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Project14 | Winners Announcement: Strange Magic Brewing in Clustered MCUs!

Enter Your Electronics & Design Project for Your Chance to Win a Grand Prize for the craziest project or a $100 Shopping Cart!

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Congratulations to balearicdynamics for The Dancing Birds! You are the winner of the Grand Prize package (an Arduino MKR Kit, MKR2UNO Interface Adapter, Arduino Uno) and a $100 Shopping Cart!

Congratulations to dixonselvan for IoT Magical Wand, mahmood.hassan for tinyMonster AIO Robot , and sakshambhutani for Octopod: Smart Home IOT Project! You are First Place Winners of the $100 Shopping Cart!

"There is a real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment." - Norman Vincent Peale, Minister and Author of The Power of Positive Thinking

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” - Arthur C. Clarke, Sci Fi Writer, "Prophet of the Space Age", Co-wrote the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” - W.B. Yeats, Poet, Prose Writer, and Nobel Prize Winner for Literature

The Clustered MCUs competition from Project14 challenged you to do projects that involved combining two or more microcontrollers. It was also an especially tight competition with nearly every contender receiving grand prize votes. A special thanks to our community member judges for helping to decide the winners. To make things more fun, we included a grand prize for the craziest combination of two or microcontrollers. This went to balearicdynamics , who provided irrefutable proof that despite what you may have heard about "Angry Birds", birds don't always have to be angry, they can do other things such as laugh and dance! Creating an environment conducive to his experiment involve six micro servos, an Arduino Mega to sync the servers and control the birds, as well as a micro:bit to control the Arduino Mega.

The winners for this competition included an IoT Magical Wand that dixonselvan used to bring us back to our childhood belief that magic was no mere slight of hand. Magic was something that was indeed real, and it could be controlled by a magician with the aid of a wand. His IoT Magical Wand uses a magical combination of IFTTT, Arduino MKR 1000, Node MCU, Arduino Uno, thinger.io, and a relay module. The next first place prize goes to tinyMonster AIO Robot by mahmood.hassan. The idea was to build a STM32+ESP based platform with the capability to drive several types of mobile robot platforms using Autonomous, IrDa, RF, WiFi, Internet, or voice control. The final first place finisher was Octopod: Smart Home IOT Project by sakshambhutani . It uses NodeMCU (Arduino MKR 1010) , Arduino Uno, and a Raspberry Pi 3 to turn your home smart! The magic of Clustered MCUs doesn't end there. Jan Cumps demoed a TI Hercules Safety Microcontroller to demonstrate Functional Safety with Lockstep CPUs and jc2048 creates magic with music using The micro:bit Quartet. In honor of all this magic, here is some Electric Light Orchestra:

Without further adieu, here are you winners for the Clustered MCUs competition.....

The Grand Prize Winner

The Dancing Birds by balearicdynamics

This project was experiment to demonstrate that birds do not always have to be angry! As balearicdynamics sets out to prove, they can do something else! He hypothesizes that birds can dance and that it is in fact possible to set up some sort of a small ecosystem where they can dance comfortably. This project was chosen as the craziest project to use two or more microcontrollers. It uses 6 micro servos and an Arduino Mega 2560 to control the motion and sync the servos. The Arduino Mega was chosen because it has many pins, good speed, and a reasonable amount of programming memory and RAM. With the Arduino Mega in control of The Dancing Birds , who was going to control the Arduino Mega? balearicdynamics 's solution was none other than a BBC micro:bit!

For the grand prize I think the Dancing Birds is my favourite, inventive, funny and detailed write up. - Community Member Judge

Watching the video made my day. This is the type of project that would brighten your day. It would be easy enough to re-create with different objects that are meaningful to the creator. - Community Member Judges

Wonderful project with lots of care in its presentation, and documentation with photos and video too. This is a very inspiring project and I learned a lot from it. This is the level of inspiring projects I would like to be able to create, and aim to present it like that too one day, so really for me it was my favourite. - Community Members Judge

This was another creative project, where whimsy was on fully display. Sort of like Art runs into Engineering. - Community Member Judge

Creative, suited to the season, and fun. Loved it. - Community Member Judge

Also on Project14 from balearicdynamics :

The First Place Winners

IoT Magical Wand by dixonselvan

In a moment of revelry, dixonselvan muses about the halcyon days of childhood when you fantasized about being a magician who performed magic using a wand, using the phrase "abracadabra", and the magic would happen! Now as an adult, he set about making this fantasy a childhood reality with his IoT Magical Wand project. The IoT Magical Wand allows you to control your home appliances and it can be turned ON or OFF by rotating the magical wand or tilting it towards a particular direction. Proving that any sufficiently advanced technology is akin to magic, he uses IFTTT, Arduino MKR 1000, Node MCU, Arduino Uno, thinger.io, and relay module as the magical elements used to perform this particular brand of magic.

"IOT Magical Wand ...demonstrates good use for each of the different devices, it is clearly documented and has a good demo." - Community Member Judge

"Dixon made this project easy to follow. The blog is filled with lots of information for those who want to re-create it. All the coding is included as well as a list of hardware required. The video uploaded was very well made with a good demo of the finished project. Very fun to watch with lots of information. I really like this project. It was fun to follow and will be worth re-making. The wand can be used for many purposes that is only limited to your imagination." - Community Member Judge

"Dixon's getting great at presenting his projects in stunning ways - great descriptions, interesting to watch his videos and he makes it all sound really fun. He ought to be one of the Ben Heck show new presenters. He knows how to make his projects interesting, like Enrico." - Community Member Judges

A lot of good effort was shown in this project. - Community Member Judge

Also on Project14 by dixonselvan:

DIY LED Ferris Wheel in Cool LED Display

tinyMonster AIO Robot by mahmood.hassan

The idea behind tinyMonster AIO Robot from mahmood.hassan was to build a STM32+ESP based platform with the capability to drive several types of mobile robot platforms using Autonomous, IrDa, RF, WiFi, Internet, or voice control. The nucleao stm32 board is responsible for the motor control based on ESP/IrDa/RF/Autonomous mode. It is interfaced with ultrasonic rangefinder to detect obstacle. It is programmed so that if you come near to it, it will move away from you, maintaining a user fix distance regardless of current mode. ESP-12E is the acting web server host used to relay control information to NUCLEO board. ESP-12E works in both Station and AP mode, allowing it to be controlled through its own WiFi network, even if no external WiFi/Internet network is available.

Some solid assembly techniques for TinyMonster I particularly like the socketting of the ESP module. - Community Member Judge

This was a huge project, with good documentation and many blog posts. All source code appeared to be supplied in the blog post #3, and many detailed photos and videos through all the other blog posts. If I had one slight criticism, it would be that the presentation should be slightly more tidier, but all the content was there, and it was a lot of content. - Community Member Judge

"This was a nicely tested project, with a fun video. Several microcontrollers were used, the video was really nice, and there was a mobile app too as if the multiple MCUs were not enough! It was an impressive amount of work, and all source code is published." - Community Member Judge

"All the detail on the build and firmware using a microcontroller that is less familiar to many." - Community Member Judge

"A lot of good effort was shown in this project." - Community Member Judge

Also on Project14 by mahmood.hassan:

Octopod: Smart Home IOT Project by sakshambhutani

While there are many IoT home automation projects out there, sakshambhutani promises you that you haven't seen anything like this! The Octopod: Smart Home IOT Project was made using NodeMCU (Arduino MKR 1010) , Arduino Uno, and Raspberry Pi 3. Octopod allows you to make your home smart. Octopod sends you a variety of data like temperature, humidity, and gas quality inside your home. Octopod sends you notification whenever it detects any sort of motion inside and tells you when you need to water your plants. You can also control your appliances through a Blynk application on your smartphone. Octopod even enables true mood lighting! Octopod is equipped with a tiny little camera, which sends you live feed. This camera also uses artificial intelligence to detect humans in its sight and sends you their pictures. In addition, it features an RFID door locking system! Awesome, right?

This is a fun project that can be recreated quite easily. The blog is full of information and worth recreating for those interested in smart home projects. - Community Member Judge

"This was a nicely tested project, with a fun video. Several microcontrollers were used, the video was really nice, and there was a mobile app too as if the multiple MCUs were not enough! It was an impressive amount of work, and all source code is published." - Community Member Judge

Runner Up Winner

Project14 | Clustered MCUs: Functional Safety with Lockstep CPUs by Jan Cumps

As you can see, Jan Cumps project deservedly earned rave reviews and he won't be laving empty handed. He'll ibe receiving a swag package that includes a Raspberry Pi 3, a Graspio cloud add on, and whatever other goodies as we decide to throw in there. Few points separated the top 5 entries, and this earned vocal praise from many judges, so we're going to make sure he does not walk away empty handed. Functional Safety with Lockstep CPUs is a design where multiple physical CPUs are used to check integrity of the processing.

"The LockSteps CPU is good because it clearly explained a technology people may not be familiar with." - Community Member Judge

"Very interesting blog with lots of detail. Jan excelled on a technical level, covering a very important topic in a way anyone can understand." - Community Member Judge

"I'm going to go for Jan Cump's Hercules Demo. It wasn't in the same sort of project format as maybe you were expecting from the competition but I felt the most complete and explained a situation where you really did want 2 microcontrollers working behind the scenes." - Community Member Judge

"Very interesting blog with lots of detail. Jan excelled on a technical level, covering a very important topic in a way anyone can understand." - Community Member Judge

"This project is very involved with a lot of information provided. Even though it is a complex project Jan has made it easy for most of us to recreate. One of the best written projects I have had the pleasure of reading. I hope to have time to build this one day." - Community Member Judge

Also on Project14 by Jan Cumps:

Honorable Mention

The micro:bit Quartet by jc2048

This is a worthy entry that was entered after judging took place but was well worth the wait because it's awesome and it has to do with music. Using three yellow micro:bits, by kind permission of the Colchester Public Library, along a fourth micro:bit to create The micro:bit Quartet : four micro:bits playing music in unison! Keeping things simple, he took advantage of the existing sound capability of the micro:bit but added an additional amplifier to drive miniature 8 ohm loudspeakers at a reasonable volume. Each micro:bit is monophonic and plays a single note at a time. Synchronisation between the microbits keeps them in time with one micro:bit acting as the conductor!

Also on Project14 by jc2048:

Tiny light cluster by Workshopshed

Finally, although he wasn't able to complete it, Workshopshed 's Tiny light cluster came the closest to what 14rhb envisaged for Clustered MCUs when he came up with the idea. This project would have used a handful of ATTiny10 chips along with some surface mount resistors and LEDs. The nodes would be spaced out on a clear plastic sheet so you could see that there was no physical connection between them. They would provide a synchronised pattern or message. Would love to see what the finished project would look like. Perhaps, in a similar competition, such as 1KByte challenge?

Also on Project14 by Workshopshed

What's Happening Now

There's always stuff going on in the community and the best ideas always come from you. Suggest your idea in the Monthly Poll! and vote on the themes you want to do projects on. We're offering Tool Kits for Test Tools in our Test Instrumentation and you can show your love for analog in Back to Analog!

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Build a Device that Takes You Back to the Days of Analog!	Tool Kit Prizes: micro:bits for Testing Tool: bits!

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