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Making Tech At Home

A contest featuring Tech At Home projects

Thursday, April 30, 2020 09:00 am PDT - Thursday, July 30, 2020 12:00 pm PDT Local time zone:
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This contest has ended and the winners have been announced! Thank you all for participating! 

Together with Digi-Key, Hackaday is proud to present the Tech At Home challenge. 

We’re in interesting times, all of us together as one big maker community, but we’re also alone and staying at home. Now more than ever, creatives and engineers need a sense of community.

What better way to fire up your creativity (and use up some parts)  then by building something fun from stuff you own already!

The goal is to come up with any project from parts that you have lying around the house. We won’t ding you if you order supplemental components, but if you’re like most of us, you have Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, a mountain of capacitors, and other parts just waiting to be used.

This is your chance to learn some new skills involving those things you have lying around. We bet you have motors, shields, hats, passives, actives, and more in boxes and drawers. 

We bet you once bought a bunch of parts for a project, promising yourself that you’d get to it on the weekend. We bet that those parts are languishing in a drawer just waiting for you. 

There are so many different ways to jumpstart your skillset, learn something new, and share it with the community. Some of the things you can do right now, today, are:

  • Learn about robotics: how do PID controllers work?
  • Learn about communications systems: how does an IR LED communicate with a receiver?
  • Learn about LED art: how do you make LED blinkies with gorgeous patterns?
  • Learn about wearables and data from the self: what is your heartbeat?

An indoor flower-waterer? A hot air balloon that waters plants? Sure! A submarine that explores undersea caverns? Perfect! Your project can move via remote-control or be autonomous. It can be serious or frivolous! Your imagination is the limit.

What’s more, Digi-Key will be providing a grab bag of parts to replace what you use to 30 very lucky winners. It’s like going to their warehouse and choosing all the best parts for yourself, but instead it ships to you.

We asked you for input on what you’d like to see in a grab bag, we listened, and now it’s your chance to help choose.


Choose what you'd like to see in Digi-Key's grab bag here

The top thirty projects will receive a portion of Digi-Key’s warehouse.

The top three projects will receive a grab bag worth $500.

We’ll be judging using the following criteria:

  • Is it clear what the project does? Catchy titles matter!
  • Have you mentioned where you found the parts you used in your project?
  • Is the project well documented?
  • Is there a system design, CAD model, or basic sketch, and how well does it illustrate the project?
  • Is the project creative and original?
  • Bonus: post about your project on social media using the #TechAtHome hashtag, then link to it in the comments so we can find it.

To get started, start a project on hackaday.io and submit to the Tech At Home Challenge. 

Contest runs from 9AM April 30th to noon July 30th. All times are in Pacific Standard Time.

******Surprise winners will be chosen ******

**edit: we have randomly chosen 5 surprise winners and notified them all June 18th**

How to enter:  Show your project by documenting it as a new project on Hackaday.io. Once you have published your project, look in the left sidebar for the "Submit project to..." menu in order to enter it in the Making Tech At Home Contest.

Who is eligible: Everyone is eligible to enter this contest. Employees, contractors, and relatives of Supplyframe are not eligible to win.

Winners must have a Digi-Key customer number so we can ship from the warehouse: register at digikey.com

View contest log

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Discussions

Dr. Cockroach wrote 10/15/2020 at 16:34 point

Just wondering, I am in the top thirty and still no feedback about the grab bags. Any updates? I do have my active account with DigiKey

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Sophi Kravitz wrote 10/15/2020 at 19:12 point

Hi there, please ask at superconference@hackaday.com

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Dr. Cockroach wrote 10/15/2020 at 19:20 point

Thanks :-)

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Starhawk wrote 08/06/2020 at 20:30 point

Could someone give an idea of when winners and losers (i.e., the list I know I'll be on :-/ ) will be announced?

EDIT: also, my project, https://hackaday.io/project/173780-space-caadet, is not showing as submitted to the contest. My life is kind of a mess right now, as in "bad thunderstorm in a dumpster that is rolling and also on fire" sorts of mess ;) yikes. I can't remember if I *actually* clicked the button to formally submit it or not, but I very much intended to submit it. If it is not submitted by way of clicking the button, that is a technical error *only* and if someone could go in and fix it for me, I'd deeply appreciate that.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Sophi Kravitz wrote 08/06/2020 at 20:37 point

sure, sometime by the end of next week. Good luck to you!

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Starhawk wrote 08/06/2020 at 21:22 point

Looks like I missed that button, and for various legal reasons that's very much binding and permanent :( oh well, I didn't expect to win anything anyways.

Congrats to the winners, whoever they are, and sympathies to the rest of us. We all tried our best, even if some of us can't manage even to click a single link somewhere lol.

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Starhawk wrote 07/26/2020 at 05:21 point

New project entry -- https://hackaday.io/project/173780-space-caadet

No pix in Gallery, but lots in the Logs... also some humor in the tags :P

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Thornhill! wrote 07/24/2020 at 01:35 point

Finally updated my Lou the Toilet Indictor project with a build guide, 3D print files, and code! https://twitter.com/MakerThornhill/status/1286474655042281473?s=20

https://hackaday.io/project/170829-lou-the-toilet-indicator

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Ashok wrote 07/23/2020 at 14:43 point

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danjovic wrote 07/10/2020 at 17:55 point

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Starhawk wrote 07/06/2020 at 07:58 point

Withdrawing "SETEC Astronomy", effective immediately... *however* I'm planning on starting a new project tomorrow and submitting it to this contest if I can.

More info -- https://hackaday.io/project/171368-setec-astronomy/log/180290-well-bugger-me

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Addidis wrote 06/30/2020 at 14:30 point

how do we submit a project? just write it up on hadio?

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davedarko wrote 07/01/2020 at 13:53 point

under the image / info section on the left there is a button "submit project to..."

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Rahul Khanna wrote 06/22/2020 at 06:13 point

Check my AI Voice trainer project. 

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/Rahul_Khanna_rk/status/1274947737935425536 

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Darian Johnson wrote 06/13/2020 at 09:25 point

Remixing one of my old projects to make a Star Trek TNG Desktop. Twitter link here: https://twitter.com/darianbjohnson/status/1271734707839995906?s=20

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Miguel Ayuso Parrilla wrote 06/09/2020 at 19:41 point

Hi guys, these last months i have been working on making a quadruped robot walk and this contest was the perfect motivation to documentate all the research made.

https://hackaday.io/project/171456-diy-hobby-servos-quadruped-robot

Also i'm very active at my instagram account, here are some #TechAtHome videos from ig:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_10FfsD1mS/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CA2nXlbjiF2/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CBDeA0IDmWh/

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bornach wrote 06/06/2020 at 16:53 point

The No-Face-Touchy Training Collar - Without magnets up the nostril!
https://twitter.com/Bornach1/status/1269310746703380480

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bornach wrote 05/10/2020 at 18:30 point

Put your phone/tablet recharger on a calorie restricted diet!
https://twitter.com/Bornach1/status/1259550465026600961

  Are you sure? yes | no

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