2020 on the element14 community: we nominated our favorites, we cast our votes, and now the results are in! Thanks to all the nominees of 2020, to everyone who voted, and to the whole of our community for their great work and positive attitudes in a difficult year. Speaking for myself, and hopefully all of you as well, it was a great comfort to watch our community keep on with its creativity and ingenuity through a challenging era.
And now, it's time to announce the winners!
Winners: Rising Contributor | element14 presents Project | Design Challenge Project | Project14 | RoadTest | Webinar
Rising Contributor of the Year
A force of nature in Project14, an unstoppable tinkerer, possibly a robot designing and leading an army of smaller robots (we can't be totally sure): Dubbie Dubbie was our 2020 Rising Contributor of the year! dubbie reveals a wide range of skills, a highly creative temperament, and the tenacity to stick to a project and see it through. So congratulations to him!
element14 Presents Video Project of the Year
Episode 463: Raspberry Pi Speech to Text LED Face Mask
VCP Biography: Lorraine Underwood
Ever struggle to hear what someone wearing a face mask is saying? Has public mask wearing made you notice that we often use lip reading to help understand one another, especially in areas with lots of background noise? Lorraine's project aims to help us all wear masks, look cool, AND keep the lines of communication open! It's a great Raspberry Pi-based project on its own merits, and its timeliness for how we were all living in 2020 no doubt helped its popularity. Check it out!
Design Challenge Project of the Year
Measure Climate Change with Hydroponic System Blog #10 | Summary
For our Sustain the World Design Challenge, Satoshi built a fully functional hydroponic farm, with a web based monitoring interface, full CO2 tracking, as well as air, lighting, moisture, and cooling control, all using Infineon hardware. The project showed a broad array of engineering skills and a lot of ingenuity, so kudos to him for a brilliant build!
Project14: Project of the Year
We're not always creating brand new things on element14; sometimes, we're improving older ones! Gene tinkered with the classic Mr. Machine robot toy of yesteryear, replacing the original wind-up mechanism for its movements with electronic motors, improving its range of motion, adding LEDs for more pizzazz, and more. There's something undeniably cool about upcycling, breathing new life into great items of the past and expanding their possibilities, and Gene's upgrades were fascinating to watch!
Project14: 2020 Decider of the Year
Speaking of the very productive genebren, for his outstanding contributions as a Project14 community judge, he was our Decider of the year for 2020! These members help to judge the numerous fantastic submissions for Project14 competitions, deciding which projects best exemplified the monthly themes, so they're an essential part of the program.
Project14: 2020 Founder of the Year
For his amazing ideas for new competitions, we recognized neuromodulator as our Founder of the Year! Project14 would be nowhere without the creative new competition ideas our members submit and discuss, and Miguel went above and beyond with his ideas and contributions in 2020.
Project14: 2020 Influencer of the Year
Our Influencer of the Year award recognizes outstanding project contributions from members of our community. We consider how many different projects members submitted, as well as how many blog posts and project videos they created overall. For his fantastic contributions to Project14 in 2020, this award goes to fmilburn His creations in 2020 were a major part of keeping Project14 the vibrant community program it is.
Favorite RoadTested Product of the Year
InfiniiVision 3000T X-Series Oscilloscope MSOX3034
For the first time I can recall, we have a tie!? Did Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty mix up the envelopes or something!? But really, the fact that these two products were the top vote getters kind of sums up the diversity of RoadTest: you can sign up to review single board computers and microcontroller boards, motor control kits, test equipment, all manner of sensors, really too much to catalog. So, here's to a new year in 2021 full of exciting new RoadTest offerings with just as much variety!
RoadTester of the Year
Randy from the RoadTest program recognized a number of different high-quality contributors to RoadTest this year, and when all was said and done with that, we noticed something: Jan Cumps had been recognized in three different categories! He had written one of 2020's best RoadTest Reviews, he also wrote a great review around an Infineon Blockchain kit (an example of emerging technology), and he was chosen as one of 2020's RoadTest Heroes for his all-around contributions to the program.
So, to again liken RoadTest to the Oscars, Jan in 2020 was a sort of Orson Welles, Lawrence Olivier, or (in more modern references) Bradley Cooper, a multi-category high achiever who merits the award for RoadTester of the Year in 2020!
Favorite Webinar of the Year
Introduction to TinyML by Edge Impulse (Featuring Arduino Nano Sense 33)
In this top vote earning webinar, Edge Impulse walked us through solutions with embedded Machine Learning, discussing TinyML and how it can enable practical applications on extremely low-power MCUs, along with a live demo using Arduino as part of their presentation. Introduction to TinyML by Edge Impulse (Featuring Arduino Nano Sense 33)
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