Project14 | You Decide the Next Monthly Project Competition!

Here are two my ideas for upcoming contests:

- device based on analog electronics,

- low power device e.g. we could create electronic eco-marathon where win device which works on the same battery the longest time

I also previously suggested a low power device theme and the contest idea is great. However, it depends on what kind of low power It might end up with a contest running for years, maybe even decades

Yes i agree with you. But for this contest we should focus on reasonable duration. So, everything depends on contest conditions e.g.:

- device which is participating in contest must use battery with size 500mAh,

- we need think about task for which way of resolving should have influence in power usage and can be solved in many different ways,

- device should report solution to server.

Wins this device which have a biggest number of properly solved tasks and works on battery a longest time.
What do you think about it ?

Project14 was designed to be for experienced and un-experienced, and featured a simple theme.

The judging is decided on based on the content and it's appeal to a large degree.

Once you starting getting into this sort of detail, it's getting closer to a Design Challenge

Low Power

As you said, unless there are specifics, then it could run for years.

Already I can see gains by choosing a few 500 mAH batteries and testing for the one that exceeds the specs .....

I was thinking that something that ran from 2x AAA batteries, but what sort of task becomes the problem.

You can make an Arduino run for months, however if it's waking up and doing the task once every hour, it is hardly real time monitoring.

There has been a few low power 'competitions' run in the past, with some surprising results.

Cheers

ark

Ok, I agree with you. Even when we create some rules for this low power contest it will not fit to general idea of monthly theme. As you mention it will be design challenge. What about theme with analog device ? It gives user a lot of degrees of freedom e.g. you could create simple fm receiver or audio amplifier ?

Ok, I agree with you. Even when we create some rules for this low power contest it will not fit to general idea of monthly theme. As you mention it will be design challenge. What about theme with analog device ? It gives user a lot of degrees of freedom e.g. you could create simple fm receiver or audio amplifier ?

Think something around analog and low power consumption are both good theme choices for the next poll.

There was an analog fever theme in an earlier poll:

Monthly Theme Poll for July 2017

Could revisit this and do the other next time around.

Low power analog design is an interesting area.  Energy Harvesting though something like an EnOcean Kinetic Energy Harvesting Switch or a Haptic Feedback device would be items to look at.  Think back to the early Swiss Battery operated watches which were some of the original low powered analog devices.

Yes, or maybe a simple "Do something inspired by low energy" ?

That would be a low barrier so that anyone can enter.