New Round Of Astronaut Or Not: Most Outrageous Component

 

Round 2 Astronaut or Not Voting Results Graph

And so ends round 2 of Astronaut or Not. We asked you to vote for the projects “most likely to be used in other projects”. Again you didn’t disappoint. We had a mountain of votes, and happily gave away a Bukito portable 3D printer to one of the lucky voters.

You must vote at least once in this new round to be eligible for the voter lottery on Friday!

Vote for the project with “the most outrageous component”. Can’t figure out what we mean by that? Well, if you come across an entry that has a quarter-million-dollar hard drive in it… vote for that one.

Voter Lottery Prize:

BK Precision 1760AHow long have you been making do with a hacked together power supply?

Be sure you vote and you could kiss those days goodbye with this BK Precision 1760A bench supply. It has three channels; 0-30V 0-2A on the first two and 4-6.5V 0-5A on the third. We’re also throwing in some leads so that you can be up and running as soon as it arrives.

We’ll draw a random number on Friday morning. If you have voted at least one time in this current round (your participation in previous rounds doesn’t matter) and your hacker number is drawn you will win! But if your number is drawn and you haven’t voted… no bench supply for you.

Now for the results:

Congratulations to the second round winners of Astronaut or Not!

* 9 of these projects were voted to the top in the first round and already have T-shirts on the way to them. This time around those double-winners are awarded the prestige of being on top again. But we’ll just be sending shirts to the 15 projects that didn’t win earlier. Here’s nine that nearly made the top projects in this second round of voting:

33 thoughts on “New Round Of Astronaut Or Not: Most Outrageous Component

  1. I wish to again protest the voting system as unfair. Votes for and against are extremely relative – how is it fair to just tally them?

    I have two projects, both are awesome. I have to pick one, and the other gets a vote against?

    I have two projects, both are not even remotely close to something worthy of the prizes here, but I have to select one.

    Why are we pitting projects randomly against each other, instead of simply voting each projects on a scale for worthiness?

    1. I’m assuming the votes will be tallied with a form of Condorcet algorithm rather than a straight majority. That [roughly] means that if you think B and C both suck but you have to vote for one, and the concensus with everybody else (which might include you, depending on which vote combinations you got) is that A is better than both B and C, then your vote for B or C has very little effect either way, because A is higher in the rankings while B and C sink down. It’s not actually that simple, but you get the idea – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method

    2. Its actually a really good system.
      Voting on each project and giving it a score is very subjective with different people using different scoring systems.
      If a comparison system like this is done right then its perfect, you’re comparing two projects on their merits and there is no worry about people using different scoring systems.

      The problem I had was with the question, a lot of the projects don’t match the questions people were being asked to judge projects on, in fact I felt very few projects fitted into that category at all.

      1. Agreed, the question might be fine but it doesn’t always apply. I plan on building a Condorcet system almost exactly like this to see what happens as far as naming our forthcoming baby. In a way it’s like asking “which boy name do you prefer” when the choices are either both female, or mixed. Thus I’ll be running two *parallel* condorcet algos for my particular poll… Oh, and if I open it up to anybody else it’ll be done with per-voter weighting ;-)

      2. Almost the same as my jumping TV channels between crappy reality shows, entertainment shows, infomercials or even the weather channel. Just because I on a TV channel, doesn’t mean I like the show. Just tired of flipping it for more of the same or just that it is the least annoying one among the choices I have, but too lazy to turn it off.

        The “a quarter-million-dollar hard drive” won’t make a good project. What good is a project if it requires unobtainium for the average folks?

        The prize for this round deserves the title of “hacked together power supply” when compared to the ones I have used and on my bench. I am going to sit this one out and slightly increase the odds for someone else. (Not that I am lucky on these kinds of thing.)

    3. > I wish to again protest the voting system as unfair. Votes for and against are extremely relative – how is it fair to just tally them?

      It is very unfair to ‘just tally them’ – this implies they will all be presented, and with that you’ll have presentation biases that goes along with that. By presenting two and doing a ‘pseudo bubble sort’ on them, we get a very fair measurement of whatever concept is being judged, be it ‘most space worthy’ or ‘craziest component’

      > I have two projects, both are awesome. I have to pick one, and the other gets a vote against? I have two projects, both are not even remotely close to something worthy of the prizes here, but I have to select one.

      You actually have a point here. Yes, for people who have two projects in the prize, the current system forces them to choose between one of your babies. This doesn’t apply to other people, and between all votes, your single vote against one of your projects will cancel out.

      I must point out people complained during the first voting round, and now each project only shows once. Then, project that are getting less votes are shown more often. Basically, we took a perfect voting system that has proofs on why it’s the best way to choose between a field of candidates in some category, and screwed with it because of commentors.

      > Why are we pitting projects randomly against each other, instead of simply voting each projects on a scale for worthiness?

      Because, again, that is not a good way to determine the ‘best’, ‘most spaceworthy’ or something with the ‘craziest component’ if we’re asking thousands of people. Also, the prize for winning a voting round is a few bits of swag, so don’t get bent out of shape on this.

  2. Why no small screens, despite them working fine in for voting in round 1? (Galaxy s3)

    I appreciate that this is your toy set, so you can set the rules, but this is frustrating. It brings to mind the days when some websites would show an error page if you weren’t using IE (but the sites would work fine if you spoofed the UA).

    I am working on the assumption that you are able to fix this, but choose not to… perhaps I am wrong, and this is actually an incredibly hard thing to fix?

  3. I think somethings out of whack. I hit refresh 5 times, and all 5 times 0x05ECure was on the left hand side. I refreshed some more and others came up, and then 0x05ECure started coming back up a lot again.

  4. There should be a metric of how many time a project was given up for vote and no project was chosen. Is it possible to post all the results, I would be interested in seeing where my project(OpenBLDC) was in the the whole scheme of things?

  5. I’m happy with the concept but the way projects are selected for voting does leave a lot to be desired. I was getting Tinusaur appearing about 75% of the time whether I refreshed or voted. It may be a nice project, but the most outrageous component is an ATtiny85…

    Also, maybe for this round show us the component list rather than the summary.

  6. I didn’t keep count, but the tiny 85 board seemed to be stuck on the right. “Most Outrageous Component,” seems a kindof lame criteria, rejecting very worthy projects made of readily available parts. Yes, the voting system is bogus. Also, unresponsive this morning.

  7. I hope people are not still thinking these votes in any way affect the actual hackaday prize (space, etc.)! The voting is just a popularity contest excuse to give out yet more swag. The only influence it may have on the judges for the actual prize is in the realm of “well.. lots of people liked it.. maybe we should take a look at it” The voting results are not part of the metric for judging.

    Dont like your two options? Hit refresh and get new ones.
    I think there is some ‘screwing around’ going on this round, as many have experienced the same project showing up in the pairing over and over… but whatever.. again.. its JUST FOR FUN.

    I think the directed question for each round is a good idea. It allows for prizes that normally might not be considered to have a chance to shine, based on some unique aspect. With enough rounds, and unique questions each time, every project should have at least one chance to ‘qualify’ and shine in the minds of the voters.

    Oh, and dont we get something like 7 votes each? so, you should all be able to choose several projects that fit the question in your view.

    Think the whole thing is just a sham?! GREAT! better odds for those of us who threw a project into the ring.

    1. Everything on the internet is about eyeballs. I view these mini-contests about getting exposure to the audience(judges included) So when you refresh the screen 50+ times and see the same project 5+ times and your project not once you wonder how much exposure you are getting. How many times was both projects were rejected would be an interesting metric. I think it would also show people fishing for their project.

    2. The problem is that the staffs get to chose who goes into the actual judging round and the popularity factor may be at play here. I won’t have an issue if the judges go through them to determine the qualifying round.

      If you are stuck at page 6 because of the skulls received, your project isn’t even going to get a fair viewing. There are also a lot of biasing for what projects getting featured so far. A lot of that will influence the popularity contest outcomes. Given the time frame, not all of these projects gets the same fair viewing and only the more popular ones.

      Looking at the top list for community so far, if you are not in the Wireless, 3D fabrications (e.g. printing/milling/laser/pick&place), vision or props, your chances are none to nil. Out of all that, only the “wireless” project are related to “connectivity”.

    3. It still says in the rules: “The results of the Community Vote are among the criteria Sponsor will consider when it assigns “cool factor” scores to Quarterfinals submissions (see “Competition Criteria and Winner Selection” for details), and therefore late entry may affect a Participant’s opportunity to advance to the next round.”

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