A Quick (and exciting!) Update
We’ve received some buzz out there in the past few days about the contest. Please continue to tell your friends about the contest. The more people participating, the more fun we will all have looking at designs after the fact. Remember we have multiple categories and there will be winners in multiple areas, so be brave and submit your design starting February 21st! Onto the news!
- As was broken in the Hack-A-Day story posted yesterday, some of the prizes for the contest have been announced. We have not decided which prizes go with which category yet, but will continue to update as we figure that out. Once they are all finalized, we will have a page showcasing our sponsors and the prizes they are donating.
- And much much bigger news is that the inventor of the 555 timing chip, Hans Camenzind, has agreed to judge some of the entries in the contest! Along with Forrest Mims, we now have two of the people most often associated with the 555 chip. We are very grateful to both of them for taking the time to participate!
Please be sure to subscribe to this site’s feed for the latest updates on the contest! We’re very excited you’re participating!
Hello you all! If you are looking for judges, I’d like to apply!
I have a suggestion about the categories. Instead of making people submit to different categories, let them simply send the designs and judges set the scores in every field, so every design would be eligible for all categories at once (yet obviously some with better chances than others). Then the prizes of each category would be given to their respective best scores.
That way people wouldn’t have to worry about things like “my circuit has applications but it’s relatively simple, where should I submit it”.
I really like A Dude’s idea about only submitting once and letting the judges rank in their respective categories. This could really simplify the submission and judging process.
I agree with A Dude and Evan.
OK, this is a good idea.
We’ll likely be using a Google Docs form for submissions. I’ll put in check boxes with a “check all that apply”. If our judges have to consider all designs for all categories, that’s more work for them and we’re anticipating many (awesome) entries. We’re looking to be reasonable with our judges time, so right now I think this will be the best option. If you think otherwise, let me know.
I concur!
Oh wow – I’m glad you got Hans on board as well, that’s awesome!
Looks like you’ve got a few judges now – are you still looking for more (as per the main page)? I’m not volunteering, mind you.. though a “People’s Choice” could be fun?
Looks like I’m going to have a large number of leftover 555′s. How serendipitous that there’s also about to be a new, awesome list of 555 projects to use them on.
incidentally Hans C has told me the 555 models in the SPICE TINA (eval from Texas Insts) are “surprisingly accurate”.
I am using TINA v9 2 months now and so far am happy with it.