EBVElectronik of Germany is hosting a design contest based around the STM32F microcontroller. They are inviting engineers and inventors to come up with the best general purpose design ideas, with prizes including a Harley Davidson Motorcycle and a 1000 euro Apple voucher. Even better, they are offering a free STM32 Discovery Kit to anyone who enters, just to get them started. Sound too good to be true? Well, there is one catch. As of right now, entrants are limited to:
Any individual or group of individuals, age 18 and over as of the date of entry and located in EMEA (Europe and Middle East and Africa)
Sorry USA. We have to save some love for the international crowd. Do us a favor and let us know what you are planning to build, or if you win any of the prizes!
The board is only $10 anyway…
Yeah!!
Ha! that’s awesome. I can’t get the free dev board because they won’t ship it to the us; yet the prize is a shitty bike shipped all the way from my home town.
Gotta love that sweet sweet irony
@steve, a fellow cheesehead, “ay?”
I can’t believe they won’t let god’s favorite country participate! Man, if W. was still president we’d bomb these suckers good.
‘merica!
@NatureTM
How can you be so sure your country is god’s favorite? Japan is making all the delicious ICs we love ;p
I entered the contest anyway (canada) just in case they would ship it here so i can laugh a bit ;p
How do I know if they send me a board?
I’m in Spain, ole!
Marketing vehicle. They just want as many projects as possible to start with their MCU as a base. The winner can possibly consolidate the expenses with the prize. The rest will not change the project base MCU because of lazyness and keep on buying MCUs. Too much effort just to get one demo board.
NatureTM: Now you know how the rest of the world feels about exclusive US contests
Thanks for the tip HaD.
If they let the U.S. enter, nobody from anywhere else could win, now, could they?
Can I get a real bike instead of a Craptastic Harley?
I’d rather have a Hayabusa instead of a junky slow old fart Harley.
@fartface
Busa FTW!
Just registered, can’t wait to see if I get a board. I don’t have too many MCUs at the moment ;) Thanks HaD!
Harled Davidson riders use Linux, not Apple… Just sayin’…
Well, seems like i’m not gonna win a harley after all…
entries had to be submitted by September 15th.
(see terms and conditions pdf on right side)
anyway, i might fill it in and just try to get a freebie !
I don’t care about motorbikes anyway, just give me the board.
@rob, The contest is good until September 15th 2011, you still have some time.
Though, I would recommend you try and enter the contest, not just for the free board!
EFF harley’s.. geeez, most overrated pieces of
crap i’ve ever rode. the brittney spears of the
motorcycle world.
Belgium does have advantages?
But to be honest my ARM skills aren’t that good.. Does HaD make a how-to of it after the rest of the AVR chips how-to has been posted?
Um, I think the reason this does not include the US, is because the contest is being run by AVNET, last I checked they had no offices in the US.
EMEA? Are they messing with us? I never heard that term and see no possible connection between those continents/regions.
I think it’s just a revenge over all those US-only giveaways.
@Whatnot: EMEA = Europe, Middle East & Africa.
it’s a common term here in this zone, and that define the market of many companies.
For example the European Headquarter of Facebook in Europe (located in Dublin, Ireland) is officially “Facebook EMEA”, since it regroups all the language support for all European, Middle East and African countries.
They probably have to limit the contest’s range for legal reasons, the same way USA’s services (just to name a few: Hulu, CBS, ABC, …) limit their broadcast to USA region/IP only (really suck btw!!! I would love )
Well they want you to present the ida when applying to get the board.
How can I know what I can do with the hardware if I don’t get my hands on it?
Oh well, I’ll make up something cool & useful sounding that can be applied to broad range of projects.
Also, Its nice to have a Giveaway/contest that people in the EU region can participate, instead of the usual US-Only.
@iHME
I’m having the same problem – I want a new board to play with and I want to produce a cool project, but I’d like to have to opportunity to see what it can do first…
It is called “get a good idea from others for 10 euros.” It is cheaper to pay someone ten euros for a good idea than it is to hire them. Euro contest, American bike, does that just reek of irony?
@Greycode
The intellectual property stays as the property of the one entering it.
They do want a license to publish full source code, schematics and documentation.
Yay, board arrived today (registered the day this article was on HaD). Packaged well in a little blister saying “This could be your Harley Davidson”… I’m glad the envelope was cushioned, seems like the mailman had a great time trying to cram this thing through the door’s mail opening (as I had trying to get it out of the door again…). Up and running (yep, there’s a funky blinking sketch loaded to it by default).
I also received mine today, but I can’t seem to access the st.com/stm32-discovery link as mentioned on the packaging and the board itself. Keep getting a 404 error. Looking forward to playing with my first IC though. Hopefully I can have some fun without the aid of their website.
I had no luck with the website either. Try http://www.st.com/internet/evalboard/product/250863.jsp
and for information (german) I used
http://www.mikrocontroller.net/articles/STM32
I went for the Atollic/TrueStudio keychain, but Avira said the TrueStudio Installer showed signs of a trojan. Can anyone confirm this?
I don’t have a problem with it, it runs fine. But I must say that when you try to use the tutorials of ST you will need a an3268 package and another package with the firmware, the second one is still unfindable..
I allready posted the issue on the st forums.
I hope they’ll find a solution fast!
@otacon2k:
What is your registration number?
I registered on Nov. 06th and got a registration number of 52x but have not received the eval. board yet. I just wonder how many free boards they have…
Anyone know if the xduino IdE is available anywhere i’m new to mcu’s and have a setup that I want to add to .
My number is in the 200-range and I got my board the same day as the others here.
Anybody else received their evaluation board?
Probably they ran out of stock…
I got mine yesterday and my number was 9XX, so I guess they still have some boards. I definetely love my board (my first proto-board btw.) and can’t wait to start coding :))
@wouter:
I think I saw your thread there. I had a hard time getting it to run with atollic. I’m working with a user account without administrative rights, which seemed to cause some problems. What worked:
1. Get the an3268 package (this IS the firmware package)
2. Run the STLink-Updater found in “Atollic_install_folder/servers/ST-Link_gdbserver” as administrator (or with an administrator-account)
3. Run Atollic True Studie as an administrator (or with administrative rights)
Without admin rights I always got an “ST-Link initialization failed”-error (even using only the gdbserver-program outside TrueStudio.
Hope that helps, Otacon2k
Did they announce the contest results already?