We’re a little under a month until the first cutoff date for The Hackaday Prize, and there have been a few questions we’ve been answering again and again: ‘what does ‘connected’ mean?’ and, ‘do I really have enough time to build something for The Hackaday Prize?’ Lucky for you, [Matt] from Electric Imp put together a very short demo of a sample THP entry. It’s a ‘HACKING’ light, kind of like an ‘on air’ light you’d find in a TV or Radio studio.
The idea for the project came from a tweet to [Matt] that seemed simple enough to implement. After grabbing an Imp and a breakout board, a LED, button, and resistor were wired up, with power supplied over USB. The code for the device was simple enough, and the Imp makes it easy to make that ‘hacking’ button tweet and serve a simple web page.
[Matt] pulled this project together in an afternoon, and although it’s not nearly as complex as the 3D printers, CNC machines, and freakin’ tricorders that are also entered into The Hackaday Prize, it meets all the requirements we’re looking for.
Of course, ‘connected’ is a very broad term, and even if you have a project that communicates with LEDs, a serial connection, or even pigeons, it’ll be more than enough to tick that ‘connected’ check box.
There’s still a few weeks until the first cutoff date for The Hackaday Prize, so get moving.
[via Bearded Inventor]
I’ll admit I threw my _very_ simple project’s hat in the ring just because it was easy enough to hit that submit button, so why not? I’m the first to admit my n00b status so I know I’m not going to be building anything revolutionary any time soon.
It’s good to hear that simple projects are being encouraged to get involved too.
Electric Imp must die. Kill it with fire!
I sense someone has tried to use their awful IDE…
Hey guys who’s the fox sticker in the bottom right
Hey guys who’s the fox in the bottom right
I want to know as well.
Why would anyone use something like this imp ?
It’s like the definition of what to avoid:
– It relies on servers that wil inevitably shutdown sooner or later
– It is closed-source (how do you know the imp isn’t eavesdropping all your wifi traffic *looks at NSA*)
– What if the ip guys suddenly decide to charge you for their service ?
In a project as basic like this the reliability-concerns might not be a big problem, but why even bother to start using this thing in the first place ?
From http://hackaday.io/prize/details
Basic Judging Criteria
* How “Open” is the design? Preference will be given to projects that exhibit depth of Open Hardware and Open Source Software
electric imp is not open at all, the hardware and software is closed and you are locked into using their server for everything (all traffic must go trough their webservice).
According to the prices on sparkfun for the imp and the breakout board, this blink a led project cost at least 42.9$. With radio modules being so cheap nowadays and for the short range intended, WHY?
The community it not stupid and keeps hating this device no mater how many of this “product placement” posts you do. The fact that a blink a led project still gets attention should represent just how desperate the imp is, just let it die already.
You hit the head on the nail. The fact that a worthless project (with respect to the rules of the contest and actual content) get showcased with a write up while there are quite a few better ones that never see their light of day proves that there are a lot of bias in the contest from HaD.
mac users :/