The Hackaday prize, where entrants competed to build something awesome that transmits data and is openly documented, has now been won by the satNOGs team led by Pierros Papadeas. The device, or system rather, is a open standard based network of ground stations for tracking and monitoring satellites.
As cool as that is, the prize, a trip into space or $196,418, is arguably even better! This seems like an appropriate prize for such a skyward-centric project. The well-produced video explaining more about what this is can be seen below. Given how many people participated on this project, I’d have to expect that the cash prize would be more expedient than a trip into space!
The networking interface looks polished, and the mechanical altitude and azimuth tracker setup looked quite interesting as well. There’s even a geodesic dome design available if you’d like a semi-permanent setup. According to the video, they need more satellite tracking stations to help augment the system. I’d love to hear about anyone that decides to take this on as a project!
As amazing as this system and the grand prize is, the other winners have some really great projects as well. The other prizes may not have been a trip into space, but an industrial grade machine tool or team skydiving are pretty great too!
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