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Spacesuit Order Cancelled

A project log for Remote Water Consumption Display

Design and build a simple, inexpensive, and manufacturable remote indicator for the most common type of mechanical water meter in use today.

john-schuchJohn Schuch 10/13/2014 at 20:101 Comment

Well, the top five entries in the Hackaday Prize have been announced, and I didn't make the cut.

Am I angry? Nah. Am I bummed? Yeah, you could say I'm moderately bummed. But that is kind of offset by the fact that the projects that did make the final five are pretty awesome. I can't point to any one of them and honestly say that my project is superior (though I think I match a couple of them). What's more, I'm probably going to use the SatNOGS project as source material for my own ALT-AZ antenna mount design, and the PortableSDR? Damn, I just want one!

And this being bummed out about not making the elite five will be so short lived that it's almost passed as I write this. Here's the thing. I believe you can choose your attitude and your outlook. You don't have to let disappointment and the little dark voices color your thinking. So I CHOOSE to look at it this way; I came in 6th. As far as I'm concerned all 45 of us that didn't make it came in 6th. And you know what? 6th out of 800 is PRETTY DAMN GOOD! :-)

As for the project, I am absolutely going to finish it and complete the documentation here. It's kind of funny that not making the final five will actually improve the quality of my project. Had I made it, it would have been a crazy push to meet the final deadline. Now, with deadlines off the table, I can take a little more time. I want to improve the code in my sensor module, and the code in my display will certainly be much better for not having been written in a time-crunch. That being said, I am going to take a break.

Maybe a week or two. The weather is finally cooling off here in the desert and I can start using my real shop again (I've been working on a small table in my living room). It's also a train wreck out there, so I'm going to spend a week or two getting my shop bailed out and cleaned, and spend some time just not thinking about this project or the contest. I'll come back to it refreshed, because this HAS been quite a push.

So ...

Congratulations to the final five! You're doing some amazing work!

Congratulations to all the other 6th place winners!!

Thank you to everyone who followed my project, gave it skulls, or left comments.

Thank you to Hackaday and SupplyFrame for running such an awesome contest.

And Thank you to the judges who took on such a daunting task (even though you chose poorly) . <grin>

I'll see you all back here in a week or so. :-)

John

Discussions

The Big One wrote 10/18/2014 at 04:01 point
Very nice post, and congrats on being 6th, too! :-)

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