For the last eight months, Hackaday has been running the greatest hardware competition on Earth. The Hackaday Prize is a challenge to Build Something That Matters, make an impact, and create the hardware that will transform the world. These projects range from reliable utensils for the disabled, a way to clean drinking water for rural villages, refreshable Braille displays, and even a few high voltage Tesla coil hats. The Hackaday Prize is the preeminent hardware hackathon with a goal of making the world a better place, and this weekend we’re going to see the fruits of everyone’s labor.
Watch It Live
We will announce the winners of the Hackaday Prize live on stage at the Hackaday Superconference this weekend. Even if you can’t make it to the conference, you can join in by watching the livestream (broadcast on YouTube and Facebook) and by joining the Supercon chat room.
What the Judges Have to Say
Over the last few weeks, our fantastic team of judges have been combing over the finalists in the Hackaday Prize. We’ve put together this video roundup with judges discussing the top ten finishers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bniJs6i6qZE
These ten projects are the best the Hackaday Prize has to offer, and one of these projects will walk away with the Grand Prize of $50,000 USD. The second, third, fourth, and fifth place winners will take away $20,000, $15,000, $10,000 and $5,000, respectively. The top ten projects in the Hackaday Prize are, in no particular order:
- Connected Health: Open source IoT patient monitor
- Adaptive Guitar
- MeshPoint – wifi router for humanitarian crisis
- HeartyPatch: A single-lead ECG-HR patch with ESP32
- Assistance System for Vein Detection
- City Air Quality
- Tipo : Braille Smartphone Keypad
- Open source underwater glider
- Open Radiation Detector
- ZeroPhone – a Raspberry Pi smartphone
5 Top Finishers for Best Product
The Hackaday Prize isn’t just about finding the best projects. We’re also looking for the best products. For that, the Hackaday Prize includes a Best Product award. This promises to awaken the hardware entrepreneurs to build a manufacturable thing that will shake up an industry. Here’s an overview of the five top finishers in the Best Product Category:
From a field of the twenty best product finalists entered into the Hackaday Prize our fantastic panel of judges have winnowed these down to five incredible finalists. They are, in no particular order:
- BeagleLogic Standalone
- HeartyPatch: A single-lead ECG-HR patch with ESP32
- Tipo : Braille Smartphone Keypad
- Smart Composting System
- City Air Quality
The winner of the Best Product competition will walk away with $30,000 USD and an opportunity to interview for a residency at the Supplyframe Design Lab. Here, the hackers behind the Best Product will have a materials budget, mentoring, and access to some world-class tools that will enable them to turn their prototype into a real product.
These are the best projects and products the 2017 Hackaday Prize has to offer, and we couldn’t ask for more. Watch live as the Hackaday Prize is awarded tomorrow at 6:30pm Pacific. It’s going to be a blast, and a few lucky projects will take away a pile of prize money and the respect of their peers. It really doesn’t get better than that.
Lesson learned from HaD Prize 2016: unless your project can be turned into a BUSINESS which may or may not allow you to get some leftovers from the great lion’s feast, DON’T even hope to win.
Instead expect your ideas and discoveries – studied on your own budget and given away by you for free- to fuel other businesses without any leftovers for you.
Or start your own business.
IMO Hackaday.io is pretty much about doing it all by your own, for free. I think the Prize is a nice addition, but relying on it proves to be dangerous, though – that doesn’t even apply to Hackaday Prize specifically. Making a project to get a grant is OK, but don’t be surprised if you don’t get it. I believe that, if you think your project is great enough to be beneficial for others, and if you think it deserves money to grow even bigger, you have to take matters into your own hands. I know that, no matter what, I’m going further with my project, organizing the crowdfunding and learning to make a community around it. Hackaday Prize could help with that tremendously, granted, but it’d be foolish of me to rely on it – I only have 50% chance to win something tomorrow, and if my project’s life depended on these 50%, that’d have been pretty irresponsible of me.
Besides, last year my project has won $1k two times, even though it was totally unmarketable (IIRC yours won once, too?). I think our experience contradicts your theory. And I do hope that we’ll see you more in HackChat – it’s just not the same without you =)
Basically if the need to solve the problem is obvious, there will be money.
Mine won once… But it was impossible to convert it into a business and it still is. So no hydrogen for the people yet. Still working in the petroleum industry.
Greetings from Sahara. I will come to hack-chat when I will find a data connection here in the mddle of nowhere.
aka TOS
This is somewhat true, but it’s definitely a good way to drive a project you might not end up bringing to fruition. Starting a business is really really hard work, especially if it’s from scratch. That’s what I’m trying to do with MappyDot/SensorDots and the road is a long and arduous one.
The main thing is the prize brings out the best in most of us and it’s great to see some really awesome ideas that might not have originally got any exposure. Heck even my idea got taken by another guy who did a kickstarter soon after, but because of the openness of my design and it’s flexibility, it’s a better product for the same price. Openness really is key because you get early community backing which really helps drive the project forward and gathers a bit of a following.
Go Zerophone! I’m glad to see my https://hackaday.io/project/8678-rpi-wifi in a top 10 project!
I’m standing on the shoulders of giants! Thank you for your great project – without it, I don’t think it would be as easy to add WiFi to ZeroPhone. You’ve helped much more projects than just mine, too, I’ve been encountering your work in advanced projects here and there =)
Congratulations to all if the finalist! My personal favorite is the Assistance System for Vein Detection. Looking forward to Hachaday Prize 2018…All ready thinking about projects.
I wonder when Hachaday Prize 2018 starts?
Not sure but the last few started in March, so hopefully March but I’m just guessing. It would be nice if Hackaday would put out a teaser like a Hackaday Prize 2018 theme or some kind of pre contest. I would be building projects without a Hackaday Prize but it is a great motivator and it was very exciting to become a semifinalist. Not to mention it is fun to read all of the entries and see what people have dreamed up.
‘Fun’ is the key word in any contest! I’ve certainly enjoyed it even though I wont now be winning the grand prize.
Awesome projects! They definitely deserve to be in the top 10 and 5.
Although I didn’t get there, I was so excited and surprised to win 2 of the semifinal rounds. Congratulations to all the top finalist!