The Experimenting with Waterproof Connectors Design Challenge, sponsored by Amphenol, and featuring a custom connector KIT and a waterproof enclosure provided By Hammond Manufacturing has officially concluded. We had 7 participants, including the Grand Prize Winner and Runner-up Winner. Our judges have read the final blog reports and the associated blogs. We tallied up the final scores, and element14 is ready to announced the winners. In this blog, I'll review the program (for newcomers) and announce the winners with a summary and links to their work.
Why are waterproof connectors so important?
Many electrical and electronic systems are used in rugged environments where contact with water, sprays, and moisture can impede normal system operation. Ensuring electrical safety and signal integrity when operating in these tough environments requires electronics being housed in watertight enclosures and interconnected by cables terminated with waterproof connectors. In these environments, panel-mounted waterproof connectors achieve a watertight seal preventing water from leaking into the enclosure.
What is the Experimenting with Waterproof Connectors Design Challenge?
element14's Experimenting with Waterproof Connectors is a hands-on competition for electronic engineers. The participants had the opportunity to receive a waterproof connector kit from our sponsor FREE of charge. They also received a single board computer from element14 and a watertight enclose from Hammond Manufacturing. They were challenged to conduct experiments and blog about what they learned. Their blogs would be judged for technical merit and creativity. The top two participants would receive some great prizes.
Who are the Winners of the Experimenting with Waterproof Connectors Design Challenge?
Our seven participants conducted experiments and produced 40 blogs that described waterproof connector builds, setting up the electronics in a watertight enclosure and their experimental results. Our judges have made their decisions, so let's meet the winners!
Grand Prize Winner of the Experimenting with Waterproof Connectors Challenge: ralphjy (final report blog)
The Challenge: This challenge caught his interest because he lives in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, USA) and they get lots of rain during the year, so outdoor projects need to be weather-resistant. In general IP65 is sufficient for his typical use cases (outdoor sensors and controllers), but this challenge presented an opportunity to try a fully waterproof enclosure system with higher power electronics than he normally uses. There were two aspects of the enclosure and associated hardware that he tested: (1) Is the enclosure with the connectors installed waterproof? Check this a shallow submersion test. (2) Is it practical to operate a moderate power (~6 W) SBC in a sealed enclosure without a heatsink. Check this with a thermal test.
The Results: This was a particularly challenging to document because there were so many 
elements and a ton of data. The thermal testing showed a practical average power limit of 2.5W for using the Latte Panda without a heatsink. This was adequate for using it with general purpose sensors, but more processor intense operations like running ML models would probably require adding a heat sink. The Hammond enclosure was easy to work with. It was very sturdy and well designed with good fit and function. The customization of the connector cutouts was very precise. The Amphenol connectors in general worked very well with the exception of the RJ45 back-shell which would have benefitted from a better boot design. Connectors are certainly more robust than using pass through cable glands, but they do require a lot more work in wiring. Using connectors has a clear advantage in portability by not having captive cables, so that probably justifies the additional work. Thanks to E14 and Hammond and Amphenol for the challenge kit hardware.
You can read all of his blogs here.
Runner Up Prize Winner of the Experimenting with Waterproof Connectors: jwx: Monitoring station for Underground Cold Storage (final report blog)
The Challenge: Many different use cases involve exposure to environmental conditions much worse than usually found in home/office settings - be it moisture, dust or temperature variations. One example is agriculture - when storage of some food types require low temperatures and high humidity levels. To better understand problems related to maintaining hardware in high-humidity conditions he entered this design challenge with the idea of creating test bench consisting of dedicated sensors put into enclosures with different protection levels, then expose them to the hostile environmental conditions and gather information about changes of parameters inside. Ultimately, his goal was to check if installing rich set of provided connectors 
negatively influences enclosure parameters - in theory every additional connector is a possible weak point where humidity can enter into the enclosure.
The Results: During this experiment, he measured moisture buildup inside Hammond enclosure fitted with six Amphenol connectors. Both immersion test and extended time internal humidity measurements showed that Hammond enclosure and Amphenol connector set exceed my expectations - despite no covers installed on connector external parts there was no detected water leak during the submersion test. Also air moisture intrusion test placed this setup even ahead of fully sealed IP65 enclosure (that I frankly didn't expected considering both it's bigger size - implying longer gasket surface and six additional possible weak points in form of installed connectors and their gaskets). Considering that most of the moisture intrusion seems to be connected with failing gaskets when pressure buildup is present (during temperature variations - for example day/night operation), there is a possibility of improvement by installing pressure compensation cap then repeating the test.
You can read all of his blogs here.
I'd like to thank all the element14 members who participated in this challenge:
charlieo21: Weather Station
cristi: How much can it take?
dougw: Sub-Surface WebCam
fyaocn: Robust Extensible Eye
Here are some more images:
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Last Word: A Big Thank You to Our Judges!
We'd like to thank Top Members Don Bertke and Shabaz for judging the Experimenting with Waterproof Connectors Challenge! Their input on the projects was invaluable to our final decisions.
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