify the prototype, improve the touch experience, and refine the haptic languages. Check out the brief demonstration video after the break.

Yes indeed, dance is a majestic way of expressing all kinds of things. Think you have no use for interpretive dance? Think again -- it can help you understand protein synthesis in an amusing way.

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The M5Stack Color Maker Can Mix Paint to Match Your Subject

We've all learned in primary school art classes that blue and yellow make green, and that adding a little black to a color will make it darker. But what if you want to paint with a color that exactly matches something else? Usually, that requires a lot of trial and error (and paint), and the end result may not look the way you wanted after all.

To help aspiring artists, [Airpocket] made the M5Stack Color Maker. This is a device that reads out a color sensor and automatically mixes watercolor paint in the right proportions to match what it sensed. It dispenses drops of cyan, magenta, yellow and black paint (CMYK) into a small bowl, from which you can then apply it with a paintbrush.

The color sensor is similar in use to the color picker (or "dropper") tool present in most graphics programs: simply point it at something that has the right color, and it will generate the correct values for you. It is based on an AMS TCS34725 color sensor, which is housed in a 3D-printed shell that also includes a white LED. The sensor outputs Red, Green and Blue (RGB) values, which are converted into the corresponding CMYK values by a Raspberry Pi Pico. A touch-sensitive screen allows the user to make adjustments before activating the paint pumps.

Those pumps are tube pumps, which have been specifically designed (and also 3D printed) to allow them to move tiny amounts of liquid while minimizing the pulsing motion typical with this type of pump. They are driven by stepper motors which are controlled by the Pi Pico.

Although many artists might prefer to mix their colors manually, the M5Stack makes mixing that exact shade of blue just that little bit easier. We can also imagine it might help those who are color blind and unable to clearly tell different colors apart. We've seen simple paint mixers for larger quantities of paint, and even robots that can do the actual painting for you. If you need a refresher on color theory, we've got you covered too.

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Meet the Winners of The Hackaday Prize Round Four: Redefine Robots

The judges' ballots are in and we're proud to present the ten winners of the fourth round of the 2021 Hackaday Prize. We love robots, and it's obvious that you do too! The number and range of projects submitted this year were overwhelming.

No robotics round is complete without a robot arm, and while a few of them were in the finals, we especially liked CM6, which really pulled out all the stops. This is research-grade robotics on a not-quite-student budget, featuring custom compliant mechanisms so that it can play well with its fleshy companions.

With six degrees of freedom, and six motors, the drivetrain budget can quickly get out of hand on builds like these, so we're especially happy to see custom, open, brushless-motor driver boards used to reduce the cost of admission. Even if you're not going to make a 100% faithful CM6 clone, you'll learn a lot just from going through the build. Oh, and did we mention it has a software stack?

Speaking of stacks, check out Stack-chan, a JavaScript super-cute desktop robot communicator and assistant. This one is meant to sit on your desk and connect you with your friends, being a sort of kawaii telepresence bot. Emphasis here was on simplicity of the build, and extensibility of the software; this is a robot for code jockeys, and it looks like a fantastic first step into making physical some of your virtual ideas, or just keeping in touch in these strange days. Besides, who can resist something that cute?

And while you're in the development phase of building a 'bot, you're going to need telemetry, logging, and probably remote control. [Maximiliano Palay]'s Robotics Ground Control Station does all of that, with overkill. Made to drive his Cablecam bot, this has everything you might need and more, all packed in a watertight case. Computer, screen, radio, joysticks, sliders, and knobs galore: if your robot needs controlling, this is your controller. Cyberdeck meets remote? If you build one of these, you can use it for all of your robotic creations.

Of course, that's not all! We had nearly a hundred entries and ten finalists, and while only the finalists get the money, you all deserve the limelight.

Ten Finalists from the Redefine Robots Challenge:

• CM6
• Tardygrade
• My Machinery 2021
• Stack-chan - JavaScript-Driven Super-kawaii Robot
• Assistive Robotic Manipulator and 6-DoF controller
• Autonomous Litter Detection Robot w/ Edge Impulse
• UV Sanitizing Autonomous Robot
• FiberGrid Reloaded
• A Robot for Automating 3D Printers
• Robotics Ground Control Station

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