Hack Like Heck: Chris Foote

makerkaren — Tue, 03 Apr 2018 20:54:34 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by makerkaren on 4/3/2018 8:54:34 PM

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Audition Video
players.brightcove.net/.../index.html

YouTube Channel	Christopher Foote
Hack Like Heck Project Progress	COMING SOON!

Name: Chris Foote

Element14 Community member since: April 1, 2015

Notable projects: PiSwitch

More about the contestant:

Unedited version of the audition video: https://youtu.be/ZNcsGBApAuI

Check out my Build instructions:https://www.instructables.com/id/PiSwitch/

More about the contestant:

How did you first get into electronics?

My grandpa was an engineer, he built a 35" color T.V. and my mom as a result was the first on her block with a color T.V. I was about 7 and going through my grandpa's magazines and saw the coolest robot. The robot would lift and drop a pen in order to draw. It had bumper switches and you could program its movement in BASIC. I begged my mom for it but my grandpa was the one that ended up buying it for me. he helped me color code the resistors and taught me how to solder. He told me if I wanted to use it I had to build the whole thing myself. so at 7 years old I built my first robot with my grandpa's assistance color coding resistors (I'm color blind, now I use a multimeter), I fell in love with electronics and never looked back.

What are some of your more recent projects?

My most recent project has actually been a part of my job. I've been building and developing an rfid key tracking system. It's for car lots with shared inventory between locations. So that way even if a key isn't at the same facility as you, you can locate exactly where it is and who had it last. My favorite project I've worked on recently is my PiSwitch which is a raspberry pi game system that uses the switch controllers, that's the one in my video. It's had a bit of a following, I had a lot of fun developing a touch menu on boot that switched between one and two player mode, media center, and debian with the pixel xserver. I stripped all the usb, ethernet, gpio header, and everything from a pi 3, I'm building a much thinner PiSwitch that I hope will actually be compatible with the original Switch dimensions. Lastly, I'm also currently hacking an old ipad video to have a 2tb harddrive, and building a beautiful wood veneer with a highly polished case.

Updates:

Battery is in progress:

22000mah of wonderful charge, lets see how far I can get this week

Bowing Out:

Unfortunately life got hectic and due to family health issues I wasn't able to find time to work on this. So good luck to all you amazing hackers out there. I did manage to get everything completed but the last step of building a new case to work with my smaller foot print.

Want to know more? Ask in the comments below and tag cfoote7!

Tags: challenger_hlh