Well, this is it. The end of the decade. In a few days the 2010s will be behind us, and a lot of very smug people will start making jokes on social media about how we’re back in the “Roaring 20s” again. Only this time around there’s a lot more plastic, and drastically less bathtub gin. It’s still unclear as to how much jazz will be involved.

Around this time we always say the same thing, but once again it bears repeating: it’s been a fantastic year for Hackaday. Of course, we had our usual honor of featuring literally thousands of incredible creations from the hacking and making community. But beyond that, we also bore witness to some fascinating tech trends, moments that could legitimately be called historic, and a fair number of blunders which won’t soon be forgotten. In fact, this year we’ve covered a wider breadth of topics than ever before, and judging by the record setting numbers we’ve seen in response, it seems you’ve been just as excited to read it as we were to write it.

To close out the year, let’s take a look at a few of the most popular and interesting stories of 2019. It’s been a wild ride, and we can’t wait to do it all over again in 2020.

A Bevy of New Boards

In June we saw the somewhat surprising release of the Raspberry Pi 4. Not that anyone doubted there would be a new entry into this monstrously popular (to the tune of 30 million units, apparently) line of Linux Single Board Computers (SBCs), of course. The surprise was in the timing: the Pi 3B+ had just been released in 2018, and in interviews conducted only a few months prior, Eben Upton was pretty noncommittal about the foundation’s plans for a successor.

As it turns out, this Pi might have needed a bit more time in the oven. After hackers started getting their hands on them, they started finding some pretty odd quirks. We’re not just talking about the (still baffling) decision to use dual micro HDMI ports either. There’s enough legitimate gripes around 2019’s Pi that many are sticking with the previous iteration until things settle down.

But the Raspberry Pi isn’t the only SBC game in town. It’s not even the only one with a cute “Pi” name, for that matter. We saw significant interest in the Atomic Pi, which delivered the power of a quad-core Intel Atom processor at a size and price not far from that of its berry-flavored peer. We’ve since featured a number of impressive modifications to the powerful board, but the discovery that the Atomic Pi was actually surplus hardware purchased from the now defunct Mayfield Robotics raised some valid questions about the long-term viability of the product.

Of course, no piece of hardware got us quite as excited as this year’s Hackaday Superconference Badge. Not only because it’s an exceptionally cool conference badge (something …read more

Source:: Hackaday