The Hackaday Prize is the greatest hardware competition on the planet. It’s the Academy Awards of Open Hardware, and over the last few years we’ve been doing it, we’ve seen literally tens of projects that have gone from an idea to a prototype to a finished project to a saleable product. It’s the greatest success story the Open Hardware community has.
Over the last eight months, we’ve been deep in the weeds with this year’s Hackaday Prize. It’s five challenges, with twenty winners per challenge. That’s one hundred projects that will make it to the semifinals in the hopes of becoming the greatest project this year. Only one will make it, but truthfully they all deserve it. These are the one hundred finalists in the Hackaday Prize, all truly awesome projects but only one will walk home with the Grand Prize.
Open Hardware Design Challenge
The Open Hardware Design challenge was the first round in this year’s Hackaday Prize, and the winners are among the best of the best. Twenty projects made it to the finals, ranging from a semiconductor lab in a garage to a 3D printer that uses HP ink cartridges.
Just check out Semiconductors @ Home, a project from [Nixie] — it’s a project trying to make sand blink. [Nixie] is building all the tools to make semiconductors at home. Being able to build a simple FET is amazing, and to do that you need a fume hood to contain the dangerous hydrofluoric acid, a vacuum chamber for sputtering deposition, and a fancy oven with a controlled atmosphere. These tools are [Nixie’s] entry in the design challenge. This isn’t your garden-variety hardware hacking; this is advanced hardware hacking.
[Carl Bugeja] built a motor out of a PCB. Over the last decade, the price of custom fabricated printed circuit boards has dropped precipitously, and that means anyone can experiment with copper foil and fiberglass. [Carl] figured that since you can put coils on a PCB, you could also make a motor. While we’re only looking at a 1 Watt motor here, this is a brushless motor made out of printed circuit boards. It’s amazing, you’ve never seen it before, and we have absolutely no idea how many uses people will find a use for this amazing technology.
Robotics Module Challenge
The Robotics Module Challenge was the second challenge in this year’s Hackaday Prize, and these twenty winners have shown themselves to be the tools we need to create a future of home robotics. Out of more than two hundred entries, these twenty are the best of the best.
For his winning entry to the Robotics Module Challenge, [Josh Starnes] is solving the problem of indoor robotic navigation. His project, IR QR Code Navigation, accomplishes the task with QR codes. Instead of unsightly blocks of pixels mounted to the wall, Josh is doing something different. …read more
Source:: Hackaday