Hardware Lab

I loved the badge project idea and the add on. It was great to see so many people putting together a hardware project for the first time.

I was disappointed with the software side of the add on. In the welcome it was touted as 'a full game system emulator', but once I put it together there was no help to get me started with software and as I looked at the Propeller ecosystem it seemed like the hardware didn't match the expectations of the NES emulator files. There wasn't even software to help test all of the hardware provided. I expect that for people new to hardware this would be a brick wall.

The software that was provided was not complete. For example, I didn't see any source for the boot loader running on the EEPROM. There also wasn't any source for the BMP Loader project that shows pictures. There seems to be a bug related to the SD card that ends up with the data corrupted and the SD card needs to be reformatted. The community can't debug the problem because no source is available or we don't know where to find it.

The room was cramped. A bigger room with the same number of work stations would be nice.

Overall, though, great concept and very good execution.

The badge project was lots of fun and I enjoyed learning to solder. The people in the room were very helpful but the room was definitely crowded. I worked on mine during Friday's keynote but it was almost impossible to hear the speaker even though it was streaming into the room.