Hackster, Avnet’s global project-based developer community, was proud to serve as the administrator of the U.S. division of the annual China-U.S. Young Maker Competition, for the 7th consecutive year. The competition presented projects from the most creative and innovative young minds from the developer community.
Hosted by the Chinese Ministry of Education, the U.S. division is judged by a panel of experts from Google’s open hardware division. This year’s competition theme focuses on community development, education, environmental protection, health & fitness, energy, transportation, or other areas of sustainable development, to encourage young makers to integrate impact-conscious thinking into their designs.
Ten teams were selected from the Hackster contest to compete on the final international stage representing the U.S. division, and five teams this year won prizes competing among other international teams, with the highest prize totaling $7500.
Here are the winning entries:
- In-Sink Garbage Composter (Won a 1st Tier Prize in the Final Competition) by Team Academic GarbageThis project tackles the problem of food waste, which is especially relevant as 1.4 billion tons of food are wasted every year. In the United States alone, 80 billion pounds of food are wasted each year. In order to prevent widespread food waste, this team integrated a sink garbage disposer with a composter so users can easily utilize the compost from food waste to fertilize home-grown vegetables and fruits.
- Weather Almanac (Won a 1st Tier Prize in the Final Competition) by Alex KendrickThis project showcases the effects of climate change and acts as a reliable source for users to detect how their local climate and weather change over time by utilizing a weather station, collecting historical data and comparing it to current weather, and finally configuring a Raspberry Pi AllSky Camera to take images during the day and implementing machine learning to identify cloud cover. It can be extremely difficult for us to visualize and understand how drastically our local climate has changed, however, this project gives users a better understanding of what specifically has changed over time and how climate change has impacted their local environment.
- AirBits (Won a 3rd Tier Prize in the Final Competition) by Andrew Van TasselAirBits monitors indoor CO2 and TVOC levels to alert users when dangerous levels of these harmful gases are present in their living space. Andrew discussed how the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the importance of tracking airflow and ventilation in indoor spaces to ensure people remain healthy, which this project accomplishes by displaying air quality levels on an M5 Core2 device with colored LEDs to show which level of quality the air within the room is. This data can be sent in real-time via AWS to show the air quality levels to users with map apps as well, ensuring users do not need to be in the room to be alerted of unhealthy levels of CO2 or TVOC.
- Soil Carbon Quantification Using AIoT Radar Sensor Array (Won a 3rd Tier Prize in the Final Competition) by DI AN and YangQuan ChenThis project aims to quantify the effect of biochar applied to soil in terms of carbon sequestration accurately, quickly, cost-effectively, and on a massive scale. Soil carbon is extremely important to combat climate change, supply crops with water, and sustain biodiversity in an ecosystem. Applying biochar to soil improves the functions of the soil itself while also preserving the soil from the effects of climate change, however, the process itself has many variables that are difficult to understand and measure in a cost-effective way. By utilizing a portable device that transmits microwaves and receives reflective signals to infer the amount of soil carbon with a UAS, this project could be scaled-up as a cost-effective method to predict local soil conditions in agricultural areas.
- Fresh Air (Won a 3rd Tier Prize in the Final Competition) by Team EdisonThis project measures air quality across various areas in New York City by using the Seeed Studio Grove starter kit with Intel Edison to detect CO2, CO, temperature, and the quantity of rainfall. When there are high levels of CO2 and CO, high temperatures, and a small quantity of rainfall, this could imply a city should plant more trees in the area to combat the negative air quality. This project is a great solution to make sustainable living spaces more efficient and reduce the negative health effects of cities. Other top 10 projects & judge’s choices in the U.S. division contest:
- A “Tree of Light” Prototype
- If The Allegations Are Not Legit, You m. AWS. t EduKit
- Affordable Smart Spirometer Utilizing Predictive Analytics
- Urban/Suburban Air Quality and Fire Detection
- Wildfire Detection with AI Drone
- Build a Litter Heatmap with a Blues Notecard & Edge Impulse
- FloWat -> Flow Water
- Full list here
For previous year’s contests and winning projects, check out the list below:
- 2021 China-US Young Maker Competition
- 2020 China-US Young Maker Competition
- 2019 China-US Young Maker Competition
- 2018 China-US Young Maker Competition
- 2017 Co-Making the Future (Intel)
- 2016 Co-Making the Future (Intel)
For further information, please contact contests@hackster.io
