555 Contest

Tom Jenner–the Mims/Camenzind prize recipient–won our top prize of a custom painting from GnomeNCandle. The plan was to paint the winning entry, but the final decision is up to the winner’s choosing. In addition, GnomeNCandle will be selling prints of whatever he paint to the general public in order to recoup costs.

Tom doesn’t know what to have painted.

In a move of compassion and awesomeness, he has asked that we crowdsource the painting’s design (with the artistic component to be finalized by GnomeNCandle). In this way, we can get a painting that many people would like to have hanging on their walls and something that commemorates the fun contest. Plus, who wouldn’t want to say they have some 555-inspired art hanging on their wall? How nerdy and awesome is that??

So, we need your help. Please leave ideas or links to sketches (perhaps linking to an upload you put on imgur.com) that could help us determine the final painting. We’ll try and get a voting mechanism in place for the final painting. After that, we’ll start a mailing list to let those interested know when the painting is done so you can purchase it from the artist. Thanks for your help and get creative! (again)

• The Mims/Camenzind Prize! Donated by artist GnomeNCandle.
  • Tom Jenner – 555 Servo Controller
• Artistic
  1. Randy Elwin — Le Domineux
  2. Sergio Gonzalez — 555 Alien Sculpture
  3. Jim Frize — 555 Synth Sequencer
• Complex
  1. Alan Yates — 555 Adding Machine
  2. Alexis Kotlowy — 555 Pong-like DodgeBall Game
  3. Jim Chen — 555 WhackAMole
• Minimalist
  1. Tom Jenner — 555 Servo Controller
  2. Eric Schlaepfer — 555 AM Radio
  3. Michael Noland — 555 Persistance of Vision
• Utility
  1. Michael Davis — Battery Charge Controller for Wind And Solar
  2. Jonathan M Straub — PCB Etching Controller
  3. Tom Jenner — 555 Servo Controller
• Under 18
  • Valentin B — 555 Inductivity Meter

Jeri and I have decided to announce the winners on-air, on Wednesday, April 20th. We will be uStreaming the entire show and will have a chat room running the entire time. This link will get you to the IRC chat and the embedded uStream window:

www.nymphs.org/Jeri/

or if you just want the uStream video and don’t care about the chat:

www.ustream.tv/channel/jeri-ellsworth

If you have questions, want to chat with others or just want to see us announce the top winners, please stop by Wednesday night at 9pm EST. If you can’t make it, we’ll be recording the show to post onto YouTube a short while later.

Thanks again to everyone for their patience throughout this process. We’re excited to share the winners with everyone!

Our judges had many wonderful things to say about everyone participating in the contest. We have received their answers and are working on the final logistics of announcing the winners.  In the mean time, check out this nice quote from Forrest Mims:

[The participants] displayed an absolutely remarkable range of engineering skills, creativity and dedication to meet the deadline. Also impressive was the use of video and photography to illustrate many of the entries.

This contest helps restore my confidence in analog designers, who have become a very small minority in electronics these days. Some of these projects do with great simplicity and efficiency what exclusively digital designers would have great difficulty emulating. Moreover, a number of these projects have potential commercial merit. Hopefully the developers will be able to pursue this.

I know there has been a good bit of radio silence from the judges of the contest. We have been busily tallying and re-tallying the scores of all of the wonderful entries that were submitted. We are now finishing up our numbers and have sent the final list to our celebrity judges, Forrest Mims and Hans Camenzind!

We hope to have the final results posted within the next few weeks. Thanks for hanging in there!

The final set of entries that are moving on!

This one seemed to have the most crossovers with the “utility” category, but that must mean it requires complexity to be a useful circuit…only the final judges will tell!

We are SO grateful for all the entries everyone sent in. Reviewing them really shows how much ingenuity and enthusiasm is out there. If you didn’t make the cut, don’t worry, there are still prizes to be had! We’ll be announcing door prizes along with the category winners.

Enjoy checking out this last round of winners!

3 down, 1 to go!

As mentioned in the Utility and Artistic categories notices, Jeri and I have narrowed entries for our second round judges; judging for finalists is already underway. This is the list of Minimalist entries that are moving on to the next round.

Check back here or on our feed to keep up to date.

As mentioned in the “Utility Category” notice, Jeri and I have narrowed entries for our second round judges; judging for finalists is already underway.

We are now posting the entries that are moving on in the Artistic category. There are fewer in this category because there were fewer submitted to this judging section.

Remember, this listing is posted solely as a notice to readers; no prizes have been awarded yet. You must advance to the final round to be considered for merit prizes (as opposed to participation-only/door prizes).

Check back here or on our feed to keep up to date.

Jeri and I have narrowed entries for our second round judges; judging for finalists is already underway.

However, we hate that our first round took so long and we kept you in the dark, so we wanted to start posting the projects that advanced to the second round! As a note on this and every other categories, there may be some projects that advanced to the next round in multiple categories. We allowed entries to be considered for all categories, but during the next round will be judged on the merit of the project as it pertains to the category. As an example, a 555 based synthesizer might be entered in the “Artistic” and “Utility” categories but will be judged on how artistic and how useful it is.

Also, we should note that this listing is posted solely as a notice to readers; no prizes have been awarded yet. You must advance to the final round to be considered for merit prizes (as opposed to participation-only/door prizes).

Check back here or on our feed to keep up to date.

Tom Jenner has a wonderful primer on a simple 555 circuit that is used in myriad applications for robotics and servo control. Check it out here:

Kliment Yanev shows off a homemade (for real, the parts are 3D printed) yarn spinning machine.

Wonderful entries! Keep it tuned to the 555 contest site in order to see more! Or subscribe to the news feed to find out instantly.