Announcing the IoT Without Limits Winners
We are excited to announce the results are in for the top 3 IoT Without Limits contest winners! To quickly recap, we teamed up with SparkFun and Google Cloud to challenge our community to create innovative IoT solutions using Helium and Google Cloud IoT. After serious review by our team of judges, projects were evaluated on creativity, execution, and other criteria in the contest rules.
And now, the moment you’ve all been anxiously waiting for…🥁🥁🥁
🥇1st Place: $10,000 USD & a free trip to San Francisco — Clean Water AI by Peter Ma, Justin Shenk, Shin Ae Hong
🥈2nd Place: $5,000 USD — Atom Ready Smart IoT Sensor Node by Manuel Alejandro Iglesias Abbatemarco
🥉3rd Place: $1,000 USD — Bike Route Data Gatherer by Paul Trebilcox-Ruiz
Honorable Mentions
Special shoutouts to some of our contest runners up:
Smart Crops: Implementing IoT in Conventional Agriculture! by Gabriel Alejandro Giraldo Santiago
Mesh Fleet Tracking with Blockchain & Cryptocurrency by Malleus Maleficarum
Virtual Helium Atom with Virtual Breadboard Infinity-Shield by James Caska
AiRobot by Tyler Bershad and Blaine Ayotte
🎸 Best demo video musical soundtrack, thanks to Tyler’s band Club Saturn. Rock on!
💸 But wait, there’s more!
With so many amazing projects, we wanted to show our appreciation by rewarding a $200 USD gift card to all remaining eligible submissions, in addition to a limited edition Helium hoodie.
And last, but not least, our current generation hardware is now available at a discount on Sparkfun. We’re excited to see what you’ll build next with Helium. The sky is the limit!
Congratulations to the IoT Without Limits contest winners and thank you to everyone who submitted valid projects. We were incredibly impressed by all of the participant submissions and the real-world problems they address. You can learn more about the winning projects below and browse through all of the IoT Without Limits projects on Hackster here.
1st place: Clean Water AI by Peter Ma, Justin Shenk, Shin Ae Hong
Contaminated water affects more than 2 billion people according to the World Health Organization, and while we think water is safe to drink in the United States, events like the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, have proven we still face serious water safety issues. In addition, monitoring water contamination is extremely difficult and available water sensors are chemical-based, the most common one is a chemical test strip that can only be used one time.
To address this issue, Peter, Justin, and Shin, developed Clean Water AI — an IoT device that classifies and detects dangerous bacteria and harmful particles. With Clean Water AI, cities and towns can install these IoT devices across their water sources to monitor water quality as well as contamination continuously and in real-time.
Since building the project, the team has been invited to give demos at AIDC, CVPR and Intel DevJam, and plan on continuing development in the near future. Follow the progress at www. cleanwaterai.com
2nd place: Atom Ready Smart IoT Sensor Node by Manuel Alejandro Iglesias Abbatemarco
There is a wave of IoT products and technologies getting into the hands of consumers and developers, but they often come with a high price tag or don’t offer the security, reliability, and flexibility needed for today’s changing world. To address these issues, Manuel developed an innovative design of a sensor node for smart IoT applications powered by Helium’s Atom module. The module has several features that make it a great solution for an embedded sensor where reliable and connectivity are the primary requirements.
The device is designed to be product-ready using commercially available components and includes a variety of possible configurations for different scenarios, from industrial sensor and actuator devices to agricultural, environment monitoring, and portable applications.
3rd place: Bike Route Data Gatherer by Paul Trebilcox-Ruiz
Over the last decade, Denver has seen a population boom and the expansion of alternative methods of transportation such as bike sharing as more people move away from car ownership that have outpaced infrastructure development and support.
To solve for the increased supply and demand, Paul created a Bike Route Data Gatherer prototype that can track the location of a rental bike as it’s used throughout the Denver area and collect route data along the way. With Paul’s prototype, the Helium Element is located inside of the bike docking station so when a bike is rented and returned, the state of the device is updated. Data can then be analyzed to make more informed decisions on how to improve on the growth and efficiency of infrastructure and local transportation services that benefits the community.
