$50k In Components Hit The Hands Of Hackaday Prize Semifinalists

We anticipate a cornucopia of hacks from the top fifty 2014 Hackaday Prize entrants based on the recent awarding of the 50 grab bags of electronics. That’s right, the grand prize was out of this world but there were a lot of other rewards worth shooting for. Instead of making hardware choices without the seminifinalists’ input we went with a shopping spree on Mouser.com.

It’s a great idea if we do say so ourselves. However, it turned out not to be as easy as purchasing fifty-grand in gift cards. Did you know that none of the major parts distributors have gift card systems built into their sites? We’re of two minds on this. We’d love to open a birthday card from grannie and pull out some chits that can be traded for chips. But at the same time, it would be a longshot for your non-hacker relatives to even know what sites are our go-to parts emporiums.

Long story short these prizes are themselves a hack. We had a lot of help from the sales crew over at Mouser who abused their account tracking software in order to make these credits work. All fifty of the Hackaday prize semifinalists now have a cool G to spend and we’ll be watching their Hackaday.io accounts for updates as they inevitably use the upcoming holidays to embark on exciting builds.

A big thanks to Supplyframe Inc. for sponsoring these 50 prizes, as well as all others awarded for the 2014 Hackaday Prize. Get those workbenches cleared off and sharpen tin your soldering tips because details about the 2015 Hackaday Prize will start to roll out in just a few weeks. Until then, occupy your time trying to win one of the many prizes offered during our Trinket Everyday Carry Contest.

12 thoughts on “$50k In Components Hit The Hands Of Hackaday Prize Semifinalists

  1. Cool that you guys managed to get store credit for prized.

    Now if only people start stuffing their prizes with Benjamin (or faces of politicians or Beavers etc), there will be a whole less line up at the return line after the holidays. If all else fails, there is always those prepaid credit cards and please say no to store gift cards.

    The Chinese are way ahead of this for the little packet of lucky money they give out to kids in their New Year…

    1. Wow.
      Kudos to HackaDay for a clever (and awesome) prize that may have left me a wee bit jealous of the top 50 folks :)

      tekkieneet, I think cash or a gift card would not have the same feel to it. It would come across as paid less than minimum wage for hacking efforts, whereas this prize is a reward for making an interesting entry that allows you to keep on hackin’ to your heart’s content. Just my $0.02

  2. Lucky guys!

    Hey, don’t forget to open the next Hackaday Prize to Italians as well, I want to participate, if not for the prizes, for the glory (I’m sure I’m also talking in the name of people that lives every other country that has been excluded from the contest)

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