News and New Products

EDN, NEC announce winners of Cornelius van Drebbel's Mad Design Contest

Microcontroller-based designs attack a wide range of applications.

By Staff -- EDN, 4/20/2005

EDN and NEC have announced the winners of Cornelius van Drebbel's Mad Design Contest, which took place through the second half of last year and attracted almost 500 engineers.

Named in honor of a 17th-century Dutch inventor who created an early submarine but didn't get much recognition, the NEC-sponsored contest invited engineers to create an application based on one of NEC's 8-bit microcontrollers with an integrated LCD controller/driver.

Most of the contestants entered one of two hardware categories and received a development kit featuring development boards plus a compiler, assembler, and flash programmer. Some contestants entered the "ePaper" category, which did not include a development kit. In either case, contestants were required to submit a CD containing a complete description of the project, a block diagram, schematics, a software flow chart, and fully commented source code.

In early January, the contestants submitted their entries, which were then evaluated by a panel of independent judges. Each hardware category featured prizes of $10,000, $7500, and $5000 for first, second, and third place. The ePaper category offered a top prize of $2000, and $1000 for second. (More details on the contest rules and procedures can be found at www.maddesigncontest.com.)

Here, we provide a summary of the winning projects, as well as some of the supporting materials these clever designers submitted.

Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to everyone who participated. We're certain Cornelius would have been proud.

EV9835 CATEGORY

First place: Dmitrii Loukianov

LCR Meter: A microcontroller-based frequency counter, capacitance and inductance meter, and seismic data logger. This instrument is intended for standalone use as a service tool, and also as a data logger for a seismometer with an inductive displacement sensor. The unique resolution and capability to measure low inductance and capacitance values, measuring deviation from the preset values, and charting the deviation make this universal instrument handy and suitable for many measurement and data-logging applications.

Second place: Brian Evans

Aquarium management system: Monitors and manages numerous parameters including water temperature and levels, lighting, feeding, and scheduling of maintenance operations.

Third place: John Peterson

"NECTilt" accelerometer-based handheld game: The EV9835 platform serves as a base for a game based on a two-axis accelerometer (such as those made by Memsic). Games are more dynamic when they require physical motion of the unit to play.

EV0338/K0RE9418 CATEGORY

First place: Alain 'd'Espaignet

SmartPlanter: A system that keeps plants healthy and fertilized with markedly reduced maintenance. Using measurements of temperature, dew point, humidity and solar irradiation, it estimates EvapoTranspiration (ET) using a model based on the FAO-56 Penman-Monteith Equation to adjust watering frequency and duration. Seasonal model adjustments are made based on a real-time clock/calendar. Configuration and status is through a keypad/LCD user interface. Low water supply level activates audible and visible alarms. Solar power keeps a lithium-ion battery charged, storing energy to operate fertilizer dosing and watering actuators.

Project description (PDF)

Second place: Gabriel Patulea

Digital audio filter: An adjustable bandwidth digital filter that increases the readability of the CW code signals received by short-wave transceivers. Usually the HF bands are very noisy and affected by interference. By narrowing the audio bandwidth of the receiver it is possible to remove a significant portion of the unwanted noise and improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the received signal.

Project description (PDF)

Third place: Alvin Schatte

Turbine Power Meter: The TPM is an integrated collection of hardware and software modules used to provide a measurement of the amount of power and energy developed and supplied in an alternative energy generation plant. The TPM consists of sensors connected to the power generating and consuming elements of the system, environmental sensors, load actuators to protect the system, and the processing and display elements to properly monitor the power plant. Sensor conditioning modules are included that scale, integrate, and calculate the voltage and power associated with those sensors. A microcontroller and its software accumulate these data, scale, and display them in an understandable terminology.

ePAPER CATEGORY

First place: Marcel Ursu

BrainIRac: The device is designed to capture, store, and transmit multiple infrared (IR) command sequences. It greatly simplifies and speeds up control of various IR devices like TV, DVD, and CD remote controls. The user is able to capture and save a sequence of keystrokes as a macro. That macro can then be run as needed.

Project description (PDF)

Second place: Michael Maassel

Car stereo tester: This unit would perform several tests (output power, frequency response, etc.) for a car stereo. This will permit smaller shops to quickly test stereos.