This is the sixth annual Holiday Competition from Project14. This year we decided to do something different from previous years. There's no shopping carts this time or gifts to gives. Instead we have 3 really big prizes of roughly equal value.
amgalbu won a 50 inch Picture Frame TV for for building a project that dazzled and awed us in the Work of Art project category with Santa Tracker. He built an ornament that displays Santa Claus position in realtime on a globe. The project uses a Nano 33 IoT to leverage the persistence of vision or retinal persistence. A strip of LED rotates fast enough to give your eyes the illusion of a "solid" globe. Finishing narrowly behind him (a vote that some would opine was too close to call!) was aspork42 with Holiday lights to brighten spirits. Moving away from someone that you are close to is never easy so when his good friend and neighbor was saddened by their daughter's announcement that she and her son were moving to Florida aspork42 did this project to lift their spirits.
Winning the award for the Most Festive Project, and therefore life of the party, was dougw with Star Twister. dougw will be rocking out to giant floor standing speakers and a premium bluetooth record player. Although they'll need to supply their own record player and floor standing speakers this time around; dubbie , guillengap , and ralphjy received first place votes for the Most Festive Category and would have made most deserving winners.
The Most Original Category was a dogfight between shabaz (who earlier disqualified himself and participated in the judging), DeltaPi , robogary , and Gough Lui . When the dust settled robogary emerged victorious with yet another Persistence of Vision project. His goal was to do a project that was nostalgic and artistic; highly visual, musical, entertaining, and inspirational. He does just that with the help of a Snoopy Christmas album, a couple of Arduinos, and a Raspberry Pi Pico. The reward for his project is an iPad Pro!
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This contest was very different from our usual contests as well as how are past holiday competitions were set up. In the end they produced some really amazing projects and hopefully you enjoyed them as much as I did.
I can't thank the member judges enough for volunteering and helping sort out the prizes. This was no easy task and I want to extend a special thanks to the following community judges: shabaz , JWx , Jan Cumps , aaryan2134 , genebren , dixonselvan , and kmikemoo ! Keep on rocking the community!
Without further ado here are your winners....
The Winners:
Most Original Project:
Art in Motion: Snoopy’s Christmas P.O.V. , singalong and Dogfight Animatronics by robogary
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"One of the most unique projects, on theme, creative and really exciting. Showing holiday messages from Snoppy on rotating center piece. The whole thing has been depicted wonderfully as well" - Community Member Judge
"Interesting show and visually well designed" - Community Member Judge
Most Festive Project:
Star Twister by dougw
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"Decorations are well-thought, visually pleasant and fitting into traditional array of Christmas decorations." - Community Member Judge
Work of Art Project:
Santa Tracker by amgalbu
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"Brilliant in both concept and presentation. Loved it!" - Community Member Judge
"Very neat. Made the effort to produce a spinning LED globe and use a microcontroller with WiFi to acquire data from an API to show Santa's position on the globe : ) Top marks for originality and effort I reckon. Code published. Schematic published." - Community Member Judge
The Runners Up:
The following projects received votes from our judges and are all worthy projects in each of the categories. Some projects received votes in other categories including some of the winners. Winners have been excluded from this list and only projects that received the most votes for a category are only listed in that category.
Most Original Project:
The N******o before Christmas: Upgrade Time! by shabaz
Project: Santa's little Helper by DeltaPi
"Original way of using face recognition for Christmas themed fun (detecting nice/naughty would-be present receivers) - by the way, here in Europe we have this winter some heating problems and as traditionally Santa Claus brings coal instead of presents to naughty kids, some co-workers of mine decided that this year it pays to be not-exactly-nice :)" - Community Member Judge
The Sa(d)nta Hotline by Gough Lui
"Didn't see that one coming. Santa does the original Python. Monty Python." - Community Member Judge
"Very original. This was more a 'system configuration' type of project, since it relied on ready-made software and ready-made devices connected to the phone network. Howerver it was a good walkthough showing how such phone systems can work. And what he did with it was certainly unique!" - Community Member Judge
Most Festive Project:
SANTA ONE (Simple And Neat Trembling Automata One) by dubbie
"This was the most confusing for me to decide. I feel both "SANTA ONE TWO THREE" and "Star Twister" are really exciting projects for the festival. But I felt the former was a well written project and made us feel going through that journey of making an exciting project. It comprised of three parts - a balancing santa, a musical train and rotating ornaments for a whole in one christmas package." - Community Member Judge
"A project with lights and movement, some of it stopped working but no easy way to find out why, because there is no circuit diagram, although Santa Two had a block diagram." - Community Member Judge
DIY Christmas Star by guillengap
"Electrical construction is simple - Arduino with relays (with some later added improvements) but final effect is nice and fitting into traditional array of Christmas decorations." - Community Member Judge
BLE Christmas Tree Lights - Neopixel Wiring by ralphjy
"Elegant execution. Music will complete the ensemble." - Community Member Judge
Work of Art Project:
Holiday lights to brighten spirits by aspork42
"The Heart of Christmas absolutely goes to Holiday lights to brighten spirits by aspork42. Humanity at its finest." - Community Member Judge
"Creative project that would certainly bring smiles to people's face. A great work of art and tech which is made well with good documentation." - Community Member Judge
"Those litopanes are beautiful" - Community Member Judge
Honorable Mention:
LED Christmas Tree Advent Calendar by Legoman
Musical LED Christmas Tree by ntewinkel
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