Today marks the beginning of the PSoC IoT design contest. Show us your idea for an interesting Internet-connected thing and we’ll send you a dev kit to actually build it.
With the help of Cypress, Digi-Key, and AWS IoT we’ll be sending out your choice of PSoC 6 WiFi-BT Pioneer kit or Prototyping Kit to up to 50 entries just for publishing a great idea of something to build with them. As you guessed from the name, these provide WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, but they’re also bristling with seven programmable analog blocks the PSoC is known for, and a hundred GPIO. They have prototyping add-ons like a 2.4″ screen for user interface, audio, IMU, capacitive touch, and a heap of other goodies.
You have until May 26th to post a project page on Hackaday.io outlining your idea — don’t forget to use that “Submit project to” button to enter it in the contest. Tells us all about the IoT project you want to build and which PSoC 6 board you plan to use. If your idea is picked, we’ll send you the dev board and you’ll have until August to actually build your idea. Grand Prize will receive a $500 prepaid Visa card, two runners up will each receive a $250 card.
Full details are available on the contest page. We know you’ve always wanted to give your fish a Twitter account, to have a dashboard that shows up-to-the minute stats on how much Boo Berry Cereal you have left, a beacon to give you push alerts when the laundry needs to make its way into the dryer, or perhaps you plan to build a new wave of Internet-connect pagers. Whatever it is, from a silly idea to a truly life-improving build, if it’s begging to spread its data far and wide, it’s a perfect idea for this contest.
Ah yes, with PSoC you get:
* a proprietary programmer bus
* closed compiler with proprietary graphical IP modules no one can debug
* cross-bar latch-up silicon that fails closed on ESD to cause serious power faults in your product
How this company hasn’t burned down already is a testament to the stupidity of US government contractors.
Is HaD that desperate for marketing cash to shill for this garbage?
And further, I love how the contest requires people to think up new and innovative applications in a field that’s been thoroughly raked over by corporations and individual entrepreneurs alike.
And the application has to use the cloud in some way. So a measuring device that connects to your home network by WiFi doesn’t count unless the data goes through the cloud (contest mentioning AWS by name) and back to you. A personal device that connects to your cell phone doesn’t count unless the data goes out to the cloud and back.
Most IoT applications are not worth the extra expense. The ones that are worth the expense – the meagre few of them – are already products.
I don’t hold out a lot of hope for this contest.
You know that Cypress has been bough recently?
So you can add:
* IP with no bright future ahead
The moment any comment calls someone a shill, I’m out.
Fascinating bad comments about the product and contest.
I’ve been using the Cypress BLE modules for some time now and generally like them.
The IDE (windows) is simple to install and use – and the compiler is GCC. I’m not doing embedded graphics – I’m doing tiny BLE boxes, so I don’t know about the “proprietary graphical IP modules”.
The PSoC6 splits the proprietary BLE code onto an M0 while leaving an M4 for user code. That way the BLE black box doesn’t keep stepping on the toes of the application program. Nordic also makes such a chip.
I don’t know of any open source BLE code, although I don’t know if I’m up for tinkering with the BLE stack. Let me know if there is and what chip it runs on. Low power – my devices run for a year on a coin cell. BLE not Wifi.
The 6 is a little pricey, but not bad. I’m having a hard time understanding the criticism.
Of course the units I’ve used haven’t had a latch-up due to ESD. If that had happened I might be more critical.
I am generally agnostic about silicon, but cypress should stick to building other products.
The PSoC series was a mistake no one ever admitted was a problem.
After our experience, I would still go with a Nordic nRF chip for BLE rather than risk the same BS.
There are dozen better options around… don’t fall for free cheese kids.
The BLE stuff is likely not that much related. Cypress bought that product line recently.
It’s free shit so shouldn’t complain. But the mandatory use of AWS is a real turn off.
So how much did Cypress chip in for this ad?
I tried using PSoC chips with some of their development boards because I thought it was a cool concept and liked the idea of having some “schematic capture” design tools for software.
But their proprietary IDE was the only option for writing code, and that combined with the lack of affordable debuggers made them not worth the headache. Most of the boards I got are still in their boxes and I never got around to making my own PCB for them.
Uh…good luck to the contest entrants though.
There’s a $10 PSoC 5LP board that comes with a debugger. How cheap do you want? You get a processor, some analog stuff, and a enough programmable logic to do something useful for a few bucks.
I made few examples based on the cmake which runs on the PSoC 6 BLE Prototyping Kit (CY8CPROTO-063-BLE). CMake allows to use your favorite IDE (Clion, Eclipse or Vim). Repo with them is https://bitbucket.org/ondrap/cypress/src/master/. It may help to somebody.
I made few examples which uses PSoC 6 BLE Prototyping Kit (CY8CPROTO-063-BLE). They are based on cmake and uses C++.
Two quick questions:
Is there an age restriction? (I’m 15)
Is it limited to AWS? Or could I use something like Blynk?
Hi Bob, there are no age restrictions and you can use any IoT platform (Blynk is fine!). Good luck!
Hi! I can’t find anywhere on the contest page a spot to submit my application!?
Post your idea as a project page on Hackaday.io. Once you’ve published that page there will be a drop-down box on the left sidebar called “Submit Project To” that lets you enter it in the contest.