Gadget Freak Contest Winners AnnouncedGadget Freak Contest Winners Announced

DN Staff

August 10, 2010

2 Min Read
Gadget Freak Contest Winners Announced

A Nerf-shooting toy machine gun that uses infrared (IR)sensors to autonomously find its target grabbedthe top spot in the 2010 MAKE/Design NewsGadget Freak contest, it was announced today.

As theGrand Prize winner in the contest, the gun's inventor will receive $1,000 and achance to sell the device in the Maker's Market. The contest, sponsored Alibre Inc., Allied Electronics and Texas Instruments, requires that entrants createa gadget, document their build, and incorporate sensing, motion, timing ornetworking elements.

Rick Prescott, inventor of the winning device,outfitted a Nerf Vulcan EBF-25TM foam dart-shooting machine gun with DevantechTPA thermopile sensors and an ATmega168 controller in his effort to create aheat-tracking toy machine gun. In his entry, Prescott wrote that he harbors "grand plans to deploy the infrared seekingsentinel facing the entrance of my work cubicle in order to speed interactionwith less desirable visitors."

The contest's website says that "we had lots of greatentries and were really splitting hairs among the top five or so." Second prizewent to Miles Moody, a student at the University of Floridawho developed a way to locate the bus that he rides to school every day. His entry employs GPS dataand Internet information to compare the location of the bus to the location ofhis apartment, and then illuminate a light on the device when the bus drawsnear. "The device will light up one of three LEDs: Red if no bus is close;yellow if a bus is somewhat close; and green if the bus is coming and I need tohightail it out of my apartment," Moody wrote in his entry. "For the greencase, a piezo buzzer also sounds so I don't have to be looking at the deviceall the time."

Third prize winners included devices called a "NotLazy Susan" and a "Magic 8 Ball Mod."Inventor Dustyn Roberts combined a rotating platform with an infrared LED and aphototransistor to create the Not Lazy Susan table centerpiece that turns inresponse to the wave of a hand. Mariano Alivira employed an OLED screen, anaccelerometer and a microcontroller with wireless capabilities to create custommessages and provide a new twist on the classic Magic 8 Ball"

Click here to see photos and video of the winners.

Sign up for Design News newsletters

You May Also Like