Voting Is Open For The Red Bull Creation Contest. Go Team Hackaday!

Go Vote Now!  update: looks like the vote button opens a popup to a Facebook app. this is required to vote :(

For the full writeup on our entry, go here!

As you can see above, our entry into the contest was a set of giant dueling mazes.

We took the idea of a table top marble maze and expanded that to be much larger. Each team races to finish the maze first. That alone was actually really fun, but we also wanted to add a way for the teams to interact with each other. To do this, we put in a trap system. There are magnets that activate to trap the ball for a few seconds and gates that can force your ball into a more difficult path. These are all controlled by your opponent.

The game is very fun to play. We were all amazed by the end that we managed not only to pull it off, but to make it actually enjoyable!  I’ll be writing up a detailed post on how to construct these with tons of pictures, but for now, GO VOTE!

If you want to see all of the entries in the contest, go here and check them out… then vote for hackaday.

96 thoughts on “Voting Is Open For The Red Bull Creation Contest. Go Team Hackaday!

    1. That does indeed suck. As much as I liked the HaD submission compared to the others (how many spinning related entries?!) I will never be signing up to Facebork so I’ll be casting no votes.

      Oh, and as much as I like the novelty of the Redbull site it wears off very quickly once you’ve watched one video and the annoying animated background is causing lurching playback.

    2. I see this kind of restriction fairly often and while I understand their need to ensure people don’t vote more than once it’s a bit like limiting political voting to land-owning white Protestant males (how 18th century!)

    3. Agreeing @Barefoot- No, I don’t have facebook. No, I wont join, possibly unless there’s a lifetime annuity for at least us$500/week and no other conditions involved. ;)

  1. Aww, is there a video of you guys playing with the dueling labyrinth? I was only able to catch about 2 hours of build during the live broadcast. I’d really like to see the final product in action.

  2. Looks like a great build that would be a lot of fun to play. Nice! I would love to vote for you but not via Facebook. WTF is it with Facebook anyway? Seems they want to be the overlords of all things clicked on the web! So nice to see that their stock is worth 30% less that the IPO. Ha!

  3. Damn was so happy to see I could finally vote then noted it required FB… Well still thanks for everything you guys did over those days of awesomeness! Was not just fun but educational & very entertaining. I’m also really happy to see all those screenshots finally came in handy! I thought for sure you’d cut them but I like how they ended up being used. :D

  4. 1) this facebook requirement just lost untold viewers and participants, AKA advertising andor sales income. not to mention the now ensuing DISTRUST of both redbull and it’s contest holders

    2) people who dont “do facebook” probably wont be convinced to do so just to enter or vote on a competition. ESPECILLY people on hackaday

    3) facebook is the only website i have EVER seen that does not let you delete your profile and that is a majour hurdle for people that “still” dont have a profile

    people already butthurt becuase they are not able to completely delete their profile would probably just scoff at your attempt to force them to reactivate thier account

    4) if you need red bull to stay awake while on facebook, you have a very serious medical problem and should seek medical help immediately

    5) FACEBOOK IS NOT A RELIGION, OR CULT.
    so stop treating it like one, stop trying to convert people, it only breeds distrust and dislike.

  5. Quite nice build for the time constraint. Would love to see some gameplay!

    Too bad I have to disable popup-blocker, enable flash and get facebook. I think the bull just shat.

  6. Just another ‘Sorry, but not a FB user’ comment. If enough of us do it maybe people will stop insisting on it. I’ve taken to emailing any company or organisation who insists on using FB and telling then sorry, I can’t participate because of that. One replied back and said they understood, got that feedback from a lot of people and they manually entered me in their competition instead!

    I should say though I am impressed with the builds for the Red Bull competition. Some really creative things going on there. Well done! Looks like it was great fun too.

  7. Man that bites i got like five apps on most systems to block tracking from sites like facebook, twitter and google and those sites block ads and all dat to link my facebook to some redbull thing argh man its stupid ppl have so much dummy facebook accounts using facebook as there validator for legitimacy of votes is stupid but then we know that wasnt there reason at all the more content and the more activity on content on any facebook page increases the reach of that page, it shows up on more timelines and alot more times in the ticker, with all that in mind i am ignoring the butthurt and ive decided to toss the link around and have ppl vote for HaD anyways because in reality facebook trolls and the likes just want a link to click on and something to like……Thanks for a great couple days but next year lets avoid redbull and look for more legitimate competitions, this entire thing was a promotion front for them in no way are they really caring about the Art or the Construct bogus competition we should have seen that from the coverage the competition got and the investment they made towards it, in reality they dint really spend any money on the teams just petty cash its sad man no one has any real love for the craft.

      1. Hi, thank you for correcting me but guess what you also made errors during your own correction. I dint write and essay to be graded but anyways lets address your error, notice your “i” and how its common and at the begining of a sentence as well.Thank you for the correction though

      2. Seems like ya could just create a dummy FB account, fill it with the most insane and offensive material and “like” and “follow” stormfront or jewwatch and when they see who likes them, they will cut ya. This works best for sites that like to “POST ON YOUR BEHALF” so when Netflix feels like showing the world you like Grandma’s Boy, the world can see how crazy (you are) Netflix is and complain to them from USA Today and other stupid news outlets that many frequent. Kill them with kindness and their TOS lol. Solved many of my problems including a spammer from Overstock that thought they were cute until they saw my “family Timeline” that somehow included their family at major non-pc uh hum events. They also enjoyed the benefit of being on the public friends list that the good folks at S&M dating sites love to poke around in live chat ;) Awful, but so is FB.

  8. Face Book arrgh! I do have a FB account, so Ill log in to vote, to do otherwise would be sweating the small shit. However having the red bull App “spam” my friends is a sticking point for me. No doubt the competition was about red bull promoting red bull first & foremost. Until there are others sponsoring competitions, I’m not sure what good it is complaining about read bull.

  9. whoa! so much hate for facebook! I LIKE IT! hehe… nah but seriously they couldn’t screw up more… there are more ways to control voting process, and they had to choose the worst one. really sorry that i can’t vote for you guys… i’ll do my best to make my facebooked friends vote for you! imho someone should slap redbull for that horrible idea. anyways great times have been had thanks to HaD!

    P.S. DosX, WhiteGoblin, tehbasti and other peeps from livestream chat – come, join us @ #hackaday! yes it’s fully unofficial, but for now must do!

    1. Well, they could allow you to only vote in person between the hours of 2-3am at their polling place in Random Point, Maine while wearing a raincoat and carrying a toothbrush.

    2. I mostly monitored the livestream chat, posting only one question (answered by Caleb, tnx) under an ID other than this one. I too thought a Hackaday chat room could be interesting. I assume this unofficial chat is somehow related to twitter. I have twitter account mostly for receiving tweets, I have yet to send a tweet. So I’m ignorant of any extra features available at twitter. I’m on my twitter home page I see @ associated with ” connect”, # associated with “discover”, but I’m having a hard time finding the twitter help entries. Perhaps someone would be so kind to create an easy to use how to somewhere on the web to assist the challenged? In that I rarely use Echolink it would be odd for me to suggest a hackaday voip chat official or unofficial? Assuming free voip chat options are available.

  10. I love Arduino & the creativity it inspires. Cheers to Red Bull & Hackaday for their contributions. But FaceBook? Sorry, that’s a deal breaker as are popups & Flash. Would love to vote for you but no can do.

    1. I’m not an arduino hater, but in this contest the arduino play a very minor role. IMO opinion the best thing red bull did in this contest was to downplay the role of a microprocessor,requiring contestants to use brain cells, and skills not associated with coding. The challenge the arduino presented here is how to figure out how to use is it in the contest builds where a microprocessor may not be needed at all. The very reason many hackers are slow to come to use a microprocessor in a build.

      1. @Caleb In responding to the comment singing the praises of the Arduino, I did fail to recall the use of the arduino wasn’t a requirement and your team used the pick axe, didn’t I? My bad :) An open question; I haven’t reviewed all the entries yet, was there one that didn’t use a microprocessor at all?

  11. WOW the shitstorm of anti facebook is funny as hell, What is the big deal. I use adblocker and turn off all cookies.
    End of story,

    I want to see where the bullduino was used in this project.
    Sure the game is kinda cool.
    but the CentriFury was great.

    I would have loved to see another variation of it as the players hold on to a joy stick that has electrodes.
    an voltage is passed in to the grip to test the level of pain they can withstand.
    Being that the electrodes are only in one hand there is no danger of cardio or respiratory impact,

    as the voltage is increased a pulse is added.
    Who ever lets go first loses.
    and the voltage can not exceed 45V but the frequency can vary and waveform.

      1. I use ad block but haven’t seen ads on hackaday for quit some time, although ad block is disable for hackaday. For many of use ads on facebook or ads in general aren’t the problem. The problem is their TOS sucks. The last time I looked they still suck, and are contrary to what facebook states in the media it doesn’t do.

  12. voted happily .. took looging onto my computer to post this though … apparently hackaday on a mobile doesnt like the Fn button on my phones keypad lol … couldnt type the @ in my email

  13. The redbull creation website sucked from day 1. Trying to act all hackerish and #root crap… and outdated macintosh look with flash ffs…

    I tried to vote, yeah I have facebook, but google chrome w/ pop-up enabled and nothing happened. If you can vote for more than 1 team why not just open the voting to the public based on IP addresses then? Stupid.

    I don’t care who wins, and I feel HAD/SqiudFoo doesn’t neither. I think much can be said about the community of which it be sorta small sometimes … that it opened new doors and light just by them participating in the redbull contest.

  14. Any vote, any like, any poke, any add, any sponsored link, any activity that mark zuckerburg and friends can potentially capitalize on I will not do through Facebook. Many others wont either. You would have had a better voter turnout with myspace.

    1. agreed!

      if it was MySpace and *_ONLY_* MySpace and NOT FaceBook then i would have (re-)signed (back) up in a heartbeat… as long as im able to COMPLETELY and PERMENANENTLY delete my profile the next day :)

      but even if we can use MySpace OR FaceBook i wont even go near that page… bye bye voting

      anyone know why and how GoogleBlog went down for 12+ hours one day? a newspaper published a how-to to hack THROUGH (and into if u wish) FaceBook and hack ANY website that has apps in facebook for it.

      something to do with unencrypted security keys sitting on advertisers servers long after you sign out… ad’s have no security/firewall and the encryption key is new every time u sign in so no need to save to file

      I DO NOT KNOW IF THIS HAS BEEN FIXED

      as i read the newspaper THAT MORNING i could imagine a million kids reading it and sayin “wow, thanks, now i will hack using directions in newspaper”

      6 hours later i got home and it was down since morning… hackers didnt take long to read the hacking directions in the NEWSpaper and use em…

      could have taken 100’s of sites down all at once, but instead the person MUST have had a grudge on googleblog and such

  15. I’m in two minds about this contest. I’m all for things that encourage people develop cool projects, but I’m not too keen on a community which has mostly resisted such things being exploited for a marketing campaign. Red Bull is a shitty soft drink; it has nothing to do with hacking (except possibly the fact that late night coding sessions tend to be fuelled by caffeine), they’re just using you all for free advertising.

    1. I wouldn’t really classify Red Bull as a soft drink, it’s an energy drink, ie you drink one instead of a coffee, and not when you want a soda, or iced tea or something to drink.

      Oh and I love Red Bull, it’s the best energy drink out there. =D

      Damn expensive though, I mean 2 bucks for 8.4 ounces, what a rip-off, but I still buy it. =D

      Damn, Red Bull got me hooked and now I cannot stop!

  16. 1. As everyone else has said, Facebook…. ugh.

    2. Hope Apple doesn’t sue them for what looks like Classic Mac OS GUI.

    3. That web site blows, what is it a 1990s geocities site?

    4. Love your project, that’s about all the love you are going to get from me, sorry. =(

  17. Combine redbull with some milk and watch….you will understand how I feel about this contest….(You can look for video on youtube if You don’t want to try it yourself)

  18. STOP MAINTAINING THIS AT THE TOP OF THE HAD WEBPAGE!

    &*^%&*^%I* YOUR *&^%&*^ DAMM FACEF*&^&(^ RELIGION

    YOU WILL NOT CONVERT ME AND I WILL STAY FACEF***-FREE

    YOU ARE PUSHING VIEWERS AND THUS AD-REVENUE AWAY BY TRYING TO FORCE HACKADAY READERS TO CONVERT TO FACEF*** RELIGION

    its too late for redbull to save-face, but H.A.D. is getting close to the point of no return. FYI

    STOP ITS VERY ANNOYING TO EVERYONE

    and the few that use FaceF*** probably dont even do electronics or any other hobby, unless worshipping the FaceF*** enterprise can be considered a religion.

    HACKADAY USED TO BE A SAFE HEAVON WHERE WE WERENT WHIPPED IN THE FACE WITH “SIGN UP FOR FACENOW” BS ALL DAY LONG

    i realise i may get banned for saying this(edit: spreading propaganda against Face-Gov) but its totally worth it if it succedes on getting rid of this damm “sign up for faceB now”

    1. edit: when this gets reported i will cool down and take the time to politely re-phrase it…

      so FaceF look out! i wont stop. go back to handing out flyers on the street. because that is whrere FaceB belongs.

  19. One post where I totaly agree. Orwellian social engineering at it’s finest.
    I have another T-shirt design to do. One like (Tommy Helfigure it out—I just don’t buy it) (Aeropastel-bird poop).

  20. Congratulations on obtaining the most votes for your creation. The Centrifury ended up being a runner up, so we will be going to Maker Fair as well. We are now pulling over 5 G’s on it, and you will be more than welcome to come try it out. See you there!

    -North Street Labs

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