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Member's Forum It's the holidays! If someone gave you the gift of unlimited budget for one project, what would you build? We are asking e14 in our Join, Share & Win Competition
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It's the holidays! If someone gave you the gift of unlimited budget for one project, what would you build? We are asking e14 in our Join, Share & Win Competition

E14Alice
E14Alice 9 months ago

A big hello to all!

We are back with December's aske14. As the holiday period is in full swing!

This month, the question is all about someone who has given you the gift of an unlimited budget for one project. What would you build?

imageimageimage

Competition Details

You'll have to be a member of the element14 Community to join in and take part in this “Join, Share & Win” challenge. It's simple, all you have to do is:


1. You need to make sure you are  Register  or Login
2. Then answer the following question by adding a reply or commenting!

If someone has given you the gift of an unlimited budget for one project. What would you build?

The Community team will then select the best 3 answers to win the UNO R4 Arduino! 

Entries close January 2nd 2026, so don't wait! 

Winners Announcement

The Community team has selected the following members, in no particular order. As it was the holiday season, we added an extra winner.

 obones 

 kmikemoo 

 robogary 

 Andrew J 

  E14Alice will be in touch with you soon to verify the delivery information before sending you UNO R4 Minima Arduino. 


This month, we are giving away:

image

UNO R4 Minima

 

Terms and conditions 

imagePDF

 

Other Holiday Activities 

If you are looking for some more holiday fun, we are also running a Hack The Holidays competition.

All you need to do is create an electronics project themed around the Holidays and what they mean to you, to be in with a chance of winning one of several prizes.

https://community.element14.com/members-area/holidays/b/blog/posts/hack-the-holidays

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  • obones
    obones 9 months ago

    Ideas without budget limits? Well, I would start with those three:

    First, create a home lab with all the required equipment to reverse engineer what's inside two wireless remotes I have here. So basically, sniffing equipment for both the RF signal and what's inside the "black boxes" on the PCB. I would imagine stuff like microscope, radioscope, current sensors that can sense at the "nanometer" scale, even tool that could read embedded flash memory. Yes, that sounds a lot like the lab that the IRCGN has with its 3D X-Ray tomography and laser abrasion bench: 
    https://next.ink/6513/108071-la-nouvelle-arme-anti-cryptographie-gendarmerie/
    https://www.pressreader.com/france/gq-france/20170517/285860142970333

    That might sound a bit too much craziness, so maybe the second idea would be more feasible. I would like to add a LED matrix on my roof tiles so that I can display images/animations whenever I feel like it. Initially, I though of using a 8x8 array of WS2812B LEDs with light guides that would get out just at the corner of a few tiles. But with 20cm between pixels, that would not be really easy to look at. So, with unlimited budget, I would actually create roof tiles that embed a LED array itself, with like 5 centimeters between LEDs so that the overlap area between tiles does not "break" the array. Pretty much like the LED curtains that are now ubiquitous on TV sets or concert shows, but embedded in the tiles with resistance to temperatures from -40°C to +150°C (yes, a tile gets hot).

    And finally, one that would be more practical is the creation of a robot that could autonomously pick cherries. Yes, I know, picking fruit robots already exist, from the "shaking tree" for olives to "hand snatch" for apples, but cherries are uniquely challenging. Indeed, the fruit must not fall more than 5 centimeters, be picked at the right time (sometimes 12 hours delay is too much) and with the tail because a cherry without it rots much faster. The computer vision is the easiest part, with the neat detail that it must happen at up to 10 meters in the air. Reaching that far by human task force is already a challenge, but a robot that does all this without "dropping" the fruit would be quite a challenge and require lots of experiments. Like, should I use a "fabric chute", a conveyor belt, a set of mini chair lifts? and should it be a retractable arm as in TV cranes, an arm with multiple folding segments, or even a snake like arm that has lots of flexibility?
    And after all that has been figured out, how much would it cost to make it a "viable product"? Probably too much anyway.

    Ah well, I guess I'll go back to smaller endeavors.

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  • obones
    obones 9 months ago

    Ideas without budget limits? Well, I would start with those three:

    First, create a home lab with all the required equipment to reverse engineer what's inside two wireless remotes I have here. So basically, sniffing equipment for both the RF signal and what's inside the "black boxes" on the PCB. I would imagine stuff like microscope, radioscope, current sensors that can sense at the "nanometer" scale, even tool that could read embedded flash memory. Yes, that sounds a lot like the lab that the IRCGN has with its 3D X-Ray tomography and laser abrasion bench: 
    https://next.ink/6513/108071-la-nouvelle-arme-anti-cryptographie-gendarmerie/
    https://www.pressreader.com/france/gq-france/20170517/285860142970333

    That might sound a bit too much craziness, so maybe the second idea would be more feasible. I would like to add a LED matrix on my roof tiles so that I can display images/animations whenever I feel like it. Initially, I though of using a 8x8 array of WS2812B LEDs with light guides that would get out just at the corner of a few tiles. But with 20cm between pixels, that would not be really easy to look at. So, with unlimited budget, I would actually create roof tiles that embed a LED array itself, with like 5 centimeters between LEDs so that the overlap area between tiles does not "break" the array. Pretty much like the LED curtains that are now ubiquitous on TV sets or concert shows, but embedded in the tiles with resistance to temperatures from -40°C to +150°C (yes, a tile gets hot).

    And finally, one that would be more practical is the creation of a robot that could autonomously pick cherries. Yes, I know, picking fruit robots already exist, from the "shaking tree" for olives to "hand snatch" for apples, but cherries are uniquely challenging. Indeed, the fruit must not fall more than 5 centimeters, be picked at the right time (sometimes 12 hours delay is too much) and with the tail because a cherry without it rots much faster. The computer vision is the easiest part, with the neat detail that it must happen at up to 10 meters in the air. Reaching that far by human task force is already a challenge, but a robot that does all this without "dropping" the fruit would be quite a challenge and require lots of experiments. Like, should I use a "fabric chute", a conveyor belt, a set of mini chair lifts? and should it be a retractable arm as in TV cranes, an arm with multiple folding segments, or even a snake like arm that has lots of flexibility?
    And after all that has been figured out, how much would it cost to make it a "viable product"? Probably too much anyway.

    Ah well, I guess I'll go back to smaller endeavors.

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