Embedded Processing

The opportunities to strut your embedded engineering design prowess in a competition format continue to roll on every few months. Freescale recently kicked off a design challenge or competition featuring their low-end microcontrollers, specifically the 8-bit MC9S08QG, MC9S08QD, or MC9RS08KA families. In contrast to designing with 8-bit processors, Luminary Micro’s Design Stellaris competition, which focuses on their 32-bit ARM Coretx-M3 microcontrollers, is still open, but it closes in a few weeks this February 7. Texas Instruments, late last year, announced the results of their design competition centered around their 16-bit MSP430 microcontrollers and their eZ430-F2013 USB stick form factor development toolkit. A few months before that, Atmel concluded their design competition featuring their AVR microcontrollers.

Are these design contests a good idea and why do companies sponsor them? A cynic might suggest that these competitions are attempts by these companies to drum up business for their parts because they currently lack a market to serve. However, the types of processor devices that are featured in these competitions tend to be general purpose in nature. In other words, they do not serve a specific niche market. On one hand, these events are an attempt to uncover potential new applications that these devices and development tools make possible. However, in general, the companies provide many kits to potential contestants and receive a small fraction back as completed entries. Contrary to the cynical claim, these types of results do not prove out to be a sufficient model for drumming up large numbers of new customers for an existing product line.

Besides the goal of creating awareness in the design community about these parts, a big part of the events is to demonstrate, in a low risk context, how much easier the development tools are to use from previous generations of tools. These events are low risk to developers because the time frame to complete an entry is usually limited to a few months at most. A key to successfully completing an entry is to properly scope the project so that the person or team can complete it before the contest deadline. Blog entries by contestants amplify how important limiting the project scope is.

Putting together one of these design competitions is not a simple exercise; there is a tremendous amount of planning and logistics to contend with. In addition to marketing the competition, the company needs to be sure to have a sufficient number of the target development kits available to potential contestants. Luminary Micro’s contest provided free development kits to participants; however, despite setting aside a sizeable number of kits for the contest, the free kits were completely snatched up within the first week. Additional kits are available, but contestants must purchase them for $49. Freescale has taken a different approach by requiring contestants to complete pre-qualifying rounds and offering discounted development kits (no free kits).

A less obvious challenge is the cost or value of the development tools that these contests rely on can be substantial and limits their utility to companies to feature more expensive devices and tools. Some development tools are available for less than $50; however, many tool sets still cost thousands of dollars. This cost disparity is a strong influence on the types of design contests that companies can sponsor and that developers can participate in.

To improve the success of these events, companies must ensure they provide adequate technical support for the phone and email questions that will come up during the competition or they risk providing a bad experience to the contestants, who are potential future customers.

In addition to limiting the project’s scope, to increase the chances of completing a project by the deadline, a contestant needs a strong internal or personal motivation. From the conversations I have had with contestants, like Jeff Berezin about his bicycle trainer entry, a project with a personal return, other than the contests potential awards helps a lot. Without a project that captures your passion, your chances of completing the entry on time are at risk.

Like most things in life, there can be more than a single payoff for the effort expended. Participating in these contests gives small business owners, or individuals, a chance to get their name and skill set out into the community. Any finalist position in these contests is often much more valuable than the formal contest awards.

However, the requirement to release the IP (intellectual property) in an entry is a possible barrier to entering a design. This is another reason for limiting the time frame for contest entries. The value and type of IP that can be developed in these short time frames is small, and the potential payoff in public recognition of talent and skill can out weigh the loss of the IP rights. Most of these contests require the use of commercially available components. Additional, it is a far cry from demonstrating a concept and bringing it to a production product support level. All in all, the design contests offer potential opportunities and benefits to both sides of the fence.