Cette page collectionne les concours (challenges) pour les électroniciens:

Live Edge : http://www.live-edge.com

Electronic Design for the Global Environment

Bienvenue au Concours Live Edge 2008, la conception respectueuse de l’environnement

Participants qualifiés Cette année, le concours distinguera deux catégories différentes : les étudiants et le grand public. Le concours grand public est destiné aux ingénieurs en électronique, inventeurs, amateurs et tout autre personne qui n’est pas étudiant à plein temps. Les designs seront jugés en comparaison des autres designs de la même catégorie.

Les conditions d’admissibilité du Design au Live EDGE sont intentionnellement larges afin d’ouvrir le concours à un large panel d’idées. Pour participer, votre design doit être original et innovant, utiliser des composants électriques et/ou électroniques, et avoir un impact positif sur l’environnement, tel que l’augmentation de l’efficacité de l’utilisation d’énergie ou la réduction d’émissions de carbone. Nous vous invitons à visualiser un design sélectionné (pdf 286Kb) et les designs gagnants de l’édition 2007.

Vous pouvez enregistrer votre projet sur ce site internet entre le 1er octobre 2008 et le 31 janvier 2009 en suivant la procédure d’inscription. Les noms des gagnants seront annoncés en mars 2009.
Les récompenses du Live EDGE Le concours ne récompense non seulement chacun des deux gagnants d’un prix en espèces de $25 000, mais il fournit également un panel de services pour commercialiser les designs, pour un montant de $25 000 chacun. Les six autres gagnants recevront également $5 000 chacun. Les participants conservent le droit de propriété sur leur design, ce qui signifie que deux lauréats auront le plaisir de voir leur design devenir réalité, de bénéficier de tous les avantages commerciaux et avoir la satisfaction d’aider l’environnement. Vous pouvez être l’un d’entre eux.

FTF Design Challenge : http://www.freescale.com

lien : http://www.freescale.com/designchallenge

Make your innovative green design the star of FTF 2008.
The FTF Design Challenge rewards the most inventive green embedded designs with cash prizes and high-profile recognition. Challenges are open around the world.

Win a seat in the Grand FTF Design Challenge

The 1st place winners of each 2008 FTF will have a chance to win an additional $50,000 USD, attend the 2009 FTF of their choice and showcase their winning prototype.

RoboChamps : http://www.robochamps.com/

Microchip PIC32 Design Challenge : http://www.mypic32.com

The objective of this full-year, four-phase Design Challenge is to foster a social community where contestants can build, test, and display their designs, based on the PIC32 Starter Kit, to the community. A set of three judges, as well their Community Member peers, will vote to see who survives each phase. Winners receive great prizes along the way! The contestant that makes it through the four phases and is voted the 2008 PIC32 Design Challenge’s Ultimate Embedded Designer will win a high-end home theatre system (or cash equivalent) worth over $8,000!

Registered Community Members can rate each design, according to the design value criteria, as well as vote for their favorite design. Registered members are eligible for weekly prizes based on their participation and activity within the community. Click here to see complete details for prizes and contest rules and regulations.

Total value of prizes to community members and contestants exceeds $150,000!

Once you sign up as a community member, you can change to a contestant by simply filling in your personal myPIC32 page! Contestants that do not make it to the next stage, are automatically considered members and can rate and vote for contestant and qualify for weekly member prizes.

Contestants that do not make it to the next stage are automatically considered members. They can rate and vote for contestants and qualify for weekly member prizes.

TECH TRENDS – THE CHALLENGES OF EMBEDDED WIRELESS DESIGN

The emergence of ubiquitous wireless connectivity is changing almost everything we know about embedded systems design. What we thought we knew about power management, security, reliability and real time and deterministic operation now has to be re-evaluated.For one thing, there are no wires, which means that each embedded design is on its own as far as power is concerned. Now designers must be concerned not only with ways to get the speed and performance needed, but at the lowest power consumption possible.

Reliability of the network, especially in applications requiring deterministic and real-time operation, must move to the top of the agenda. Also high on the list of concerns must be security: unlike the largely closed environments of the last decade, a wirelessly connected embedded system is open to all of the « slings and arrows » the world can throw at it.

All aspects of these issues are covered in the articles referenced in this issue of the Embedded Tech Trends newsletter, including choosing a low power wireless network protocol, wireless power-save protocols, RF thermal management, simulating wireless nets, and low power wireless mesh networks.

What are the challenges facing you? And what kinds of articles would you like to see? Have you come up with a design you think the rest of us would like to know about? Both as readers and as potential authors, I would like to hear from you. (Bernard Cole, Site Editor, Embedded.com, 602-288-7257, bccole@acm.org)
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ImagineCup: http://imaginecup.com

The World’s Premier Student Technology Competition

« I wish there had been an Imagine Cup when I was growing up. It gets people involved in seeing that software is changing the world. »

–Bill Gates
Chairman, Microsoft Corp.

Everything that the world may become « someday » lies in the hands of young people today. As they look at the road ahead, their close relationship with technology enables them to dream in ways we never have before. Put the two together, and you have young minds holding the tools that can make their vision a reality.

This is the recipe that inspired Microsoft to create the Imagine Cup. What begins with a burst of inspiration and a lot of hard work can become a future software breakthrough, a future career, or a flourishing new industry. The Imagine Cup encourages young people to apply their imagination, their passion and their creativity to technology innovations that can make a difference in the world – today. Now in its sixth year, the Imagine Cup has grown to be a truly global competition focused on finding solutions to real world issues.

Open to students around the world, the Imagine Cup is a serious challenge that draws serious talent, and the competition is intense. The contest spans a year, beginning with local, regional and online contests whose winners go on to attend the global finals held in a different location every year.  The intensity of the work brings students together, and motivates the competitors to give it their all. The bonds formed here often last well beyond the competition itself.

NEW: Programmable Logic DesignLine and Altium are holding a Design Competition

As you may recall, earlier this year, the folks at Altium introduced their Innovation Station, which is a combination of th their unified electronics design software, Altium Designer and an extended range of Altium NanoBoard reconfigurable hardware platforms (see my article #206104574 for more details).

Well… a box containing one of these little scamps recently arrived on my desk (an Innovation Station, not someone from Altium) and it is a beauty to behold! But there’s a problem, because – as always – I am up to my ears in alligators fighting fires, and I have no time to do anything with it.

I tell you, when I was younger I would have given anything for this little rascal… I can’t believe that I’m too busy to even play with it, but there you are… I’m juggling so many balls in the air my head is spinning… metaphorically speaking.

So… I was chatting to Nick Martin (the founder, CEO, and CTO of Altium) and I asked him if I could offer this little beauty as part of a design competition on Programmable Logic DesignLine. And Nick said: « Let’s make it interesting and offer three! »

Since then we’ve been bouncing ideas back and forth, and we’re finally agreed on the following:

  1. Programmable Logic DesignLine is going to host a design competition. This competition will feature Altium’s Innovation Station. The idea is to allow readers to experience this new approach to designing electronic products; to allow them an opportunity to demonstrate their prowess at electronics design, or to demonstrate their creativity for the first time.
  2. The competition will be open to readers (resident in the United States and Canada – I’m sorry about this restriction, but it gets to be a pain for me to ship these things anywhere else) of Programmable Logic DesignLine as well as other CMP / EE Times / TechOnline-related websites. The competition will run in various phases (see below) between October 2008 and April 2009.
  3. Phase 1 – A Call for Ideas: If you think you’ve got a suitable design project in mind, email me and tell me about it. Entice me. Flatter me (trust me, flattery goes a long way 🙂 What makes this project interesting? Why should I get excited about it?
  4. Phase 2 – Reader Vote: After a couple of weeks, I’ll summarize all of the ideas in a blog and in my weekly newsletter and ask you – the readers of Programmable Logic DesignLine – to ponder them and tell me which you think are the most deserving.
  5. Phase 3 – Assesment: This is where I mull everything over along with the folks at Altium and we select three finalists. Sometime before the end of November, the three finalists will be presented with an Innovation Station (an Altium desktop NanoBoard, and a one-year time-based license of Altium Designer) which will allow them to create, test, debug and finalize their designs. During this Phase, I’ll be posting articles and updates on the progress being made by the finalists. The deadline for the completion of these designs will be March 1, 2009.
  6. Phase 4 – Final Judging: As part of this competition, the three finalists will each write a 2000+ word « How To » design article explaining how they went about creating and realizing their design using the Innovation Station. All three of these articles will be published on Programmable Logic DesignLine towards the end of March 2009 (Don’t panic if you hate writing, I’ll help with the editing and picture formatting and « stuff ».)The three entries will be assessed by myself and Nick Martin. The winner will be announced 8 April 2009. Judging criteria will include:
    • The skill demonstrated in the submission.
    • The innovation in the design (embodying new ideas or new approaches) and how this innovation is demonstrated in concept and implementation.
    • The experience of the designer (for example, whether the entrant is a novice or an experienced designer and whether he/she is new to FPGAs or not).
    • The potential for commercialization.

OK, now onto some nitty-gritty details. First of all, All three finalists will receive an Innovation Station from Altium, each comprising a desktop NanoBoard and a one-year timed license for Altium Designer (see below for details relating to the NanoBoard), along with access under Altium’s usual user terms and conditions to support from Altium for the period to the license. (Altium reserves the right to modify this level of support depending on whether the support needs of any entrant are in excess of what Altium regards as appropriate or fair.)

The three finalists will have the following elements available to them as part of the NanoBoard development platform:

  • 32-bit RISC processor running at 50 MHz
  • Ethernet port
  • USB port
  • 802.11g WiFi
  • QVGA touch screen display
  • I2S stereo audio subsystem
  • VGA output
  • RS232 port
  • I2C bus controller
  • CAN controller
  • DE disk controller
  • SD card reader
  • IrDA

The winning finalist will keep the Innovation Station, complete with the one-year time-based license which will be converted at renewal into a perpetual license – the value of this prize is approximately US$4,300 for the hardware + $5,000 for the core perpetual license (the two runners-up will return their Innovation Stations at the end of the competition).

Programmable Logic DesignLine and Altium will have rights to publicize all entries, including the initial submissions, the three finalists, and the final winner. The rights to publicize shall extend to any design that becomes available commercially, or which is developed by the designer for commercial use, but ownership of the intellectual property in any designs submitted in this competition will remain with the entrant.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I think this is pretty exciting. If only I were a younger (or cleverer) man I’d enter myself … so start pondering this and send me your submissions…

Questions? Comments? Feel free to email me – Clive « Max » Maxfield – at max@techbites.com). And, of course, if you haven’t already done so, don’t forget to Sign Up for our weekly Programmable Logic DesignLine Newsletter.