Hackaday Belgrade preparations have now passed the flash point and the hacker village that is set to descend on Serbia in a few weeks grows larger and more awesome by the day. Prepare for a massive data dump on what is in store. But before you go any further, make sure you have a ticket.

What is Hackaday Belgrade and What Comes with a Ticket?

Hackaday Belgrade is the best conference focused on hardware creation that you can find anywhere in Europe. Taking place in Belgrade, Serbia on May 26th, the schedule is packed with talks, workshops, and a hacker village that is hackathon, entertainment, and the demoscene rolled into one.

More than just an event, this is about the culture of Hackaday. These are your people, you need to make room in your life to come to Belgrade because you don’t want to miss this!

Your ticket includes:

Admission to the Hackaday Belgrade Conference

Three talk sessions featuring sixteen speakers

Access to hands-on workshops (seating limited, register for your ticket now)

Hacker village activities including badge hacking, project demos and presentations, lightning talks, and hacking/demoscene awards ceremony

A custom hardware badge (early details here)

I Need a Ticket! Food and beverages throughout the day

Swag

Live IDM and DJ sets

Invitation to pre and post conference social events

Meet up with us the night before, and join in impromptu festivities the day after. It’s a beautiful time of year to visit Belgrade and you can justify the adventure as professional development — the kind that is an insane amount of fun.

Call for Project Demos

We’re looking for more hackers with a project to show it off, answer questions about, and inspire others. Come show an enthusiastic audience what your project does and the tech behind what makes it tick. We’ll make sure you have power, a table, and a chair if needed. This is a great chance to get huge exposure both at the conference and through Hackaday’s digital channels! Please email superconference@hackaday.com to reserve your spot.

Complete Talk Details:

Keynote: Jack of All Trades, Master of One Rachel Wong Session 1 Rachel Wong has two passions. In her spare time she designs and builds wearable electronics with an eye to a time when high-tech fashion will be commonplace. When at work she is a stem cell researcher, focusing on projects like growing human eyes. The resulting tissue can be used to give the blind sight, and is now in clinical trials. Success in this line of research will help pave the way for breakthroughs in the development of other organ tissue. Rachel will discuss her work in both wearables and stem cell technology, taking the audience along for a glimpse into the future. Building the Hackaday Belgrade Badge Voja Antonic and Jaromir Sukuba Session 2 The custom electronic badge for the Hackaday Belgrade Conference was conceived, designed, and manufactured specifically for this event. Join Voja Antonic, who designed the hardware, and Jaromir Sukuba, who designed the firmware, as they discuss the process of producing unique electronics on tight timelines. 5 Cases of Designing for Meaningful Hardware Vanessa Julia Carpenter Session 3 Five cases of hardware prototypes developed to explore what makes a meaningful experience are presented. From unusual sensors in jewellery, capacitive touch in Japanese craft, and a Bluetooth speaker / music creation interface, Vanessa extracts the qualities from each that move us towards creating experiences which help us to build identity and connect to ourselves and others. Vanessa asks engineers, hackers, makers, and inventors how can we create smart products with a focus on value over function? Designing PCBs with Code Kaspar Emanuel Session 2 Most engineers use EDA software to design circuits, but there are other ways. Kaspar has been exploring various tools and languages that allow you to use code rather than CAD software for your circuit design. If you have ever thought “I could easily solve this with a for-loop” when using KiCad or Eagle then this talk is for you. The overview and history speaks to programmers thinking about getting into designing circuits, anyone used to expressing their ideas with code, and those who enjoy learning different approaches to unique problems. Bitbanging is so 2017 (Fast Peripheral Control from Raspberry Pi and Friends) Matt Evans Session 2 There is a simple technique to output high-speed signals from a Raspberry Pi, with zero CPU overhead, in a slightly unexpected way. By re-purposing the Display Parallel Interface (DPI) video hardware, arbitrary control signals are output by writing patterns to the framebuffer. This is faster and lower-overhead than ‘bit banging’ IO ports in software. Matt will cover the concepts, give an example (and possibly demo) of driving a 64×64 RGB LED array, and discuss other potential uses. Blimps — Like a Drone But Won’t Take Your Head Off Sophi Kravitz Session 1 A blimp is a nonrigid airship used for advertising, scientific research… and fun! Sophi developed a mini-blimp to fly around the house, through hula-hoops, and to go to death battle with other mini-blimps. This mini-blimp features custom hardware bringing together motor controls, a power system, and an ESP8266 which talks to a giant red joystick. Since a mini-blimp is essentially some tiny fan motors propelling an oddly shaped balloon, it seemed like this would be an easy task. While developing her own mini-blimp, Sophi learned that making something that flies has a bunch of gotchas which she’ll detail during her presentation. Build your Acoustic Levitator at Home Asier Marzo Session 1 Acoustic Levitation uses the energy of sound to hold particles in mid-air without any physical contact. Acoustic levitation is not suited for supporting large mass like humans but, quite useful for manipulating small particles including liquids and powders. Levitated droplets of reagents are already being used in lab work during complex chemical reaction. Asier Marzo plans a live demonstrations to go along with this talk covering how to build an acoustic levitator with regular off-the-shelf components. Drone Assisted IoT Sensor Network Deployment and LoraWAN Coverage Mapping Luka Mustafa Session 1 Studying wildlife in remote areas to implement informed conservation strategies requires a simple and time-efficient method to build sensor networks covering vast inaccessible areas. As founder of the Institue IRNAS, Luka has developed animal trackers, static sensors, and drone automated signal coverage mapping methods across water and over tree-tops. In his talk he will present solutions and challenges encountered in projects involving Green Sea Turtles monitoring in Africa, and Arboreal monitoring in Peru. State of the Hackaday Mike Szczys Session 3 Hackaday Editor in Chief Mike Szczys takes the stage to discuss the past, present, and future of this amazing community. From Hackaday’s editorial voice to its celebration of new tricks and techniques, from weekly Hack Chats to monthly meetups, and from a global engineering initiative to a scholarly journal, Hackaday holds high the pursuit of knowledge and the free and open sharing of information and ideas. Mike looks at the common threads that bring us all together and make Hackaday the greatest engineering community on earth. Hacking Soldering Robot with Open Source Hardware Laptop TERES-I Tsvetan Usunov Session 3 What happens when industrial automation robots come with terrible UI and programming? Tsvetan takes on the challenge of improving a robot used for soldering plated through-hole (PTH) components. Improvement efforts included more sophisticated software, adding cameras to provide feedback, and hacking the communications protocol. Tsvetan will show just how good this automated soldering machine can become with the right alterations. Building a TTL Microcomputer Without a Microprocessor Marcel van Kervinck Session 2 Marcel designed and built a small 8-bits homebrew computer using a few dozen 1970s TTL chips, an oscillator, some RAM, an EPROM, and a handful of passives. The computer has similar capabilities as the microcomputers of the early 1980s and the first PCs, except that it has no brain; it is entirely driven by simple TTL logic, without the need for a microprocessor, a video card, or a sound chip. Marcel shares his experience including what went right and what went wrong along the way. Logic Noise: Hacking Music out of Digital Chaos Elliot Williams Session 2 Of course you could just take a beautiful-sounding instrument and simply play the right notes. But that’s taking the easy way out. Instead, this talk is about using basic logic ICs to build something musical or at least interestingly noisy, a tradition that’s as old as the 4000-series chips themselves. Elliot will demo a big handful of his favorite algorithms and circuits for composing in solder, and if all goes well, “music” will emerge. The Earliest Computer-Controlled Interactive Robotic Sculptures Aleksandar Zivanovic Session 3 Aleksandar explores some of the earliest truly interactive robotic sculptures, developed by Edward Ihnatowicz. His first sculpture, Sound Activated Mobile, used analogue electronics to turn to face the direction of sound and was exhibited at the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition in 1968. His largest work, The Senster, was a hydraulically actuated, computer-controlled robot that turned to face visitors to the Evoluon in the Netherlands in 1970. Join in on a journey to the dawn of robotics as art.

Complete Workshop Details:

Creating Art in PCB Brian Benchoff Session 1 This workshop will guide attendees through the process of creating art in PCBs. Topics covered will be the layer stackup of the modern PCB (copper, fiberglass, soldermask, and silkscreen), the current state-of-the-art using Chinese board houses, and how to implement graphics in PCB art using KiCad. Interactive Poetic Glove Lavoslava Benčić Session 2 In this e-textile workshop, participants will create a unique interactive wearable that generates sounds of various frequencies and responds to the touch (pressure). This includes learning about electronic elements and circuits with emphasis on the capacitive, conductive, and resistive properties of fabrics and yarns. FPGA Development 101 Miodrag Milanovic Session 3 This workshop will show the capabilities of FPGA devices, providing an introduction into FPGA tools used and the Verilog hardware description language. We will go through prepared examples and show the differences in approach when doing design for FPGA and MCU.

This will be an amazing weekend. We look forward to seeing you at Hackaday Belgrade!