Hackaday Prizes Will Reward Innovation That “Builds Hope by Building Something That Matters”

Hackaday, the tech innovation website owned by Pasadena-based Supplyframe Inc., has launched the Power Harvesting Challenge of the 2018 Hackaday Prize engineering initiative, which is challenging engineers, makers, and designers to “build hope by building something that matters.”

The challenge will have participants design and create a module that can harvest energy from sources like solar, thermal, wind, and ambient light. The modules can be the sole source of power or supplemental to reduce traditional consumption, according to a Hackaday press release Monday.

Entrants must present their builds as a module, which includes a distinct design that can be easily incorporated and transferred into other builds. The third challenge round started Monday and continues through July 16.

The 2018 Hackaday Prize, now on its fifth year, is sponsored by Digi-Key, Supplyframe, and Microchip.

“Microchip is thrilled to collaborate with Hackaday for the fourth consecutive year to challenge engineers and makers to better the world through hardware engineering,” said Greg Robinson, Senior Director of Marketing for Microchip’s MCU8 business unit. “Because of Microchip’s commitment to low power microcontrollers and extensive analog offerings, we are particularly excited to see what the community designs for the Power Harvesting Challenge.”

Participants at the Power Harvesting Challenge can work alone or collaborate as a team, the press release said. Participants and teams are allowed to enter more than one project to be considered for the Power Harvesting Challenge.

Entrants are required to submit their module idea, supporting images, documentation logs, and at least four build logs.

The other rounds of the 2018 Hackaday Prize are Open Hardware Design (March 12-April 23), Robotics Module (April 23-June 4), Human-Computer Interface (July 16-August 27), and the Musical Instrument Challenge (August 27-October 8).

Twenty projects from each challenge round will be selected as semi-finalists and awarded $1,000 per project.

At the conclusion of the final challenge, the 100 semi-finalists will automatically advance to the Finals Round, where five top projects will be awarded prizes ranging from $5,000 to $50,000. The 2018 Hackaday Prize finalists will be announced at the Hackaday Superconference taking place November 3 and 4 in Pasadena.

Throughout the course of The Hackaday Prize initiative, over $200,000 will be awarded in prizes.

To learn more about The Hackaday Prize, visit www.hackaday.io/prize or follow the latest contest news on Twitter at @hackaday or #HackadayPrize.