Start Your Engines!

Here we go again: The 2020 Hackaday Prize has just been announced! And as usual, we want to see you all using your powers for good, to help make the world a better place. The twist this year is that four nonprofits have been selected, and your job is to help them with their goals: developing solutions to aid ocean conservation, creating or redesigning open-source assistive tools for people with cerebral palsy, designing modular housing for communities in need, and engineering open-source medical and technical tools that can be easily built in the field.

How often have you wanted to help, but been held back by lacking the background knowledge of which problems to tackle, or where to start? That’s the point of teaming up with non-profits that already have a very tangible need right now.

Oh, and did we mention the prize money? Not only can you do good, but you’ll also do well! The Best All Around Solution gets $50,000, there are four $10,000 prizes, one for each non-profit, $3,000 honorable mentions, a $5,000 wildcard, twenty $500community-chosen prizes, and then the twelve two-month Dream Team grants.

Pshwew! There’s something for everyone, and that’s made possible by our sponsors:Supplyframe, Digi-Key, Microchip, and ARM.

We’ve got four good ways for you to do good. Get out there and get hacking!

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11 thoughts on “Start Your Engines!

  1. It does say this was brought to us by sponsors. My guess is the cameras are all the Hackaday folks personal gear (no sponsorship) – though with how cheap a reasonable but old DSLR is it would be nice if they did upgrade this stuff at least a little.

    1. DSLRs suffer from the rolling shutter bug because the CMOS sensors have a rolling readout. Unfortunately there are no cheap CCD pocket cameras on the market to fill that void anymore – you have to get a dedicated DV camera to shoot videos without the wobblies.

  2. Personally I don´t care the video. I don´t have time for videos, and you cannot jump directly on the information using by using a search form. But I like precise, exhaustive and well-organized reports.
    The only moment a video is useful is when it illustrates an already well documented text. And then it should be concise, show the subject of the video, and complement the text. Not show a guy gesticulating and talking talking talking. If one needs to see that, just turn the TV on. I never owned any, but I can understand some people spend a lot of time with it. At the highest level (wink)

    1. Most comments on any board are negative because of a simple reason: if things are fine in your opinion, you’ll have nothing to add to it.

      Just saying “Great news!” doesn’t add anything of interest to the discussion. It just comes across as people trying to self-promote and draw attention to themselves, “Look at me, I’m being supportive here! I’m in with the team although I did nothing for it.”, which is irrelevant to the topic. Another alternative is shills trying to generate fake positivity regarding some controversial topic.

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