Hackaday Newsletter 0x6A

The commonalities between tech art and rocket science, and why you care. [HACKADAY]( If They Fire The Nukes, Will They Even Work? [Read Article Now»]( Design for People By [Elliot Williams]( We all make things. Sometimes we make things for ourselves, sometimes for the broader hacker community, and sometimes we make things for normal folks. It’s this last category where it gets tricky, and critical. I was reminded of all of this watching [Chris Combs’ excellent Supercon 2022 talk]( on how to make it as an artist. “But I’m not making art!” I hear you say? About half of Chris’ talk is about how he makes his tech art worry-free for galleries to install, and that essentially means making it normie-proof – making sure it runs as soon as the power is turned on, day in, day out, without hacker intervention, because venues hate having you on site to debug. As Tom joked in the podcast, it’s a little bit like designing for space: it’s a strange environment, you can’t send out repair teams, and it has to have failsafes that make sure it works. What is striking about the talk is that there is a common core of practices that make our hardware projects more reliable, whatever their destination. Things like having a watchdog that’ll reboot if it goes wrong, designing for modularity whenever possible, building in hanging or mounting options if that’s relevant, and writing up at least a simple, single-page info sheet with everything that you need to know to keep it running. Of course with art, aesthetics matters more than usual. Or does it? So suppose you’re making a thing for a normal person, that must run without your babysitting. What is the common core of precautionary design steps you take? (And if you’re reading this as the newsletter version, head on over to Hackaday on Saturday morning and chime in the comments.) From the Blog --------------------------------------------------------------- [Why A Community Hackerspace Should Be A Vital Part Of Being An Engineering Student]( By [Jenny List]( How can universities join in the hackerspace scene without killing them? [Read more »]( [Largest Ever Hydrogen Fuel Cell Plane Takes Flight]( By [Lewin Day]( A test of a fuel-cell powered plane is both more and less than it sounds. [Read more »]( [How Tattoos Interact With The Immune System Could Have Impacts for Vaccines]( By [Lewin Day]( What gets under your skin and stays there? Vaccines, and tattoos. [Read more »]( [Hackaday Podcast]( [Hackaday Podcast 213: Not your Grandfather’s Grandfather Clock, the Engineering Behind Art, Hydrogen Powered Flight]( By [Hackaday Editors]( What happened last week on Hackaday? The Podcast will get you up to speed. [Read more »]( If You Missed It --------------------------------------------------------------- [Minecraft Finally Gets Multi-Threaded Servers]( [A Compact Camera Running Linux? What’s Not To Like!]( [3D Printed Post Modern Grandfather Clock]( [Classic Film Camera Goes Digital With Game Boy Tech]( [Fast Scanning Bed Leveling]( [Blender and openEMS Teamed Up Make Stunning Simulations]( [Hackaday]( NEVER MISS A HACK [Share]( [Share]( [Share]( [Terms of Use]( [Privacy Policy]( [Hackaday.io]( [Hackaday.com]( This email was sent to {EMAIL} [why did I get this?]( [unsubscribe from this list]( [update preferences]( Hackaday.com · 61 S Fair Oaks Ave Ste 200 · Pasadena, CA 91105-2270 · USA