Custom projects

Decided to make a custom project? Awesome! Right this way.

Whatever that one project you've been thinking of doing forever - whether that be a custom 3D printer, a full mechanical keyboard, or something else - now's your chance to make that real

Before you go crazy with ideas though - please be resourceful! This is not a free money glitch. Hack Club is a financially limited non profit, and every dollar we can save together goes towards the next program.

Any questions? Join the #highway channel in slack!

Before starting your project, please read over the Project Guidelines and Submission Info pages so that you have an idea of what you're doing

Here's how to get started:

Make a new GitHub repository for it! This will be where you add your project
Start a journal by creating a file called JOURNAL.md and commit it
Make a pull request to add your repository to the Highway repo!
Start designing your project! Journal each day you work on it!
Submit your project

To add your project to the website, head on over to the submissions.yml in the site's repository and add the URL to your project

projects:
  - "https://github.com/Dongathan-Jong/SpotifyDisplay"
  - "your_repo_link"

As long as your PR doesn't have any conflicts, we'll merge it and your submission will be added to the project list! Other people will be able to see your journal & see what you're up to.

After that, you're done! You can move onto designing.

The gallery will unlock on May 23th, 2025.

Each project you design that is approved gets you 6 points, or 10 points if you build an extra advanced project (scrol to bottom)

On Journaling

This is the most important part of the whole process! Journaling your progress is how to keep track of how your project is going. Beyond that, it's also a way to tell a story and have something to look back at many years down the line.

At the top of your JOURNAL.md file, include this metadata:

---
title: "Your Project Name"
author: "Your name (name or slack username)"
description: "Describe your project in a short sentence!"
created_at: "2024-03-20"
---

Don't just journal your wins! It's much, much better to maintain a smaller, more consistent one every day - it'll capture a more realistic story to what things were really like. Fails are important

Journaling is mandatory to get your submission approved! Poor quality journals will be rejected.

The general formatting of every journal entry should look something like this in markdown:

# June 8th: Got the screen to work!

[actual journal content - what did you do?]

[insert pictures of what you're working on!]

**Total time spent: 2h**

Do NOT have:

Wall of timestamps with barely any descriptions
No images
Terrible formatting that's impossible to read
AI generated journal entries; anything written by AI will be automatically rejected

You can see what the optimal journal entry looks like here

Extra advanced projects - get up to 10 points & up to $350 USD

Most projects (keyboards, game consoles, custom devboards, etc) can all be built under $150 USD, and while fairly difficult, are still fairly achievable within a couple weeks.

Some projects though are above and beyond - a DIY 5-axis 3D printer, a go-kart from scratch, etc take significantly more time, require a larger budget, and are overall a lot harder to execute.

These projects should not be attempted unless you have some sort hardware experience in the past - even if it's just a starter project

If you think you have the idea & ability to execute:

Pitch your idea in #highway-pitstop with:

A very brief description of what it is
Rough BOM w/ costs
What specifically you would have to design & what the process would look like - KEEP IT VERY BRIEF, BULLET POINTS ONLY
If applicable, link a couple references of what you're thinking of
1-2 past projects you've made that gives you the confidence to pull this off
Why the complexity warrants 10 points

Even if the project would fit under $150, if it's particularly complicated (beyond the standard project guidelines) then you should still pitch it in pitstop! Worst case you get some feedback on your idea

Please format your pitch with bolded text, bullet points, etc to make it easier to parse

@alexren will respond with whether it's approved. Do not start if you are not approved