(uptempo music)
- Okay, well thank you for coming to my keynote speech.
Hopefully it can be somewhat inspiring or something.
Yeah, so a little history about myself.
I am a Midwest gaming classic alumni.
I've been going to that show.
pretty much since the beginning, and I actually named it.
There was a contest many years ago to come up
with a name for some little quaint Wisconsin show,
and I won a free joystick.
And I have been coming here ever since,
and so what was Dan was thinking.
Dan Loosen, the guy who runs that show
is like hey, we're gonna have some people
from MGC talk at CypherCon and maybe vice versa,
so we can merge the shows together.
So yeah, a little bit about me.
You probably know about me if you're here in this room.
I use to be a graphic artist,
I wasn't really well, I wasn't into computer.
when I was a kid as lot of you probably were.
Yeah I started off as a graphic artist,
and I was doing my own thing.
But I always like hacking when I was a kid.
Anything, I owned was torn apart.
All the radios, all the video game consoles,
all the toys, had the erector set
I was into that when I was a kid,
but then as I was teenager,
I drifted away from it unfortunately.
If I go back now and change anything,
it would be to say, hey I take my young self
and shake myself and say keep at this stuff.
You'll be so much further along on when you're an adult
but whatever, we all drift from the primrose path.
Anyway so I was into it
but around 2000, I was into hacking again.
and obviously hacking is a big thing,
so I'm a physical mechanical hacker
or hardware hacker, not necessarily a software hacker.
So my big thing was video game consoles.
I really the old Ataris when I was growing up
but I though really cool if I can hack this
into something smaller and more portable.
And this is back before they had color Game Boys,
or backlit things, before they even had PDAs.
So it seem like there could be
a lot of cool things to do there.
So what I did was I did a project
and it put it on GeoCites I think it was back in 2000,
and people really got a kick out of it.
So this is it, oh so I realized
I can use my Microsoft pen.
Look at that, right in the end zone.
Yeah so as I said I was a graphic artist,
and we also had CNC machines.
So I was doing a lot of,
well I would consider quite rudimentary now
but I do mechanical design.
I design for CNC Milling and what not, so I had those skills
and I was like I can hack up something really cool.
So I dragged this old Atari,
2600 video game console out of a barn.
Again Midwest Gaming Classic, video games.
And I put it through the bandsaw,
and I hacked it up, I'm like you don't need this,
you don't need, you don't need this, you don't need this,
What is the minimum need to make this run?
And I created this really cool,
portable that you see on the right there.
And that's original that I ever made,
and so it was hardware hacking.
And obviously back in the 70s,
they have all sorts of RF shielding on things.
Like inch thick or not inch thick.
Eight inch thick aluminum
which is still ridiculous by today standards.
So I started doing that, that was my early hacking stuff.
What I wanna do today is talk about
some of the stuff I've done if you haven't seen it before.
Then talk about how I feel about hacking.
How I think it's important
and hopefully leave you with a message of joy and hope.
Look at these terrible wiring jobs.
This is a really horrible hack.
I look at this now and I am fairly embarrassed
by my soldering skills.
They're a little better now, but it was really important,
because back then, this is around 2000.
There really wasn't what you have
"the maker movement now," and there wasn't much.
If you look on the right hand side here.
This is a diagram of how to get
composite videos from a 1970s video game console.
Back then, my terrible drawings were the best
because nobody else had really done it.
So it is really quite a different world
and much like early hackers back in the 70s and 80s
were trying to figure out how the computer systems work.
I had to figure out how a lot of these old videos game
consoles work so I can share the information with people
that wanted to mod their own things.
Now, also if you're interested in videos game consoles,
there's a bit build room right down the hall.
It's a lot of people that were on my website
back in the day and now they've advance
far beyond what I could ever do.
So you should check out their work, it very impressive.
So that's what I start doing,
I created a website back in 2004.
I still have it BenHeck.com, sevenletter.com for the win.
They're pretty cool.
So anyway I was this is really cool, this is really fun
so I started hacking more things.
And luckily since I was a graphic artist,
I was good at drawing things
and also building them in the real world.
So my big thing back then,
I wasn't very good at electronics.
I'm still only just passible,
but I can make things look good, that's what matters.
So yeah I made some of these new cool ATARIs here,
There's a wooden one on the right.
This was actually like a stair step
at Menards or Home Depot.
Oh wait, you're from Wisconsin, so I can say Menards,
you know what that means.
It was really fun and so anyway I started branching off
into more computers and different things.
Super Nintendo was really cool.
I tried to make a console that look a question mark block
that Mario would hit his head against.
And it was really fun just capturing the aesthetic
of those original consoles,
so you felt like you were in the 80s.
Because so much of this is about nostalgia and how you feel,
and so if you can make someone feel like they're
oh that's my childhood.
I've relived it, that's really the key,
and what I started doing around this time, around 2001.
I was still working full time,
but I started building things on the sides,
and I was selling them.
And I was turning it into a little business,
and I'll get into that a little later.
But I think it's just really amazing.
If you made something really cool,
people gravitate toward it.
Even here on the right hand, this is a Apple IIGS,
which is my favorite classic Apple computer.
The IIGS meaning graphics and sound.
Yes, I think they probably have one in their the room.
Yeah so let me just show you a few other things
that I have here that I did.
So I started branching out in other things,
hacking more things and Commodore is really cool.
I think about it, I try not to think about things
that I necessarily love the most.
I was an Atari 800 kid, so of course in theory,
I should be at war with the Commodore people
even though the system is superior.
I have to admit that from a technical stand point.
But I started branching out and I'm like OK,
people like Commodores.
So again I'd be like this pic looks like it's from the 80s.
The original hardware's in there,
it wasn't been hacked too much,
but it all about giving it a new look,
making sure the original keyboard works,
so it looks and feels the same and still works.
Although if you look into the front here really closely,
there is an FC card slot.
That's become more prevalent now
but in the mid 2000s, there weren't a whole
lot of solutions for just drive emulation.
Now a days, they have them you know falling off of trees.
Another thing I did that was really popular
around 12 years ago was I started getting into the Xbox 360.
For some reason, I'm like I'm gonna make a Xbox 360 laptop.
I don't know why, but my God it was popular.
Everyone wanted it.
This one actually done for well, they're defunct now.
THQ but I also did a lot of work with videos game companies
where I would make them promotional items
so that has actually work out pretty well.
I'll get into that a little bit more,
as we go through the talk.
I want to make sure that it in 45 minutes
'cause I love to being punctual or on time I should say.
Use all the correct bits.
I branched off into other things.
I was doing PlayStation 2 portable,
this one quite large again.
If you wanna see some great evolution of these ideas
go into the bit built room.
They've got some amazing stuff in there
because as I went off and corporate with my show,
they kept hacking and they've eclipsed me by now.
Yeah, oh this is another fun one, NEO GEO.
You can take the arcade machine
and basically make it down into that
because some of you might know
there's not much in arcade machines.
Yeah, here's a few more.
Another version of the Commodore, here on the right.
Actually make two of those because what will happen.
What I use to do is I would just build something
that I thought was really cool.
Like oh well, I really had the Commodore.
I really like the Atari.
I like the Apple IIGS,
and then I would just randomly to build things.
And then I always put them online,
and people would always buy them,
which is really cool.
I've gotten away from that because I haven't had time.
Maybe I'll get back into it in the future.
Oh and on the left here, we have a PlayStation 3
that's been hacked down into a more portable form.
Now I should preface this question.
I don't do the hacking where you can play like ROMS
or hacked disks.
I try to stay away from that because I'm usually
maybe this sacrosanct to say.
I'm usually pretty cozy with video games companies
and developers so I want to stay on their good side.
But yeah, anyway so I did that for quite a long time,
and along the way, I quit my day job.
They say don't quit your day job
well I did quit my day job,
and I wrote a book about hacking.
But it worked out pretty well
because I was okay, some day I could get back
to working for the man.
I could get back to working for the man,
but I never really did
because if you hack it, they will come.
All these people were continuing to ask for new, cool things
and I just kept building them
and I didn't have time to go back to a normal job.
I guess that's the dream but it could also be the hell
because if you're hobby becomes your job
then you have to find a new hobby.
That's good advice for everyone.
So around 2010, we started doing The Ben Heck Show.
And just for the record, I didn't want it to be called
The Ben Heck Show because I'm not that egotistical.
I'm selfish not egotistical, completely different.
But this ad agency is like,
hey, we have this client Element 14,
which is part of Premiere Farnel Newerk,
an electronics distributor,
and they wanna have an online presence
about electronics and hacking
and getting people excited about their community.
Would you like to make a web series for them?
And I was like, yeah sure, that sounds cool.
This was around 2010, obviously YouTube existed
but it wasn't really in the form that it is today.
So I said yeah, I'll take a shot at it,
and the plan was to build cool devices that served a purpose
instead of just doing things for show.
And Joe and I were talking about this yesterday
how of course I was a MythBusters fan
but it seemed like they were usually
just blowing things up all the time.
So I wanted to make things resectability
or hack existing products so they could help people
who might not be as abled as you or I.
Of course we've done a lot of fluff along the way,
but that was my idea.
Anyway, we started in 2010 as bi-weekly episodes
doing it part time.
By 2012, we were doing it every week,
and working full time.
So a lot of people have asked me,
"Ben why are you leaving your show?"
Which is called The Ben Heck Show
and I tell them that I've had eight years
of one to two weeks deadlines
and it's really taking a toll on me, and I need a break.
That's why we're quitting it,
although there's 350 episodes by time we're done,
so you can watch it for eternity.
It's like the Simpsons, never ending.
So anyway, so this is what we did in the show.
So the show, we branched out from just video games.
Until this time, I was all about video games
but we try to do some more things.
Although here on the left is viola, a video game system.
That one was something we hacked up for
I think it was a contractor, Overnight Rack.
They kept getting sand to clog in the video game console.
I don't know if you've met anyone
who was in the second Iraqi war
but there is a lot of Xbox playing going on apparently.
And sand clogging of the fans was a big issue,
so if you can see right here.
There's actually a filter system, on the fan.
So that's something you might not think about
like you see with pet hair too.
I'm sure that's not a probably
a better use domestically.
Yeah, so when we start doing the show,
I just wanted to do kind of random, cool hacks
and the big thing for me as I mentioned
I was building things for people on demand, client work.
But with the show, since we had a budget.
I was able to justify things that might not necessarily
make sense so I did some cool things.
I tried to make a domestic, electronic can crusher,
which I still haven't really nailed
or this which is a computer heat sink
LTR aluminum can cooler.
I don't know if you're familiar with LTRs
but it's a device that can basically transfer
heat through electricity.
I'm sorry the electricity doesn't make the heat transfer.
It can basically pulls all the heat away from the can,
dumps it into the heat sink, and then blows it away.
We started doing cool things like that.
Around this time, I know this maybe this
isn't really the fort of the hacking scene,
but I really got into 3D printers.
And 3D printers started out, when I first saw them
I'm like well that's a great gimmick.
You can make a bottle opener with a penny, who cares?
But then I started getting into them
and I was like, my God, I was so wrong.
I love 3D printers.
I don't think it's one of those are things where every home
is gonna have one maybe a hundred years
when we have replicators like Star Trek.
But I really got into it,
and for some reason I thought I could.
I started making my own.
Both of these here I design myself.
It has all of your lovely wood
and laser slot construction there.
But the thing that I found interesting about 3D printers
as far as hackers go is that they've existed for decades.
But what happened was entrepreneurs,
yes including people like maker Bobbitt,
also Josef Prusa figured out a way to hack it down
and make it available for the masses.
And I think that's what's really important
about any sort of movement or alternative manufacturing
is figuring out ways to make things work for everyone.
I think that was really what made 3D printers explode
instead of having a $30,000 strati-is,
you could have a $1000 maker bot or a $1200 Prusa.
And I really got into it, and I really enjoyed it
working with it over the years.
And so speaking of hacking, this summit I thought.
No solution is two silly,
which is a point I'll probably gonna harp on
quite a bit during my talk.
The very first thing I printed
with my first off the shelf 3D printer
was a lid for my SPAM because if you eat the whole thing
of SPAM, you'll probably die from sodium.
(audience laughing)
So I was like, okay, and I don't know.
I think it was just fun for me.
I wanted to, you can't buy SPAM lid
but you can hack a SPAM lid.
You really should put Saran wrap on it though
because it's not a perfect seal.
And you can't really see it here.
I tried to adust the gain 'cause I printed it black
but there's a little edge to it.
So you can also use it to slice your SPAM.
(audience laughing)
'Cause SPAM has a consistency of butter as you may know.
There's actually more flavors of SPAM than you might think.
They have specific flavors for different countries even.
Anyway that was something but here's the thing.
No solution is too silly,
you might make something that might.
Who would need this?
Who would want this?
And the thing that's great about the internet
verse a hundred years ago when you could only sell
things to people that live in your own small town.
Someone out there will need it.
And hopefully a lot of someones
and then you can even make a career out of it
which I'll get to in a little bit.
So here's something kinda' crazy.
This is another thing that I probably wouldn't have built
unless we had the show.
But there's this guy, and he's like,
"Hey, I like to play pinball," as a lot of you might know.
I'm into pinball.
This guy is like, "I like to play pinball
"but I only have my right arm."
And of course the pinball machine,
you have to do this.
You have to straddle it with your arms.
Now, the first things someone might think
is okay, it's just a button.
Drill a hole the side of your game,
then stick a second button in there
by your right hand like this.
But here's the thing pinball machines
are really, really, really expensive.
And some of them are very desirable
and rare and whatnot.
So what if you go over to your buddy's house?
And your buddy is gonna be like
"Yeah, don't drill holes in my machines."
So we came up with for this guy,
and this is what I really feel passionate about
is accessibility and whatnot is they have suction cups.
So you can slap this onto any game you want
and it's adjustable.
There's little thumb screws here for the distance.
And you put this on one side and it has two buttons
on the upper one by this finger.
That just presses the button that's underneath it,
the existing one, but the second one activates
a servo over here that actually pushes
the other side button for you.
So you can push both buttons with one hand
on one side of the unit.
And what I did was I measured,
I think I had five different manufacturers
of pinball machines and I created an average target
of where the button is in comparison to the glass angle
at the front of the unit.
And then I average that out, use it to create my design.
So yeah, things like that.
I don't think I would have bothered doing that,
just on my own, but with the show,
it give us a lot of flexibility to do some things
that might be a little more time consuming
than we otherwise have time for.
Well speaking of that, some of the stuff we've hacked.
So this guitar here on the left.
I wish I had a bigger screen here, I'm sorry.
I guess it not my fault
but I guess you can see it okay.
So there's this guy and I think he's from South America.
And he's like I can't really do his accent
but he's like, "I use to play guitar mates.
Oh I no, that's Australia.
(audience laughing)
I use to play guitar but then I had to get a job
at the railroad.
It's amazing the stories you hear once people find out
you do accessibility, oh my God, you hear so many stories.
Most of them involving motorcycles.
Oh I shouldn't say that 'cause I'm in Milwaukee
but (laughing) anyways.
So this guy is like, those things were locks together
to lock the trains.
His arm got stuck in that and he's like,
"Now I can't play guitar anymore."
This is a big thing.
We learned this when we
went to Walter Reed, the medical hospital too.
Is that when someone is in a horrible injury
or they're incapacitated in some way.
The most important thing is for them to get back
to something in their old life so they can reclaim that.
And if you're an able bodied person as most of us are.
We take it for granted all sorts of things
even like tying our shoes.
But once something happens, it's completely different.
So this guy could no longer play guitar
because you have to strum and then you have to hold the keys
or the strings to create the keys.
So he was like, "Can you help?"
And again, it's one of those things
where if I had to bill him hourly to do it,
it probably wouldn't have been affordable.
But as a show project, we could justify it
because on the show we're sponsored
so we're all salaried.
You probably have the same thing here with your show.
So we came up with this whole thing where there was a,
it's not on camera here but there's a foot pedal.
And so he taps his foot to do the strumming.
And then we have all these controls,
so basically you can strum down, you can strum up,
you can strum up and down because right here.
Well we have a servo here
which does left to right of the strum.
And you also have a lift lever here,
so it will actually strum, lift it up,
bring it back over, bring it back down and strum again.
And it actually worked out pretty well.
I had all the controls built into.
It's also really expensive to ship things to South America
it turns out but I'm sorry South Africa.
South America probably also be really expensive
especially when it's Brazil.
Yeah, but that's why I really enjoy doing things like that.
So again as far as hacking goes,
most people wouldn't think to do that,
but this are the kind of things we've been lucky enough
to do with the show.
We can do really complicated builds like that
and then help people.
And so in the right hand photo,
this dorky looking photo of me
which is impossible not to take 'cause I'm dorky looking.
So this is a seeing eye hat.
Actually I was in New York this last weekend
and a saw a person who I don't think was sighted
and I'm how would you deal with this.
This is insane, it's hard enough if you have eyeballs.
This is just four ultrasonic sensors with cell phone motors
and it tells you where you are.
So as you walk around, it's like.
It's all analog, so the closer you are to things,
the more it rumbles, so you can get a spatial.
I don't wanna say image but spatial idea of where you are,
so that was a pretty simple build.
It's just a micro controller and a bunch of sensors
but stuff like that's been fun.
So I've really enjoyed doing things like that.
We've also done a few other non-accessibility things,
well most of them are.
But again like hacking.
Like the one on the left here, it's clearly a video camera
with an image tracker on it as well.
On a linear slide system.
So I was like hey, what if you're making a video,
and you don't have a videographer.
What if you're not as fortunate as I am and have a sponsor
and you had to do it yourself?
So this one would do is I think it would track a ball.
So you have something, you say okay, go here.
And they'll like do the X,Y.
I think it was pixie which is from Kickstarter.
So that kinda stuff is fun, and then we have
the matching 3D print to the background there, that's great.
Here's another hack.
Not a lot of people do this.
You can take a toaster oven and turn it into a reflow oven.
That's actually pretty straightforward to do.
But here, where we are in America and stuff.
We have a lot of things are already available to us.
We don't actually have to hack a whole lot,
which is cool but I think it's important.
We shouldn't lose sight of the fact
that we still need to be innovating.
You know we can't just say, oh we've got everything.
No, our cellphone now takes the place of 10 devices,
so let's give up.
And I worry about that a little bit when I see these kids
and they're like, their whole life,
and we still need to keep going.
Okay, I'm doing great on time.
So yeah, just a few things that I've learned.
Just my hacking past is, if you hack it, they will come.
If you make something cool,
somebody out there will want it.
And there is a phrase, yeah I'm sorry, bad back.
What is it, if you do something people need once a year,
you can make a living.
And if you do something they need everyday,
you'll be a zillionaire.
And that's true, and if you think about the old days,
you're like, oh, I'm in my little village,
and I've never gone a hundred yards past my village.
I guess it's like being the hobbit.
But you're limited to the people around you
but now you have the whole world.
So even if you have something that's strange a niche
as accessibility beauty game controller.
It doesn't matter because the internet can aggregate
that across so many people.
You can find enough people to keep you going
like I don't know how familiar you are with my show.
But my assistant on the show, Felix.
He does all of the accessibility controller stuff now,
and he can't even keep up with that.
He does it as a side job.
It's pretty insane like the number of people
that actually need something like that.
Speaking of which, no hack is too stupid.
Okay so this mess that you see on the screen.
This was the original prototype
that we made for accessibility controllers.
This is back in 2006, this guy emailed me,
and he's like, "Hey, I was in Iraq,
"and my arm got blown off by one of those bomb things."
And he comes back home and what does he want to do.
He wants to play video games.
There's so many, like with that war.
There's a lot of young people.
Really the first war of the video game generation,
which is strange to say.
And if someone is injured,
they wanna get back to their existing life.
So he's like, "Can you help me?"
And I'm like, this is really interesting.
I hadn't even thought about because again
I don't think about this.
I have two hands.
I don't think about how hard it might be to do.
So I'm like I'll totally do this for you.
And so I started gluing things together
and putting pieces of wood on it,
and PCBs from Radio Shack RIP, hot glue,
rumble motors all this.
This one was a mess.
We've refined it a lot since then
but it looks dumb and it seems silly.
But then we did that and I guess this would be
my message for anyone.
You guys are probably all pretty much super hackers
but even if something seems really stupid,
you should still go for it
because in the case of this.
This led to me doing a retail product.
It led to me doing latency testing for video games studios.
We've built God knows hundreds upon probably at least 500
of these things on our own.
Felix used it as a side form of income.
It's insane how much came from that just one idea.
And I didn't have to think of it.
Someone brought it to me.
I just had to execute it.
So yeah, I guess that would be my advice is just to.
It's never, it doesn't matter what it is.
You should always give it a shot,
and this is what I've tried to do.
Never stop hacking.
I have this old carpenter dude here.
I probably won't live that long
but yeah, I try to do that myself.
I try not to become complacent with my show.
I wanna keep hacking so when I'm done with the show,
I can still continue to hack and keep myself out there,
but I don't know.
Old people can hack stuff too.
It doesn't always have to be like these
20 year old wonder kids.
So I guess another thing I wanna talk about is
why we still need hackers
when there is so much cool stuff already.
And I just grab this picture of one
of those Boston Dynamics super robots.
I like the one that looks like a mule, dog thing.
Well it's scary almost 'cause it's in uncanny valley
'cause it looks like it's nature.
Well this is probably preaching to the choir
with this stuff but I guess I'm talking about it
like a retail perspective.
So I don't know, consumers of the products
are still mostly driven by large companies,
and I don't have anything against large companies.
But large companies always focus on the larger market,
and not the niche use cases.
So I've said for myself.
There's always a need for small things
and you might not necessarily think about it.
I've talked to people from Microsoft
about the accessibility controllers that we make.
And one of the responses I get is,
yeah we understand it's a problem
but there aren't enough people that need it
to justify manufacture of it.
But then the flip side of that is Felix
can't build enough of them in his spare time.
And that really puts us at a cross roads,
actually 3D printing has helped a lot with that.
So that's definitely something that I appreciate.
To think about it, back in the 70s.
HP or Honeywell or IBM, they'd be like we don't care
about a person using a computer in their home.
Nobody wants that, nobody needs that.
But they had all those garage engineers like Steve Jobs,
I should say Steve Wozniak first then Steve Jobs.
They were building all that stuff and they're like,
"Hey, it turns out people do want this."
So granted I think we might think
that we have every innovation under the sun now.
But they probably thought that back in the 70s as well.
Oh my God, we got touch tone phones, we're done.
So I think again, never stop hacking.
And another thing hackers take a risk
that large companies won't as I talked about.
Oh, we can't afford to do an injection mold,
we'll only sell 20,000 of.
Yeah, a lot companies make all sorts of other stupid crap.
They don't care then.
So yeah, I think that's a good thing that hackers can do.
Hacking shouldn't just be about risks
but doing the cool things.
That's what I try to do, the cool things
other people might not think about.
Because a lot of times, hackers,
us, we live in the real world
not the focus group marketing bubble.
We see things, we're like okay, that's something
I wish we could do.
One thing I did for the show.
I should have made a slide for it, but one thing we did
which was really cool, we had robot luggage.
'Cause I'd always be going around the airport and hunched
over and I'm like, why can't my luggage follow me?
And that was one really cool project we did.
It was pretty rudimentary, just use ultra sonics
but yeah, although I think companies are doing that now.
So that's what I try to do.
I just wanna have really cool projects
that help people and stuff.
So yeah, let me just get though this here
so I don't go over time.
So here's my inspirational message.
Hacking is life, hacking is the root of all progress.
We'd be in caves if we didn't hacked sticks into weapons.
Let me think, I know is stupid but hey, fire was a hack.
Weapons were a hack.
It's just all connected.
And even with our advanced inventions now.
Hacking which takes concepts to the next level.
Okay, this is where it's a little bit more altruistic
and stuff but we're all in this together
and this is all we have to work with.
Again, I think about so many people are just obsessed
with the cell phones now.
The kids, I hope we have the future generations
can think outside this box a little bit.
Because this is what we have to work with.
And yeah, but I think we could still make it better
and so I guess my final example here.
It might seem a little weird but a really good example
of hacking is Cuba.
There's some insane stuff down there,
but I think it should be inspirational
because obviously we don't have the challenges they do,
but it's still about what do you have to work with
and how can you make it better.
They have insane stuff where
oh, can't charge your hearing aid batteries
and they figured this out
or literal TV dinner where they turn
their TV trays into antenna.
That's pretty insane.
But that's not so much different than what we do here.
We just don't have to do that,
but we choose to do it.
But heck I mean if I could.
If I had a company, I'd bring up all these people
from Cuba to be engineers.
Look how good they are.
They're making bikes out of stuff
and well this isn't much of a hack.
It's pretty insane, but the reason I'm bringing it up
is because yeah, that shows how hackers
can actually help the country survive
or help the people survive.
And we shouldn't lose sight of that
just because we have everything pretty much here.
We still should be thinking about hacking
and how we can change things.
And it might be something that's trivial
as a video game console or maybe somewhat more altruistic
as making accessibility console.
Don't take your hard work for face value.
See what you can do with it, hack it.
Whatever corporation made it originally,
they did it to a budget.
They did it to a schedule.
It's not because they didn't wanna make it better.
They just ran out of time.
And as hackers or home brewers, we have the luxury
of taking more time to do things
and squeezing everything out of it.
And one more slide about Cuba.
Even if you don't wanna stay in Cuba,
you still have to hack your escape
so very, very hacky worthy down there.
So yes, excuse me.
Just a few more notes here.
So for myself personal or future projects.
I wanna get more into accessibility.
I really think that's cool
where they have the 3D printed prosthetics.
Because prosthetics are stupidly expensive,
I don't know why.
I think it really cool if you could design it backwards
from the hands, you make a modular.
Do you need this?
And then just create what you need.
I'd love to get into that stuff.
I'd love to have a wall of 3D printers.
That's my goal.
Nine of them, perfectly in a row.
They could just spool them all day long.
What I would like to see from hacking?
I guess, as I mentioned a couple times.
The hacker movement or the maker movement
as well is really incredible.
I just hope that our kids don't get too wrapped up
in cellphones and they still say hey, we can get out there,
and build some stuff.
Although, if you think about it.
If I go back to the 80s, my parents were probably like,
"Oh Ben, he's too wrapped up in his video games.
"He's not going to do anything besides video games."
But then video games can act as a gateway drug so to speak.
It gets you excited in other things.
So hopefully there's some cool stuff there.
I think what's really cool was the Nintendo switch label
or whatever that cardboard thing was.
Have you seen that?
That's really cool.
Okay, here's your electronics.
Here's how we get that into the real world
so hopefully we can see more stuff like that.
What hacking could do better?
Well I mean it's a lot different than the 80s where
there's a stigma about hackers.
Everyone was trying to launch nukes or whatever.
Obviously that's not what it's about.
Hopefully that's what it's not about
but yeah, maybe get more people excited about it.
Have people not be complacent with their electronics
like oh my gosh, my selfie camera doesn't work.
Okay figure something out.
Or make it better yourself,
don't rely on the super corporations to do it for you
because they're thinking about what a billion people want,
not what one person wants.
But again, a billion people didn't want a car
until someone is like, "Hey, your horse sucks."
So you just never know until you do it.
Yes, so I guess where do we go from here.
I would say yeah, just hope more people can hack,
hope more people think about that stuff
that was the whole reason I did the show
was I wanted to inspire people to think
about things differently.
It's pretty insane now looking at it
'cause I'll have someone come up and say,
"Hey, I started watching your show then I went to college.
"I got a degree and now I'm an engineer."
And I'm like, oh God, it show had been on that long.
It's insane to think about.
So yeah, that's pretty much it for slides
and all of my random stuff about welding in Cuba.
I wonder where they even get welding rods?
I just find it fascinating all right
'cause it's like you're on,
it's always like a deserted island.
Danger Will Robinson.
Like where do you get stuff?
Yeah, so I guess maybe like 10 minutes
of questions and answers and that will wrap it up.
But thanks for coming.
(audience applauding)
Joe.
- [Joe] What are some of your preferred tools
for your modeling and mechanical 3D printing side of things?
- Well, Element 14 distributes Autodesk,
so we've been using Autodesk's Fusion 360 a lot.
There are some limitations with it,
but I've been more or less happy with it.
I use to do everything in two dimensions
but obviously three is better.
Although I still lay out things in two dimensions
'cause sometimes that's all you need
especially when your machines are two dimensional.
Especially like laser cutters.
- [Man] Do you (indistinct talking).
You said you were (indistinct talking)?
- There's other solutions.
A lot of people use Blender.
You can use Tinkercad, OpenSCAD.
There's a lot of ways to do it.
There are a lot of free solutions
because I think again, what a lot of companies are doing.
They're trying to get the maker movement
into their products.
Think about Ardweno was a great Trojan horse
for at-mail or whatever companies owns it now.
Yes, sir.
- [Man] Everything is becoming more and more defined
to be (mumbles).
- Yeah.
- [Man] Do you think that helps
makes the (mumbles)?
- Well I would say it hurts it.
I was trying to fix my phone a couple weeks ago,
and it's embarrassing I couldn't do it.
I would think I would be able to do it.
Maybe I'm just out of touch or something.
They do it for a reason because they make it look sexy,
screws aren't sexy.
You get through it, it's all screws.
But yeah, you shouldn't have to break your phone
to get into it, but that's a problem.
That's what's happening right now
with video game consoles and televisions.
These stupid cell phones have basically taken over
'cause it's like we can sell someone
a $600 piece of electronics every two years
verses a $600 television every 10 years.
And these things basically making
these things fragile pieces of crap
have basically addicted the manufacturers
into basically having some that can't be repaired.
But it really bugs me
because what happens to all this stuff.
Let me talk about AOL disk for crying out loud.
We're gonna be able to make a moon out of these eventually.
I always think someday I bet we're gonna have
to mine our own garbage.
Yeah, that would be a good futuristic movie.
So I find it discouraging especially
because this is like the primo de facto technology
that everyone has now.
It's not even like a laptop you can take apart,
but it's too bad.
And certainly you can't hand solder.
It's not like 40 years ago, I could make an expansion card
from an Apple II, you can't do that by hand here.
Anyone else?
Yeah, a few minutes, yes.
- [Man] So when you do those one hand game controllers.
- Yep.
- [Man] How do you test them and are they ambidextrous?
- So what we do is we have a left and right handed model
version of it so it's not ambidextrous.
As far as testing goes,
I usually just plug it into a Windows computer
and go into the menu.
I use to test it on Xbox hardware
but I'm always worried that I'm gonna accidentally rent
an Adam Sandler movie by pushing buttons randomly.
- [Man] You test them yourself?
- Yes, I test them myself and I'm actually designing
a new version now that's for the PlayStation 4,
which is something I've always wanted to do
but hopefully when I'm done with the show,
I'll actually have some time to do it.
And in that case I'm actually modeling it
as a right handed unit because I'm right handed.
It's easier for me to test,
and then once I have it all designed.
I'll just mirror it in Fusion or whatever
and then boom have both versions.
And then it will just be a case of which one
I tell the printer to print.
But that is a problem as product because yes,
not only do you have a niche product,
but you have two versions of it.
And then even worse, well actually no it's true
because if you think about people
who are left handed verses right handed.
There is way more righties than lefties,
so companies they do discriminate
against left handed people.
But then when you get into an injury,
it is often, they usually lose their left hand
because most people are right handed, they protect this one.
So I have seen statistically that you usually end up with
more right handed controllers because the less dominant hand
basically gets ruined more often.
Anyone else?
Yes, sir.
- [Man] What's your favorite failure?
- My favorite failure?
- [Man] Yes.
- I would say probably, I made a Commodore 64 laptop
around 10 years ago, not the one that was pictured,
which is important.
Some guy commissioned it.
He's like, "I want a Commodore 64 laptop."
And I was working on it forever,
and I was having so much trouble with it.
I was probably about 31 at the time,
and I was thinking, oh this sucks, this sucks
and I kept trying to make it work.
And eventually I'm like, this sucks.
And so I took all the designs and I just threw them out.
I took the case, I think I gave it away at a show like this
and I just started over.
And then when I started it over, I came up with that
which I think worked out really well.
And it was a good lesson for me
'cause well I'm also in film production.
I know it's completely off topic,
but sometimes if an idea sucks.
Instead of trying to make it work,
you just need to cut it off and start over.
So that's why I felt the Commodore 64 failure
was good because it taught me to start over.
I've had some other projects that I would consider failures
that I didn't learn from or I just didn't care for,
so I wouldn't list those as well.
But the Commodore was a good failure.
Yes sir, behind him.
- [Man] What is the most costly project that you in your
(indistinct talking)?
Either by time or money or goal that didn't go anywhere?
Should that deter me, is that just because I'm a student
and I don't have it as a full time job?
Is that something, where I am, I've done some projects.
I don't know I guess I'm asking two questions in one.
- So it sounds like you're in the middle
of an expensive project and you're not sure
if it's gonna work?
- [Man] Yeah, that's what--
- Okay.
- [Man] I have ideas that I haven't started--
- Okay.
- [Man] I don't wanna start anything--
- Oh, so you don't wanna start it
and basically sink an expenditure
that you can't recoup or justify?
- [Man] (indistinct talking) later in life,
maybe a few years when I graduate.
- What is it?
- [Man] I don't know yet, I have a few things.
- Okay.
- [Man] It's just everything (mumbles) is expensive.
- Well, when I started out.
I definitely started small.
I talked about that Atari portable that I made,
and I remember driving back from Best Buy
with this $190 pocket TV in my car seat next to me
thinking, oh man did I just waster $190 on this?
- [Man] Yeah.
- What if it doesn't work out
and then I've made God know how much money since then?
Well IRS knows, I suppose but--
(audience laughing)
There's always an inherent risk,
but you should manage that risk.
$190, even back then when I was making $25,000
a year or whatever.
It wasn't like it was gonna bankrupt me or anything
but I would have been pissed
if $190 got flushed down the drain.
I have a pixel phone died and I got pissed about $600
going down the drain.
- [Man] You gotta balance,
so maybe this is (mumbles) should go in there.
- Yes, I would say that.
It's like investing or gambling.
Don't gamble more than you can afford to lose.
And I would say if you're getting started out in hacking
and I still wreck stuff
and I certainly wreck more things in the past.
So I would say yeah, start small.
We mentioned video games.
Video games, a lot of those consoles are fairly cheap,
and so if you wanna get into stuff.
Find something that's cheap and plentiful
and cut your teeth there.
Learn the ropes there and then move onto the more expensive
things where failure could be detrimental.
- [Man] Thank you.
- Got a few more minutes right 45.
- [Man] Yeah, a couple more.
- Couple more before they get the hook.
Anyone else?
Yes sir.
- [Man] What's next?
- Nice shirt.
- [Man] What's next for the Raspberry Pi or Element 14?
- So they did a Hack like Heck challenge,
so basically since I'm leaving.
They're finding new content creators.
- [Man] No, what's next for the device or (mumbles)?
- Oh, the Raspberry Pi portable device that we made?
I'm working in trying to basically come up
with a carrier board for that,
so we can sell it as a kit.
I know Element 14 doesn't like the Raspberry Pi Zero
because it's a $5 device that does not cost $5.
Like movie pass but so basically
it would be a carrier board.
It would have the lipo charger, the what's it called?
The USB hub basically all that stuff we've built on one PCB.
You plug into Raspberry Pi and you plug an LCD into it,
and you can approximate what we did on the show.
The thing I'm struggling with
is I'm not sure if we can make it as slim in this direction
as we did on the show if it's something that plugs together.
'Cause you see all those things
like those eight-fruit boards that plug into Raspberry Pi.
They add up in thickness really quick
whereas the thing that Felix and I built.
We actually built two more of them because we were so happy
with it because Element 14 will of course do a giveaway
of the one we built.
But Felix and I are we want our own.
That doesn't happen very often.
That we actually duplicate the project.
So actually next week is what I'm working on.
We're working on trying to figure out basically
a PCB that we can make as a kit.
So you can plug it in and very quickly
have your Raspberry Pi be a game system.
And of course I told them, everyone loves video games.
So if you make it like, oh it's a game
then people are more excited about it
than just some carrier board.
Do you have time for one more or should we leave.
- [Man] You could do one more.
- One more question, yes sir.
- [Man] What would you say is the most important skill
to get started, anywhere form soldering the circuit board,
making a 3D printing?
- Soldering.
- [Man] Soldering?
- Yes, yeah I started when I was 10, I think,
and I got away from it for awhile,
and I would say I'm still learning.
But you can solder poorly and it will work,
but it's better that you solder well.
Especially if you're trying to run a bunch of wires
everywhere because the thickness and massive wires
is really easy to forget about
when you're building something.
Not everything is a great computer
but you're like, oh crap, I got all the stuff here
but I don't have any room for the wires.
Then you're like I have to start over.
Like when we did the Hack like Heck challenge.
Actually we're sitting there judging everyone's wiring.
Actually when I was hiring assistants,
everyone had to bring in a soldering example,
and I totally judged them for it.
All right, well thanks for coming.
(audience applauding)
(uptempo music)