July’s mystery component for the virtual contest was a pair of photocells! Next month is Let’s Make a Clock! Last month was Arduino Challenge.

The cool thing about this contest is it’s a low pressure system so you can focus on the fun of your project. It also has regular meetups so if you need ideas or support it will come forward.

Further the voting system encourages you to learn to share your project through a Web site and elicit other support from the community. This can be very helpful for a creative process.

This contest is designed for fun by volunteers. So please feel free to come forward with suggestions, support or to join the volunteer team.

Ottawa Hacker Leaderboard

Kevin Nesdoly, Black Box

Kevin’s elegant Black Box project has a tactile and sensory dimension. It wasn’t easy to grab a picture of his project from his site so you’ll have to visit his site! I saw the project myself and was able to grab a sneak preview of its workings. I think this sort of thing has a lot of potential. I think the art world would find this interesting as well.

Kevin is new to the Arduino community and is learning at an amazing pace. I’m looking forward to seeing more of his work. Be sure to keep an eye on his Web site for future project.

Peter Sjoberg, Light Following Robot

Check out Peter’s Light Following Robot. Looks like he’s also hacked a remote control truck he found for $10. That’s a cool platform for experimentation and probably has lots of power and speed.

Peter also entered the Ottawa Arduino Challenge with his Lance Project which was very popular.

Peter has a lot of experience with Arduino and such and he even makes his own custom boards and uses the Arduino Mini Pro in some of his projects. He is a great asset to the Arduino User Group.

Hussam Alhertani, LightSpeak – Speaking Light Meter

Hussam’s LightSpeak – Speaking Light Meter is a cool way of of using light to interact with a project as well.

There is a video at his site but you’ll need to click through to it since it’s not in a repository he seems to have his own video player there.

His project is actually tethered to a computer and uses speech synthesis.

He seems to have a lot of experience with this stuff so hopefully he will continue to hang out with the Arduino User Group to guide people.

Prizes

Electric Paper Plane Kit!

All contestants who receive votes will receive a Zen Glider.

Contest Rules

Contestants use the supplied hardware in their project.

Winner will be determined by a voting process.

The person with the highest number of votes will choose a prize from whatever is in the prize bin. Then the person with the next highest and so forth till all the prizes are gone. Any ties will be broken by choosing the one that posted their project the earliest.

Reports