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A couple week's back, we went to Austin, TX to take part in SXSW and SXSWCreate. While we've been to SXSW in the past, this year we did something a little bit different with our "BadgerHack" soldering workshop -- a fun, interactive way for people to learn about soldering and engage with SparkFun and other companies at SXSW.
While we were there, we took a video of our booth and overall goings-on, including a description of what, exactly, is a BadgerHack. Check it out:
We got great feedback on the Badger -- look for it comin' at you at more events in the near future. If you joined us at SXSW, thanks for coming by! Otherwise, maybe we'll see you next year!
This was an incredibly cool event, thanks again to SparkFun for coming back to SXSW. My 7 year old daughter soldered for the first time (yeah!), and my 11 year old daughter, who is an old pro, had that thing whipped together in no time. After getting her code, she decided that the best use of her 10% discount was to buy a 3D printer; though she still hasn't figured out where she's going to get the other 90% (other than pointing at me!). Ah, nerd kids!
SXSW Create was a ton of fun! It was awesome getting to visit you guys and make a Badger. The Badgerstick and the SMD LED Matrix are both really slick components. Any change of them being sold on the site so that we could start using them in other projects?
Yes! We are considering selling them on the SparkFun site, because we had such a good response at SXSW Create. We are thinking about how we'd handle the plastic badge part, or if that's even important to have in the kit. What do you think?
Stay tuned to New Friday Product Posts for the kit, if and when we carry it. It's always good to have another customer who is asking. Thank you and so glad you enjoyed our booth at SXSW! ;)
I think selling a kit would be awesome, especially for those who were unable to go to SXSW, as for the plastic badge part, it may not be very important, those who want a badge can probably by some sort of lanyard/badge for it. If you wanted to sell a badge with it you could produce a blank badge so people that buy it can put anything they want on it.
Awesome ideas and thank you so much for the feedback! :)
That Badgerhack helped me a lot. Now I'm thinking of scaling this up to run a lot more wearable lights than this. I like how you put on right-angle headers, and then mounted the battery pack behind. Now I'm thinking of swapping the 9v with a 4x AA 6v pack, swapping the badge with perfboard, or surface mount, or something. And throwing on an 8-channel, 118mA buffer ($7), and swapping the Badgerstick with an Arduino mini pro.
Now you've got basically a talisman which powers and MCU's a fairly respectable amount of wearable lights.
I went Friday by myself and had fun building one up and playing find-the-blinky-space-pod, so I brought my kids on Sunday so my 7 year old son could try his hand at soldering. The line was too long for his younger sister's patience, so we bought a Simon PTH kit and he built it up at home instead (also a lot of fun, and with 100% more Bee-Gees). That's not to say the booth was too small, it was by far the busiest one there.
Mine is still hanging by my desk, waiting to be repurposed.
I'm curious: why the FTDI UART? I'm not asking out of lingering FTDI-gate rage, but because it seems a 32U4 would be a cheaper alternative for a cost-sensitive gimme like this.
Also, the matrix is really nifty on its own, and the right angle header makes it easily breadboarded.
Thanks for the freebies!
As it turns out, the FTDI and a 328p was the same cost as a single 32U4. We've seen that people have issues with the 32U4 USB driver much of the time, so we decided to stick with the tried-and-true FTDI for the time being.
Glad you liked the badge! Can't wait to see what you repurpose it for.
Video: 2 points to the kid soldering with broken arm. Thats determination. Got to love it! :)
SXSW was a lot of fun and y'all had a great showing. A lot of the members of The Robot Group were able to partake in the soldering project and one of our younger members re-programmed the Badgerstick to scroll "The Robot Group" on his badge (after getting all the codes of course). We look forward to seeing you next year at SXSW Create.
Was the Processing graffiti wall on display? Or am I mixing up when that was being shown?