On Wednesday afternoon 28 May the Helsinki Co-location Centre started to fill up with all kinds of hackers, students and professional programmers.
The Ell-i co-operative that is housed at the CLC organised a 48-hour hackathon on "Bare Metal" programming. For the following 2 days and nights the venue was set for serious hacking of yet unknown targets.
The participants were presented with a collection of really small computers, smaller than a Raspberry Pi, to program and electronise their own design targets without using any existing operating system as basis. As the time was running short, the most succesful makers slept only a few short power naps and mostly programmed their creations.
Achievements were great, but really the best goal was to cobble together a whole lot of individuals interested in programming for ultra small systems and generating a positive buzz about it. Resulting discussions went hyperbolic as did the creations. To mention only few, a fully software polyphonic sound synthesizer and a very cool direct conversion software defined radio receiver.
More photos available on flickr.
