I’ve written before about mbed, a development board aimed at rapid prototyping.  With the tools in the cloud, and C++ classes that abstract away the microcontroller peripheral registers, it is quick and easy to get ideas up and running.  All you need is a computer and a USB cable to get started.

NXP, mbed, Circuit Cellar, and Elektor have teamed up to bring you the mbed Challenge.   The total value of the prizes available is $10,000.  Entries can be hardware designs, software applications, shared libraries, or nearly anything else mbed related.  The idea is to grow the ecosystem of shared mbed code and projects at mbed.org.

The contest is open now, and final entries must be received by Feb 28, 2011.

What sorts of things are mbed users working on?  A quick look at the cookbook on the mbed.org WWW page show:

Take a look at the cookbook, get an mbed, and get started!

Steve Ravet

Design News Gadgeteer

Send in your gadget! Design News is always looking for new gadets to feature in the print edition of the magazine.  Mechanical, electrical, pneumatic, whatever.  Believe me, if they’ll run my hot rodded Billy Bass they’ll run anything.  If you’ve creating something clever and would like to see it in print, submit it to the Design News editors:

http://www.designnews.com/file/25333-Submit_Your_Gadget_Freak_Design.pdf

You’ll get the thrill of seeing your product show up in a print magazine right in your mailbox, and you’ll get a check for $500 as well.