Online community for electronic designers element14, has announced its latest design challenge, representing a global competition encouraging participating engineers to develop pioneering pollution measurement applications.
Challengers will use a core kit featuring several popular products: the element14 BeagleBone Black, Würth power inductors and TI's SimpleLink Wi-Fi CC3200 LaunchPad and ultra-low power MSP430FR5969 FRAM LaunchPad. The aim is to create innovative Internet-of-Things (IoT) solutions to measure pollution and relay that information efficiently to enable smart and timely interventions.
The 'In the Air' challenge is receiving support from such partners as Cisco Systems, Texas Instruments (TI), Würth Elektronik, The Eclipse Foundation, Sierra Wireless and Keysight Technologies.
In addition, participants will receive a $500 budget for additional parts and prototyping and $64 toward Würth Elektronik's PCB services. All passive components, connectors, switches and LEDs listed on Würth's website will be supplied free of charge, and Texas Instruments has contributed $5,000 toward the challenge as well.
The recruitment period concludes Monday, October 13. Ten competitors will be selected to build their designs and blog at the award-winning element14 design community throughout the challenge, addressing their ideas and key challenges. The competition will end January 30, 2015, with the winners announced in early February.
The grand prize is a 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, a U1273A OLED Multimeter from Keysight Technologies and a TI Bluetooth low energy SensorTag. The Community Choice winner, who will be chosen by a vote on the element14 community, will receive a MacBook Air and a TI SensorTag.