The Electronics Hobbyist

The Arduino Contest Winners were recently announced. The grand prize winner was “the Word Clock“, a clock that uses language to tell the time.

Binary clocks, gardening, a talking robot head, a coffee roaster, a digital window sticker, and a Wii Nunchuck adapter are just a few of the cool ideas submitted. Each is presented as a how-to “Instructable” so that you can build your own.

Check out the winning projects at the Instructables website.

The iMCU Design Contest 2010 is the second contest WIZnet has co-sponsored with Circuit Cellar. The iEthernet Design contest held in 2007 introduced the W5100 hardwired TCP/IP Ethernet controller to the design community. The W5100 allowed designers to finally bring Ethernet capability to their existing embedded projects.

The 2010 design contest requires the use of Wiznet’s W7100 as part of an embedded project. The W7100 is an Internet microcontroller integrating a hardwired TCP/IP core with an 8051 processor. The new W7100 chip provides a platform for applications that need a network connection, and its MCU capabilities help engineers create sophisticated Internet-enabled projects.

Circuit Cellar is a print magazine about hands-on embedded systems projects, so every iMCU Design Contest entrant is viewed as a potential author. Many of the participants with the best entries may become Circuit Cellar authors, project evaluators or advisors, which is quite a resume booster opportunity.

Contest judges will look at a wide range of criteria when selecting the winning projects, including originality, technical merit, usefulness, cost-effectiveness and design optimization. The deadline for project submission is June 30, 2010. For more information visit www.circuitcellar.com/iMCU.

Arduinos are awesome – with one simple controller, you can make almost anything! What new things can you make with Arduino? We’ve teamed up with the creative folks at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories and the Arduino Team on an Arduino contest to find out.

The rules are simple:

to enter you must make a new Instructable that involves the Arduino IDE. You can use any hardware that you like, or none at all. Be sure to provide the code you used so that others can follow in your footsteps. Make something amazing and win a Meggy Jr RGB from Evil Mad Science or an Arduino Mega from the Arduino Team for your next project!

So what are you waiting for? Document a project you’ve been meaning to write up, or make something new! We can’t wait to see what it is.

Awesome photography requires all types of creativity and wizardry, and not just in composition. Techniques, tricks, and resourceful homemade gadgets can also help you take the perfect shot. Do you have a photography secret to share? Instructables.com has teamed up with Popular Photography for the Digital Days Photo Contest!

Innovation comes in all shapes and styles. Show off your cool flash ideas, your image-tweaking tips, your low-light techniques, homemade tripods, or anything else that you devised that helps you take some of your best pictures. Share your photo innovations on Instructables, and you can win a great Sony camera, camera bags, or workshop tickets for a Popular Photography event!

What are you waiting for? Enter the contest NOW!

digitaldays Official Contest Rules.