Start electronics Good evening. Last weekend I participated in MashupCamp, a special event of MashupAward9, a camp-based hackathon! http://atnd.org/events/41082
What is MashupCamp?
This is a camp-style hackathon, where teams are formed and mockups are created in 3 days and 2 nights. I haven't attended one yet, but I'm sure I'll be able to find a sponsor. I have not participated in this event yet, but I have heard that it is almost the same time schedule as the sponsor StartupWeekend. I have not attended one yet, but the time schedule is almost the same as StartupWeekend, which is sponsored by StartupWeekend. Basically, the schedule is as follows: Day 1: self-introductions + team build, Day 2: work + interim presentations, Day 3: work + presentations + awards + reception. This time, the event will be held at MONO, a manufacturing-style coworking space, with facilities including 3D printers, laser cutters, etc. The facility is quite well equipped. The event will be held at MONO, a co-working space with a 3D printer and laser cutter. http://mono.jpn.com/
Day 1
I really wanted to participate from this day, but I had to give up due to a sudden notice of overtime work at work. But I had to give it up because I was suddenly notified to work overtime at the office. For some reason, I always get into trouble when there are events like this. I live and work in Shizuoka, so events in Tokyo are quite a hurdle for me. Oh well, I'll join tomorrow. By the way, I heard later that a GitHub engineer came and gave a lecture on this day. However, he seemed to be only announcing and promoting the event, and did not give a very useful talk. I guess it was okay if I couldn't attend. Also, there were quite a few people there on the first day. I guess they are going to give a lecture and dinner for free, so I guess I'll join them.
2nd day
9:15 Arrival at MONO
It was a 9:30 start, so I arrived a little early. There were only a few staff members here and there still there. The venue was quite large and deep, with a workshop and a good view of Odaiba on the 14th floor. It was certainly a good place to work, and I wish Shizuoka had such a well-thought-out place. Mr. Banno was also there, as it was sponsored by Recruit Co. I told him that I was using Twilio service, and he immediately introduced me to a Twilio mentor. He is a Korean man named Mr. Song. He speaks fluent Japanese and is very friendly. When I told him about my idea of creating a website over the phone, he said it would be very interesting. Moreover, he said he had never heard of such a service before. It seems feasible. I had never used Twilio before and thought it would be technically difficult, but I might give it a try.
9:45 Introductions and team build
There didn't seem to be many participants from the second day, and most of them seemed to have already formed teams. After the radio exercises (laughter), there was a self-introduction time for newcomers, including myself. I told them that I wanted to do a service using Twilio, that I was a hardware store, and that I was returning from Aomori and had some apples as souvenirs. After that, there was a time for recruiting members for the teams we had already assembled. Everyone was actively recruiting. Overall, were there many places where there were not enough engineers? In my experience, there is usually a shortage of designers, so this was a bit surprising. After the overall recruitment time, everyone returned to their desks. So it was time for the final team build. After a quick turn around, I joined a team that combined the unusual trio of hardware, erotica, and Twilio. I was suddenly involved with an engineer (I later learned that he was Mr. Uehara, who had created the marshmallow catapult at Mashup Award 8), which made me a little upset and made me aware of the high level of this event.
what we make
The company that produces that TENGA has created a fun item for women. The name of the product is Iroha. I didn't know about it, but it seems to have been talked about quite a bit on the Internet. It is a service that enhances your mood so that you can enjoy your evening alone more. When Iroha is fully charged, she calls you on your cell phone and says something like, "Sorry to keep you waiting ♡. There were many teams that used Twilio, but this was the only one that used eroticism. Anything is possible now.
10:00 Start of work
The team consists of two engineers, including myself, one designer, and one director. We have a good balance. The first step was to create a schedule. It was a long two days of work from here. However, on the third day, we had to prepare a presentation and go through the screening process, so we had almost no time in the afternoon. So, the actual time is about 24 hours. Well, it is long enough. I shared the responsibility with Mr. Uehara. Mr. Uehara is in charge of sending a notification to the server when Iroha detects the completion of recharging. I was in charge of sending a specific message to a specific number upon receiving the notification. The charging completion was based on a microcontroller board called Raspberry Pi, which is a little more sophisticated than Arduino, and uses a current detection sensor to detect the amount of current in the USB power line. Since I had only done L-tickers with Arduino, I was impressed.
12:00 Lunch
A luxurious lunch box was provided free of charge. It was far more luxurious than the company's 500 yen box lunch. This event is too much effort. They also allowed us to borrow about 20 computers and eat all the snacks we wanted. It was too much. Over dinner, we chatted and talked about each other. Even though it was a camp-style hackathon, the atmosphere was quite relaxed. Everyone seems to have been to this type of event several times before, and they are all very active people.
13:00 Reopen
I've finished building the development environment (server area, organizing files on my computer, etc.) and I'm going to use Twilio. I don't understand how it works at all. My mentor, Mr. Song, told me that Twilio is a system that makes both users and developers unaware of the server. I see, it is indeed true when he draws it in a diagram. I managed to get to the point where I could write an automatic voice to my phone number while going through the tutorial. This is quite interesting. After that, I was able to make the woman on the automated voice say naughty things. This was quite funny. I guess I achieved my quota for the day. (The voice was recruited from the Koeki Club.)
15:00 3D printer model making + information gathering
So, for my second purpose (the first being, of course, Twilio), I tried a 3D printer. The model was to be made by Mr. Uehara, who had painstakingly created it since this morning. For modeling, there is software called 123D and Google Sketch Up. In the end, the prints had to be made with a .stl extension, which was quite a challenge. Mr. Uehara, as expected, was able to use 123D to complete the model with great skill. (He was struggling a lot with the touch panel computer, which was only available for loan, because the screen reacted and moved when he brought the actual model close to it to measure its dimensions.) The 3D printer is designed to scan the nozzle and build up the resin. The thickness of the resin, whether the inside of the walls should be hollow or not, what material the resin should be made of, etc. can be set. The optimal material must be selected by weighing the strength of the structure, speed of fabrication, accuracy, and other factors. In addition, after the model is loaded, the horizontal axis that serves as the foundation needs to be adjusted, and this may be quite difficult depending on the object to be fabricated. There was a person who had tried a rather complicated structure before me (he had made full use of MONO's facilities and later won the MONO award), and he seemed to have a lot of difficulty because the structure was spherical. The initial estimate was 2 hours to adjust the foundation and a whopping 36 hours to fabricate the structure! The first estimate was 2 hours for adjusting the foundation and 36 hours for fabricating the structure! As expected, it was not possible to fabricate the structure in these two days, so they simplified the model and tried again. The person who participated in the workshop was quite busy and full of vitality, but she was a wonderful person. I was trying to produce a logo for my team, and I was looking for a way to convert the .ai file loaded in Illustrator into a .stl file. I struggled quite a bit, as it didn't seem to be easy to do with free software. 123D couldn't read .ai files, and SketchUp couldn't output .stl. We had to wrestle with it some more.
16:00 GitHub team rounds
There was a section where two GitHub engineers from the U.S. were there to listen to each team and get advice. Our team desperately explained about erotic toys and the importance of making people feel excited before using the toys. The engineers laughed at us. I guess Americans don't use these toys very often. As for advice, aside from erotic toys, they said that the idea of hacking USB charging devices and acquiring information on the charging process and completion is quite interesting from a business point of view. It would certainly have other applications.
Others on the team are
I was recruiting for the voice to be played over the phone in the cohort, thinking about the wording, and the rest of the time I was fabricating paper mache banana w's for decorating the iroha. This was my first hackathon with a team, and I thought it was quite efficient to work in parallel like this. For an event like this, the appearance, design, and the work that touches the heart are sometimes popular, so it was very encouraging to know that they were moving forward with these aspects. I could concentrate on development.
19:00 Dinner
We stopped working and had a standing buffet party with a mix of teams. It was quite interesting to talk with people from other teams that I had not been able to talk with yet. It was very stimulating to be able to talk with people I wouldn't normally talk to, such as a young man who was studying abroad because he wanted to present at TED, and people I had met at previous hackathons.
21:00 Return home
I went home one step ahead of the others. Most of the others stayed behind. I heard that some teams were staying overnight at the nearby Oedo Onsen hot spring, which shows how much they are into this project. I hope I can stay overnight and work like that next time. Tomorrow, I will try to operate the 3D printer.
3rd day
Arrival at 9:15
Most of the team had already arrived. I immediately started working on the printers. Today, one of the two printers had a broken nozzle and only one was usable, so we had to wait our turn.
12:00 Structure completion
Brilliant work!
14:00 Preparation for presentation
Preparation for Presentation
17:00 Start of presentations
I think the gap between the demonstration part and the explanation of the system from the demonstration was popular.
20:00 Awards
A brilliant award! The award was given by an individual, not by the company, because it was an erotic toy. That judge was in the picture wearing a horse mask. lol The winning teams were Vincle for hardware and Sukusuku Cinema for software, both of which won well. Both were convincing winners. In particular, Vincle's work made good use of sensors and MONO facilities, which was very suitable for the theme of this year's competition, and its concept was both easy to understand and highly finished. I myself was thinking of a service that would allow people to "toast with that person far away," so the concept resonated with me, and I am glad to have been reminded of the fact that there seems to be a high need for this service in the world.
Return home at 21:00
I went home again a step ahead to go back to Shizuoka. It was quite a coming two days!
When it's over.
I had the impression that the fusion of hardware and software is still in its infancy. As a hardware engineer, I have an advantage in the hardware area, and since hardware engineers do not often participate in events like this and are weak in the software area, this is where I can play an active role. I will learn more by playing around with Arduino.
＼電子工作歴9年の私のイチ押し！ELEGOOの電子工作キット／
