The judging criterion is :
>>Does your project have a festive attitude?
>> is it innovative?
>> is your documentation complete?
I'll rate each hack on each criterion on a 0 - 5 scale (festive, innovative, documented)
Chris' Junkyard Lamp (4, 1, 2)
Ryan's DIY Mp3 Boombox (3, 2, 2)
Nicole's 'As Built' Plans for the P.A.C. (3, 2, 2)
Stephen's Compression Chuck for the lathe (1, 4, 2)
Stephen's Indestructible Boom Box (3, 3, 2)
Stephen's Boom Pack Hack (4, 3, 1)
Tom's CVS Videocam Hack (2, 1, 5)
Nick's Embedded Guitar pedal (2, 3, 2)
Ryan's Xbox Controller Hack (2, 1, 2)
Chad's Dam Hack (1, 2, 3)
3 of the hacks were unlike the rest and much harder to judge:
Nicole learned how to use AutoCAD to manipulate and "SolidConverterGX" to render designs, and produced something clearly useful. This is something that you could get a job doing, which puts you above most of us hackers ;-)
Chad's dam hack was a modification which I think required some civil engineering. The pictures do a good job of showing the area before and after. I understand that it was not possible to take a picture of the actual mod without dropping the camera in the water !
Stephen's Compression Chuck was hard to imagine in use without a picture of the lathe. Anytime someone makes a tool, they're innovating. The "festive" come in the end result, which were beautiful.
Of the audio hacks, Ryan's DIY Mp3 Boombox is the only one which lists all of the electrical components. It lacks an amplifier, which simplifies a lot but limits it "boom". (The web page calls itself "Xbox Controller hack") Battery access is still an issue.
Neither of Stephen's speaker setup described any of the electronics. There was one vague refrence to batteries and DC to DC converter. Some simple diagrams and specs, please.
Having done an embedded guitar effect hack myself, I had lots of questions that were not answered by Nick's documentation, like what turns off the battery power to the effect ? A derived curcuit diagram for the guitar (pre-hack) would go a long way, as guitars are wired in interesting ways.
Because I don't know my X-Box from my Play Station, I had trouble following Ryan's Xbox Controller Hack without a "before" picture. Just soldering an L.E.D. across 2 pins that have a voltage across them doesn't sound wise to me. This part was not documented well.
I give Tom's CVS Videocam Hack the higest rating for documentation because all of the parts were listed, and the crucial diagram included. The open source community here did most of the innovation here, while a solid state video recorder is festive through the movie you can make with it (Tom's selection was baseball). Don't bother to include the soldering iron in your parts list, you'll use it on the next project !
- Lyle