Meet Vinícius and Simon, young hackers from Youth Hacking 4 Freedom
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.
The Youth Hacking 4 Freedom 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 successfully ended 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.
Vinícius automated the process of star tracking showcasing, ability to
upcycle devices with his
Automatic Telescope, whereas Simon created a project with SHC
devices 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!
FSFE: 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?
Vinícius: 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.
Simon: My name is Simon. I am 15 years old living in
Germany. My hobbies are swimming and programming.
FSFE: What was your first experience with programming
and how did you start learning it? Was it with Free Software?
Simon: I started to learn programming during COVID,
when I bought myself a Raspberry Pi 4 and began experimenting with Arch Linux ARM. 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
Vinícius: 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.
FSFE: How and why did you decide to join YH4F? What do you like the most about the contest?
Vinícius: 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.
Simon: 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.
FSFE: Vinícius, how did you come up with your project
idea? What motivated you to do your project?
Vinícius: 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.
FSFE: Vinícius, is astronomy a long-standing passion of
yours or did the project stem from your interest in coding?
Vinícius: 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.
FSFE: Simon, what inspired your project idea? What was
the motivation behind choosing this particular project?
Simon: 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.
FSFE: Your project emphasises freedom for users. In
which specific ways do you think Free Software can empower users when
integrated into SHC devices?
Simon: 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.
FSFE: What were the main problems or challenges that
you both encountered during the programming phase?
Vinícius: 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 model
the trajectory of the stars.
Simon: 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.
FSFE: Did you work on your project alone?
Simon: Yes, I worked on it alone.
Vinícius: 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.
FSFE: 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?
Vinícius: 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.
FSFE: This sounds like a lot of work. We are truly
amazed by the effort you put into your project Vinícius.
Simon, your project includes both software and mechanical components.
What were the main challenges in making sure the software and hardware
work together?
Simon: The biggest challenge is figuring out how the
hardware is connected with one another and then adjusting the software
to fit the hardware.
An amazing and truely baffeling automated telescope
FSFE: How has participating in YH4F and working on
these projects affected you personally? What have you learned about
yourself through this experience?
Vinícius: 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.
Simon: I discovered that there are many people like me
that love to tinker with electronics and software.
FSFE: 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?
Simon: 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 Zigbee, 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.
FSFE: And last but not least, is there any kind of
advice that you would like to tell new Youth Hacking 4 Freedom
participants?
Vinícius: 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.
Simon: 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.
FSFE: Thank you Vinícius and Simon. We wish you the
best of luck with your future plans and a lot of success with your
projects!
The 2025 edition of Youth Hacking 4 Freedom will starton 01.01.2025. You can already
register now. Check out the YH4F website to find out all the details of
this competition or feel free to reach out to the organisers via mail!
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