Merge pull request 'adding YH4F interview' (#4668) from news-20241211-yh4f into master
All checks were successful
continuous-integration/drone/push Build is passing
All checks were successful
continuous-integration/drone/push Build is passing
Reviewed-on: #4668
This commit is contained in:
commit
35d2f17a2d
413
fsfe.org/news/2024/news-20241211-01.en.xhtml
Normal file
413
fsfe.org/news/2024/news-20241211-01.en.xhtml
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,413 @@
|
||||
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
|
||||
<html newsdate="2024-12-11">
|
||||
<version>1</version>
|
||||
|
||||
<head>
|
||||
<title>Meet Vinícius and Simon, young hackers from Youth Hacking 4 Freedom</title>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
|
||||
<body>
|
||||
|
||||
<h1>Meet Vinícius and Simon, young hackers from Youth Hacking 4 Freedom</h1>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
The 3rd edition of Youth Hacking 4 Freedom (YH4F) has officially
|
||||
concluded, celebrating the impressive talents of young European
|
||||
developers. Two of the participants in the 2024 edition are sharing
|
||||
insights about their projects and experiences: Vinícius developed an
|
||||
automatic telescope while Simon worked on bringing Free Software on the
|
||||
SHC devices.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<figure>
|
||||
<img src="https://pics.fsfe.org/uploads/original/6e/c2/9ced0e9d41702570bf6e0ce0399d.jpg"
|
||||
alt="picture with different pieces to build a led sign with the logo of Youth Hacking for Freedom, among them two plastic boards with the logo, a led string, a usb type c cable and stickers"/>
|
||||
</figure>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
The <a href="https://yh4f.org">Youth Hacking 4 Freedom</a> contest is a
|
||||
competition organised by the Free Software Foundation Europe that
|
||||
encourages young Europeans to work on a personal technical project.
|
||||
After six months of programming, the competition <a
|
||||
href="/news/2024/news-20241027-01.html">successfully ended</a> last
|
||||
October with an inspiring award ceremony weekend. This unique
|
||||
programming competition is more than just a contest: it's an opportunity
|
||||
for young talents to showcase their creativity, learn new skills, and
|
||||
contribute to their community.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
Vinícius automated the process of star tracking showcasing, ability to
|
||||
upcycle devices with his <a
|
||||
href="https://codeberg.org/Batsvini/Automatic_Telescope_YH4F2024">
|
||||
Automatic Telescope</a>, whereas Simon created a <a
|
||||
href="https://gitlab.com/1337Misom/openshc-external"> project with SHC
|
||||
devices</a> because of the freedom of choosing his own project. In this
|
||||
interview, we will learn more about them and their projects with
|
||||
different approaches but similar spirit!
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="question">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>FSFE:</strong> Hi Vinícius! Hi Simon! First of all,
|
||||
congratulations to both of you for your participation in the third
|
||||
edition of YH4F! Could you please briefly introduce yourselves and tell
|
||||
us what you like to do before we delve into your projects?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>Vinícius:</strong> My name is Vinícius Carrijo Tambascia and I’m
|
||||
17 years old. I was born in Brazil and moved to Sweden at the age of 10.
|
||||
My hobbies are looking at the stars with the telescope, playing tennis
|
||||
and skateboard when the weather is good, and also to make projects with
|
||||
software and hardware.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>Simon:</strong> My name is Simon. I am 15 years old living in
|
||||
Germany. My hobbies are swimming and programming.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="question">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>FSFE:</strong> What was your first experience with programming
|
||||
and how did you start learning it? Was it with Free Software?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>Simon:</strong> I started to learn programming during COVID,
|
||||
when I bought myself a Raspberry Pi 4 and began experimenting with <a
|
||||
href="https://archlinuxarm.org/"> Arch Linux ARM</a>. For me, Free
|
||||
Software was there from the beginning. I tried to compile obscure
|
||||
programs that only met one requirement, but by fixing bugs and reading
|
||||
their code, I gained a lot of experience and knowledge about programming
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>Vinícius:</strong> My first experience with programming was with
|
||||
a Free Software website called Scratch. Scratch allows you to make games
|
||||
and animations using blocks as code. It’s relatively easy to use and it
|
||||
teaches the concept of programming.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="question">
|
||||
<p><strong>FSFE:</strong> How and why did you decide to join YH4F? What do you like the most about the contest?</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>Vinícius:</strong> I first heard about this competition from my
|
||||
parents' friends. I got interested in this competition because I never
|
||||
did anything like this before and I also wanted to challenge my skills
|
||||
to see what I could learn and achieve.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>Simon:</strong> I joined YH4F last year because it was the only
|
||||
competition in which you could do whatever you want, and it was also one
|
||||
of the few competitions where younger people could participate.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="question">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>FSFE:</strong> Vinícius, how did you come up with your project
|
||||
idea? What motivated you to do your project?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>Vinícius:</strong> A month before joining this competition, I
|
||||
got a small telescope from my grandparents. I started using it a lot but
|
||||
I did have issues trying to point at a star that wasn’t visible to the
|
||||
naked eye. I knew this problem would be solved with an automatic
|
||||
telescope but they are much more expensive. Therefore I thought I could
|
||||
make my own automatic telescope for this competition. Before coming to
|
||||
this final idea, I had thought of many other options such as games,
|
||||
automatic watering systems for plants, and remote control planes.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="question">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>FSFE:</strong> Vinícius, is astronomy a long-standing passion of
|
||||
yours or did the project stem from your interest in coding?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>Vinícius:</strong> I always had a certain level of interest in
|
||||
astronomy but it wasn’t a long standing passion. The telescope helped me
|
||||
to gain even more interest in astronomy.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="question">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>FSFE:</strong> Simon, what inspired your project idea? What was
|
||||
the motivation behind choosing this particular project?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>Simon:</strong> I received these devices from a relative, who
|
||||
switched to a different smart home system after the shutdown of the the
|
||||
one they were using. So I tried to get them up and running in offline
|
||||
mode but the encryption keys, used for pairing and communicating with
|
||||
the end devices, were not saved from the previous owner.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<figure>
|
||||
<img src="https://pics.fsfe.org/uploads/original/ed/ad/2f9a9665d4e0bf609be720f02d30.jpg" alt="picture of a chip" />
|
||||
</figure>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="question">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>FSFE:</strong> Your project emphasises freedom for users. In
|
||||
which specific ways do you think Free Software can empower users when
|
||||
integrated into SHC devices?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>Simon:</strong> The main goal of my project is to get end
|
||||
devices to use an open standard for communicating. Additionally, I want
|
||||
to release all software that I write for them so that if I lose interest
|
||||
or they break, other people can try to fix any issues/bugs still present
|
||||
in the software.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="question">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>FSFE:</strong> What were the main problems or challenges that
|
||||
you both encountered during the programming phase?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>Vinícius:</strong> I had problems throughout the whole process
|
||||
of making the project. I started by making the hardware and the
|
||||
mechanical part of the telescope. I spent a lot of time coming up with
|
||||
ideas on how to move the telescope and all of my original ideas didn’t
|
||||
work. Halfway through the competition I managed to move the telescope up
|
||||
and down by itself using a system that involved a rope and a motor. The
|
||||
next part was to make the telescope move horizontally by itself, however
|
||||
this part was much more challenging. I tried so many different ways but
|
||||
nothing worked until the end of May. By then I actually had a telescope
|
||||
with all the mechanics and hardware working but the problem was that I
|
||||
had less than a month for the actual coding period. Time management was
|
||||
a big problem here because I spent a lot of time on the building phase
|
||||
and little on the programming one. During the programming phase, I
|
||||
didn’t know how I was going to do it. I wanted to connect the Arduino
|
||||
[board] to astronomy software (like Google Maps but for stars) to get
|
||||
the live coordinates of the star you want to track, however I simply
|
||||
didn't know how to do that. I tried but got nowhere. Instead I came up
|
||||
with an idea to track the stars using a bunch of mathematical equations
|
||||
that <a
|
||||
href="https://codeberg.org/Batsvini/Automatic_Telescope_YH4F2024">model
|
||||
the trajectory of the stars</a>.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>Simon:</strong> Mainly, learning how Linux works under the hood,
|
||||
especially building my own "OS" using build-root, was a significant
|
||||
challenge. Another big problem was that missing documentation for the
|
||||
hardware, which meant that I had to figure out all connections to other
|
||||
peripherals on my own.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="question">
|
||||
<p><strong>FSFE:</strong> Did you work on your project alone?</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p><strong>Simon:</strong> Yes, I worked on it alone.</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>Vinícius:</strong> I did work on my project alone but I had some
|
||||
help. My school helped me with the project by allowing me to use their
|
||||
3D printer machine. I could have not done the project without a 3D
|
||||
printer. I also had some indirect help from my parents' friends as we
|
||||
discussed ideas for building the telescope.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="question">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>FSFE:</strong> As far as we understood, Vinícius, you have
|
||||
developed software to follow the movement of the stars in the sky. How
|
||||
did you do that?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>Vinícius:</strong> I tracked the path of the start by coming up
|
||||
with equations that could model the star based on its current position.
|
||||
The path of the star around the sky is mainly caused by the Earth's
|
||||
rotation around its axis and the sun. This is only true for the stars
|
||||
very far away unlike the planets in our solar system.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="question">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>FSFE:</strong> This sounds like a lot of work. We are truly
|
||||
amazed by the effort you put into your project Vinícius.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
Simon, your project includes both software and mechanical components.
|
||||
What were the main challenges in making sure the software and hardware
|
||||
work together?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>Simon:</strong> The biggest challenge is figuring out how the
|
||||
hardware is connected with one another and then adjusting the software
|
||||
to fit the hardware.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<figure>
|
||||
<video style="align:center" width="100%" crossorigin="crossorigin" controls="controls">
|
||||
<source media="screen and (min-device-width:1000px)" type="video/mp4; codecs="avc1.42E01E, mp4a.40.2"" src="https://download.fsfe.org/videos/yh4f/automatic%20telescope%20YH4F%20vinicius.mp4">
|
||||
</source>
|
||||
<source media="screen and (min-device-width:1000px)" type="video/webm; codecs="vp9, opus"" src="hhttps://download.fsfe.org/videos/yh4f/automatic%20telescope%20YH4F%20vinicius.webm">
|
||||
</source>
|
||||
</video>
|
||||
<figcaption>
|
||||
An amazing and truely baffeling automated telescope
|
||||
</figcaption>
|
||||
</figure>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="question">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>FSFE:</strong> How has participating in YH4F and working on
|
||||
these projects affected you personally? What have you learned about
|
||||
yourself through this experience?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>Vinícius:</strong> Working on this project has helped me to
|
||||
develop my coding skills, but most importantly it has shown me that I
|
||||
can do more complicated projects than I originally thought. At the
|
||||
beginning of the project, I doubted myself that I could do something so
|
||||
advanced, but in the end, I realised that anything is possible with a
|
||||
lot of dedication and effort. Nothing goes according to plan, but we can
|
||||
still go around it and reach the goal.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>Simon:</strong> I discovered that there are many people like me
|
||||
that love to tinker with electronics and software.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="question">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>FSFE:</strong> Do you think you will continue working on your
|
||||
project and what would be some next steps you would like to take? Are
|
||||
you planning to improve the documentation so that more people can reuse
|
||||
your projects?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>Simon:</strong> I will definitely continue to work on this
|
||||
project, but I will probably stop developing the Linux port because the
|
||||
hardware in the central devices is very slow and has no real use any
|
||||
more. However, the next step will be to design custom PCBs for the end
|
||||
devices and use ESP32s to create a replacement board that uses <a
|
||||
href="https://csa-iot.org/">Zigbee</a>, an open standard, instead of the
|
||||
closed standard they have used so far. Another reason for switching to
|
||||
Zigbee is that I recently switched to Zigbee for my home automation and
|
||||
don't want multiple different communication standards that may not work
|
||||
after 10 years. I will definitely document the process for developing
|
||||
the new PCBs and also share other information I still have for the
|
||||
central devices.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="question">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>FSFE:</strong> And last but not least, is there any kind of
|
||||
advice that you would like to tell new Youth Hacking 4 Freedom
|
||||
participants?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>Vinícius:</strong> Time management is very important. If you're
|
||||
thinking of making a project that involves hardware, then make sure that
|
||||
the building period doesn’t take all of your time because the main focus
|
||||
of this competition is the software. I believe I could have made better
|
||||
software if I had spent less time on the building part and more on the
|
||||
programming part.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="answer">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>Simon:</strong> I think you should always just try to do your
|
||||
best. Even if you don't win, you will still make friends and have fun in
|
||||
the process.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
<div class="question">
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<strong>FSFE:</strong> Thank you Vinícius and Simon. We wish you the
|
||||
best of luck with your future plans and a lot of success with your
|
||||
projects!
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
|
||||
<tags>
|
||||
<tag key="front-page"/>
|
||||
<tag key="news">News</tag>
|
||||
<tag key="interview">Interview</tag>
|
||||
<tag key="yh4f">Youth Hacking 4 Freedom</tag>
|
||||
<tag key="yh4f-project">Youth Hacking 4 Freedom - Project</tag>
|
||||
</tags>
|
||||
|
||||
<discussion href=""/>
|
||||
<image url="https://pics.fsfe.org/uploads/original/6e/c2/9ced0e9d41702570bf6e0ce0399d.jpg"
|
||||
alt="picture with different pieces to build a led sign with the logo of Youth Hacking for Freedom, among them two plastic boards with the logo, a led string, a usb type c cable and stickers"/>
|
||||
|
||||
</html>
|
Loading…
Reference in New Issue
Block a user