The Countdown Begins — Last Two Weeks For Entries

Procrastination is a wonderful thing, but now is the time to stop delaying. Get those hacks documented and entered in the 2015 Hackaday Prize. We’ll close entries in just about two weeks. There’s a handy little countdown on the Prize page which lets you know that your entry must be in by August 17th at 1:50pm PDT (UTC-7).

There’s a lot at stake here, so let’s take another look at what this is all about: Build something that solves a problem faced by a lot of people and you could score a Trip to Space, $100,000 for Best Product, or 2nd-5th place prizes worth $5,000-10,000 each.

Of course the goal is to show off your build. This could end up inspiring others to Build Something that Matters and that means to win you need to document your work. Join us after the break to see the minimum needed for your entry to qualify for judging.

Make sure you read the Official Rules but here is a summary of the requirements for judging. If you want to discuss your entry join us for our next live Collaboratorium on Wednesday.

Basic Requirements to Qualify by 8/17/15:

  • Discuss the problem which has been chosen and how your project will work to alleviate or solve the problem. Publish at least one image to help illustrate how the project might be used.
  • Create a video, no more than two minutes long (we suggest making this an “external link” in the left sidebar of your writeup so that it’s easy to find)
  • Post at least four project logs
  • Link to any repositories you’re using
  • Post a system design diagram
  • Document the licenses of any libraries, etc. used in the project

Best Product Requirements to Qualify by 8/17/15:

  • 3 working beta test units must be received by the entry deadline (shipping details in the official rules)
  • Discuss the problem which has been chosen and how your project will work to alleviate or solve the problem. Publish at least one image to help illustrate how the project might be used.
  • Create two videos
    • One no more than 2 minutes which shows the prototype build in progress
    • One no more than 5 minutes which shows the working prototype
  • Post at least eight project logs
  • Link to any repositories you’re using
  • Post a system design diagram and an image or rendering of what the product will look like
  • Document the licenses of any libraries, etc. used in the project
  • Post a component list that is at least 90% complete

Good luck to all entries!

13 thoughts on “The Countdown Begins — Last Two Weeks For Entries

    1. Yeah… is there a mechanism to filter ALL HAD Prize news (perhaps a sub-domain that removes these tags)? I personally don’t care about most of these submissions and a lot of the posts end up feeling too much like an advertisement. I get the space prize is awesome, but if you’re only here for interesting stories, there’s low SNR in the blog feed.

  1. I’m working, I’m working! Congrats HAD on the success of getting so many entries, its great to see the diversity of projects and skill-sets this year. The community is growing and open source information is becoming the norm, so very exciting.

    1. It is also a bit of a pain to have all 3 samples required so early. I can understand if they want an initial prototype in the qualifying round then sent in the other two for the final judging to prove that the product can be produced. The time frame is too short unless your project has already passes the beta phrase. It also makes life a bit easier for updating the design during the course of the contest.

      I’ll hope HaD can learn from this year as it is a new contest and make it better in the future just as it did for the regular contest.

  2. Question for Mike: Should the specific writeup for the contest be in the “details” part of the project, a separate build log, or somewhere else?

    Also, I’m unclear how to add a right sidebar to the .io project – which leads me to believe that the writeup should be somewhere else. How do we add a right sidebar?

  3. Question in regards to this line:

    Document the licenses of any libraries, etc. used in the project

    Where should we be documenting them? I’ve got a license file on my GitHub, do you want it in the details section or something?

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