Continuing the concept of saving planet Earth with gnarly, repeatable hacks, the fifth and final challenge of the 2022 Hackaday Prize is all about making the world better with smart and sustainable hardware. While the focus is still on saving the planet, this time, anything goes. Does your project not fit within the confines of a previous challenge? Here is your last chance to enter the 2022 Hackaday Prize: Start your entry today!
Go Wild!
We’ve already run contest rounds that focused on green power generation, recycling, hacking tech out of the landfills, and just finished up making our world more climate-resistant and connected. How else do you want to use your hacking powers to make the world a better place? Well, that’s up to you. This is the wildcard round, after all. If your project helps to keep this planet running for future generations, you can enter it here.
The Save the World Wildcard challenge starts right now and runs until October 16th. As with previous rounds, we’ll award one of ten $500 prizes to each finalist, and the best projects will have a chance at the overall 2022 Hackaday Prize. So get hacking!
I have to say, this year’s HAD prize is tremendously restrictive.
Lots of good projects are pushing the envelope of what’s possible in the hacker domain, but don’t fit into the definition of “save the planet”.
Perhaps the categories could be more generic and nondescript, such as “best potential product”, “best device for security”, “best scientific study”, “open hardware”, or similar.
Hey PWalsh, why don’t you sponsor your own challenge (or sponsor one in collaboration with HaD)? It would appear you could do this for O($1000) or around there.
This year’s HaD challenge doesn’t seem more restrictive than previous years, just different sets of restrictions. Also lots of good projects that are pushing the envelope of what’s possible that don’t fall into categories such as “best potential product”, “best device for security”, “best scientific study”, “open hardware”…
Another reason for having a “theme” for a challenge is to drive innovation in that area. It seems reasonable that the folks putting up the money get to set the direction.
There’s a lot of good reasons to allow criticism and discussion, but throwing criticism back in someone’s face only serves to push people away from the site.
So you are allowed to throw out subjective criticism/whining, but nobody should respond unless they are agreeing with it?
I don’t find your criticism subjective, constructive, or fair to the competition organizers. Also note, when presented with your own criticism, you say that would only serve to push people away from the site…. Perhaps reflect on how your criticism (the way you present it) will appear to other people?
I don’t want to push you away from the site and not trying to do so, but negative and highly subjective criticism isn’t contributing a great deal, and you must expect counter criticism pointing out the value/validity of your criticism.
I agree. They used to have a wide open field and I would sign up every year. I even won a t-shirt year, which was pretty cool. Now the categories are often things I’m not interested in, so I don’t join.
“I don’t want to make something if it will actually be useful”.
i vote for using the treadmill turned generator. could get a good 18 hours out of each one, put them on constant rotation, give them lots of time to think.
Some sort of crusher / rotating knife assembly at the bottom with drain tank, and you’ve got my vote.
I think I’ll freeze distill the atmosphere on mass, fraction off the CO² and bind it chemically into a solid compound.
CO²
Why is it not used more in refrigeration, along with butane, propane etc.
Ah yes, it’s not a propitiatory gas for which you can a charge a lot of money.
Apparently it is. There are rumors that automotive use of CO2 as an AC refrigerant was outlawed, but I understand that there are legal industrial uses such as supermarket refrigeration. I think it should be 100% legal, we’re putting it in soda-pop for crying out loud!!
Grow trees or other plants, and then burn them off into charcoal, then bury the charcoal. That’s a way to turn CO2 into a solid and bind it into a solid compound. Charcoal lasts millenia, that’s why we have terra preta in the amazon.
We live in the West. In the best place and at the best time in the history of humanity for the development of an individual. All of this was made possible by oil. So the question is not how to make it a better place. The question is to find how to preserve this dream and share it with the rest of the world when the mines and the oil wells are depleted. We should focus on how to have a relatively decent life under these conditions. The challenge is there.