555 Contest

The official announcement you’ve been waiting for! Our judges will be:

Adafruit Industries

Head judge: Phil Torrone

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

Head judge: Windell Oskay

These two groups, along with Jeri and Chris, will be deciding among all entries who will be winning the individual categories before moving onto the final “best in show” judgement by Forrest and Hans.

We found some more fun entries as we continue to review the submissions to the contest. Enjoy!

Pinball machine (by Roy Eltham)

Laser beam security system (by Jaren Havell)

Fridge Alarm (by Faz Jaxton)

Hi Everyone,

Jeri and I are hard at work thinning the pack to pass on to our hack-master judges by next week. And don’t worry, even if you didn’t make the first cut, you’ll still be eligible for some of the door prizes from our wonderful sponsors. We’ll be announcing those judges soon.

In the meantime, I wanted to highlight only a few of the amazing projects we’ve already seen. Why should the aggregator sites get all the fun? We’ll be posting links to all of the entries in the coming days, once the entries have advanced to the next round. Check out 3 videos Jeri and I thought were particularly fun and inventive:

80m receiver by Frank Latos

A 555-based level by Brad Boegler

Whack-A-Mole, 555 style by Jim Chen

That’s all for now. Keep checking back here or subscribe to the 555 contest feed to see more entries and winners!

The contest is closed! Your entries are in! And you guys rock!

The official final count: 238 entries!

Our first step is narrowing the entries. This includes bringing it down to a reasonable volume for our judges. After that, we’ll have our judges pick winners in the four listed categories. And finally, we’ll pass all the winning entries on to our celebrity judges, Forrest Mims and Hans Camenzind, to choose the “Best in Show” winners.

Throughout the process, we will be posting links and embedded videos to entries, as well as the content from emailed entries. We’ll be posting these on the News & Results Page. We’ll try and get those posted as soon as we narrow the field. In the mean time, subscribing to the feed is the best way to keep abreast of the newest developments and entries.

Thanks again for entering the contest and thanks for reading!

Hey Everyone!

Remember, there are only two more days until the contest closes (11:59 PM EST on March 1st). Here are some of the stats so far:

121 Entries as of 11:00 PM EST on Feb 27th

That’s all for now. Be sure to get your entries in on time. We can’t wait to see what everyone has as an entry. We’ll start sharing them with you all soon!

We’re all very excited to begin accepting entries for the 555 contest! Already we’ve seen a huge amount of press and early progress reports for some very exciting projects! As the title says, we’ll begin accepting entries at 12 am EST over at our Entries Page.

We’d like to thank everyone who has made this contest possible, including our wonderful sponsors, who have given generously. We can’t wait to distribute the goodies they have donated once all of the entries are judged. We’ll also be showcasing some of the entries on this site in the near future as we deliberate over the top 555 circuits and applications, so be sure to check back here starting March 1st. If you haven’t seen it, we have a feed of all of our content. Once we begin posting some of the awesome entries, that will be the best source of new information.

Thanks again to everyone involved and we look forward to bringing you more 555 related fun!

~Chris & Jeri

Welcome to two more of our sponsors, Xilinx and the Android team at Google! Check out the Prizes and Sponsors page for more info.

Seriously though, we’re excited so many wonderful sponsors are participating in this contest. We’re looking forward to seeing all of your great entries and showing them off to the world. Jeri and I will be choosing judges in the near future and will have a page up soon detailing how you enter (with the submissions beginning to be accepted on February 21st).

In the mean time, be sure to tell your friends about the contest! Don’t worry, there’s prizes to go around! Plus with more people, we’ll see even more designs. And more designs on here will mean more ideas for you to play around in your own lab!

So since it’s come up a few times, I thought I should clarify for the part-usage section of the 555 contest rules:

You are allowed to use any parts you want in your design. However, if your design does not make the 555 an integral part of your design, you likely will not impress the judges.

Why do we do this? Because it’s the easy way to say, “There are no rules about what you make”. We just want to see your projects involving 555s. Because we know there are some good projects in the pipeline.

As an extension to the “There are no rules about what you make”, we also feel it’s necessary to state:

All flavors of the 555 are acceptable. Every single one.

Yes, this includes 555s, 556s, 558s, 7555s and so on and so forth. Any vendor. Any date code. Anything you want.

So, if you still have other questions about the contest, leave them in the comments section below. We’ve been fairly diligent about checking the comments on this site daily and will continue to do so.  Remember, entries are due March 1st, 2011 and you can begin submitting them on February 21st, 2011 (we will have a page set up at that point where you can submit your entries).  We’re excited you’re all participating and can’t wait to start looking at and sharing designs!

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!

1. 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.
2. 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!

We have rules and categories now! Start building immediately! Drop everything you’re doing and go pick up a 555 and start creating!

We’ll have more details in the near future about the prizes and other details. But seriously, go make something.