The grand prize winner of the competition received a Sony PlayStation 5, a luxury earthquake survival kit, survival shelter and vehicle fire extinguisher, with a total value of $1,050.
OrbWeaver Rover
This was Milos Rasic, who is from Serbia. He created a complex design named the OrbWeaver Rover. Based on two Arduino boards, it can cast a “net” of sensor boxes around a targeted area to monitor various data points including temperature, heat index, humidity and air pressure across multiple locations. The OrbWeaver also boasts active suspension.
There’s masses of information and detail on the element14 site if you’d like to try and follow in the steps of his rover, including schematics, code and step by step photos.
Milos writes:
“My initial plan for the rover was to have an Arduino Mega 2560 for communicating with all of the different motors and stuff like that (because of the sheer amount of pins), an Arduino MKR WAN 1300 for using the rover with LoRa and a Raspberry Pi 4 for ROS.”
“While I have set up ROS a while back and had a few successful tests with the LIDAR, I don’t have time to integrate it properly at the moment, so for now, I will be sticking only with the 2 Arduinos.”
His full list of necessary components for the build (excluding connectors, etc):
- Arduino MEGA 2560
- Arduino MKR WAN1300
- Antenna for Arduino MKR WAN1300
- 2 x L298N Motor Driver
- Buck Converter (I got an 8A one)
- MPU6050
Garden Pond Monitor
Not forgetting the “Just Encase” Runner-Up, which was Christopher Kettell from the United Kingdom
He developed an Arduino MKR-based Garden Pond Monitor – dubbed Floaty McTest Face – that measures water temperature at various depths and can determine the total dissolved solids, pH, air temperature, humidity, light levels and air pressure (pictured).
All aspects functioned properly in a total submersion test.
You can see lots more information on the site’s project page.
Range
And apparently other participants created a range of projects to monitor wind, solar, pool water quality/chemical levels, air quality, winter driving conditions, landslides, irrigation and particulates.
“Our community of makers and engineers continue to impress with projects that solve for important issues around the world where monitoring is essential, even in extreme conditions,” said Dianne Kibbey, Global Head of Community and Social Media for the element14 Community. “We’re continually grateful for this ingenuity and thoughtfulness that goes into these challenges.”
You can see the complete list of winners, visit the element14 website. element14 is part of Farnell.
