This is the final week and weekend to prepare your PSoC Pioneer Challenge project before the deadline at 11:59pm PST on Monday, April 6. (This contest is open to international makers; see below for the adjusted timezone differences.)
One lucky maker will receive $2,500 for travel to the special 10th anniversary Maker Faire Bay Area in mid May.
Another lucky maker will receive a total of $450 in gift certificates from the Maker Shed, Arrow Electronics, and Cypress Semiconductor.
This contest is challenging makers to design projects for the IoT using the PSoC 4 BLE (pictured above), a new development board released by Cypress late last year. The board contains a CapSense slider and Bluetooth Low Energy integration, and projects are built using a Windows-based software IDE with access to over 100 components ranging from timers to logic gates, PWM, op-amps, and comparators. All the components are easily allocated with just a few clicks or drag-and-drop motion inside the software.
During the course of the contest we’ve had a lot of fun exploring this board and its features. We began by looking at the CapSense proximity header built on the board – one of my favorite features. We took a quick look at how quick it is to debug this board – just two clicks! Along the way, Cypress launched its 100 Projects in 100 Days campaign for this board (they’re up to Project #30). Make: contributor Alasdair Allan explored some of those projects as they relate to BLE layers like GAP and GATT, along with lower layers of the BLE stack like Link Layer, L2CAP, and Security. Cypress conducted a live Hangouts On Air where it demoed some live projects and discussed future BLE product. And lastly, the Challenge even inspired Make: author Don Wilcher to conduct a series of free online lectures discussing PSoC and the BLE.
In other words, there’s more excitement for the PSoC 4 BLE than even we anticipated!
But it’s not over yet. Like I say, we’re now in countdown mode. The deadline to enter the PSoC Pioneer Challenge is 11:59pm PT on Monday, April 6. Because this contest is open to international makers and we have been in touch with a number of you, I’ve also provided the deadline time below as it relates to a number of other timezones. Just be sure to enter before the deadline passes and you could win $2,500 for a trip to Maker Faire Bay Area.
The deadline to enter the contest is:
- 11:59pm PDT (San Francisco) on Monday, April 6
- 2:59am EDT (New York) on Tuesday, April 7
- 3:59am BRT (Rio de Janeiro) on Tuesday, April 7
- 7:59am BST (London) on Tuesday, April 7
- 12:25pm IST (New Delhi) on Tuesday, April 7
- 3:59pm JST (Tokyo) on Tuesday, April 7
- 4:59pm AEST (Sydney) on Tuesday, April 7
Good luck!
Enter the PSoC Pioneer Challenge and you could win $2,500 for travel to Maker Faire Bay Area in May. Projects should include the PSoC 4 BLE kit from Cypress Semiconductor. This new development board includes Bluetooth and CapSense, along with a software IDE that makes building for the IoT both challenging and fun .
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