Stories from past
Useless Project 🛠️
📍 Organizer: TinkerHub Foundation
Kerala's most audacious make-a-thon challenges students to create brilliantly impractical tech solutions. This 18-hour overnight event recently concluded with impressive results:
2,800 student participants
30+ venues across Kerala
600+ completed projects
85% project completion rate (a record high)
The event encourages participants to build anything using software, hardware, or both—as long as it's purposefully useless! This was TinkerHub's first major event since AI tools became widely available, and students embraced these technologies to enhance their creative process rather than being limited by them.
Post-event highlights include:
22 makers selected for the scholarship program (receiving 3.5k-5k monthly for 6 months)
10 best projects chosen and showcased
Prizes and goodies are available for claim through the Hub app until January 15th
The make-a-thon revealed several key insights: Hackathons are evolving with AI integration, creativity flourishes through teamwork, and hardware projects are experiencing a notable resurgence.
For detailed statistics and more information about this innovative program that turned 2,800 students' absurd ideas into reality, visit:
https://metabase.tinkerhub.org/public/dashboard/c107d021-0854-409c-825b-1107292cc139
Repair Cafe 🔧
📍 Organizer: Tinkerspace, Makergram
This event is inspired by the Repair Café movement (https://www.repaircafe.org/), but with a different focus.
Here, we are not guaranteeing that your device will be repaired. Instead, we aim to revive curiosity—the same curiosity that led many makers to open up their first RC car, radio, or broken gadget, just to see what’s inside.
Over time, many of us lose that curiosity to explore and experiment. This event is about reigniting that mindset by creating a space where people feel comfortable opening up their devices, understanding their components, and learning how they work.
Even if a gadget isn’t fixed, participants will walk away with a better understanding of electronics, repairability, and open hardware. It’s about learning, experimenting, and thinking about how things can be improved.
Repair Café Movement: https://www.repaircafe.org/
Right to Repair Movement: https://repair.org/
Basic Fixing Guide: https://ifixit.com/
Community Repair Initiatives: https://restartproject.org/
Open Hardware Community: https://openhardware.space/community/
Open Source Hardware Association: https://www.oshwa.org/
Open Hardware Projects & Designs: https://www.openhardware.io/
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