Amazing SPE Challenge Project Ideas
We've had a bunch of stellar ideas come from our Single-Pair Ethernet Design Challenge. Here are some of the creative highlights.
At SparkFun, we celebrate both successes and failures. It can be hard to know how a project will turn out until you actually TRY, and we didn't want a lack of necessary hardware to be the roadblock that was keeping our community from experimenting with 10BASE-T1L Single-Pair Ethernet (SPE) technology - so all we asked for was a project idea, and now we are sending out SparkFun MicroMod Single Pair Ethernet Kits to those who took the time to fill out our form.
Well, we've been blown away by all of the stellar ideas coming from our Single-Pair Ethernet Design Challenge. Whether they work out or not, we wanted to highlight the creativity and wide range of use cases that y'all submitted in a blog post, so here we go...
There is a special prize awarded for the most sustainable project, and we've seen some really unique ideas come in that could greatly contribute to the environmental potential of SPE applications, like this one:
With climate change and water scarcity, arid countries' policies aim to conserve dams’ water for domestic and industrial use only. Due to a lack of budget, having no other alternative, Small-farms crop production turns to the use of innovative low-cost solutions for irrigation and livestock. The proposed project outlines a new approach supporting agricultural agencies and policies at all levels, livestock professionals, smallholding farmers, and local populations, to stabilize the ecologically unsustainable exploitation of the water on dry-lands. The proposed approaches aim to implement Smart connected Hardware to both the prediction of water quality and its evolution, manage an innovative irrigation process, as well as livestock watering points."
We love to see users implementing other SparkFun parts into their builds!
I plan to use sparkfun's micromod and qwicc products in a battery-less energy harvesting setup to monitor earthquake signals and other vibrations, by leveraging the low power consumption of the ADIN1110 and (most likely) that of artemis MM MCU. The idea is to illustrate where the SPE setup is an advantage over twisted pairs when wireless can't be used (earth quake sensors should be located underground).
Submissions came in from all over the world, with over 50% being outside the US.
Almost all multi storied buildings in Bangladesh contain a water tank in the roof and a water reservoir in the ground. An electric pump is used to pump the water from the reservoir to the water tank on the rooftop. Most of the building the system is manual and a person manually turn off the pump when water tank becomes full. This manual process always creates wastage of valuable water and indirectly create wastage of the electricity as well. An automatic system can save a big amount of water and electricity by automatically turning off the pump when water tank become full. Besides monitoring the water quality of the tank can give some important information of the water e.g. when to clean the tank.
There have been a number of interesting maritime ideas. Here's one:
Demonstrate the practicality of using SPE to act as the single cable tether for a marine research sensor node. A pressure-rated & waterproof capsule will be built and configured for a shallow ocean trial. The modular design will be backed with a custom 'backplane' which provides surface communications and power delivery (10BASE-T1L + 802.3cg), while providing flexible hardware choices via MicroMod and a large area for mounting sensors and custom sensor boards.
Maybe one of these projects will end up in space!
We will use the SPE kit for prototyping a CubeSat subsystem controller and data bridge functionality. SPE provides great benefits to CubeSats because it can reduce the harness weight, significantly lower the number of pins on connectors (and difficulties associated with working with nano-D connectors), lowers cable bend radii, and enables architectural redundancy by bridging from spacecraft components that use heritage data buses like RS-422 UARTs, etc. to ethernet.
Here's a neat look into the internal processes of nuclear plants:
The idea is to prove that this cable can solve the ongoing issue with electrically noisy areas. The main issue I'm talking about is nuclear power plants, as there is an ongoing issue with wired connections. As of now, most Ethernet cables are too expensive, heavy, short, and not good enough to be reasonably used in nuclear power plants. Due to this many were seeking development in wireless communications that were less noisy so they could be used. I believe the 10BASE-T1L will provide better uses to the industry due to its perks, more so that continuing to explore wireless methods. My project will showcase that the 10BASE-T1L Ethernet cable will be faster in an electrically noisy environment that a wireless connection, while also being more cost effective for its usefulness.
This is just a taste of what's to come. You can expect updates and project showcases in the coming months, so make sure to check in on the blog if you're interested.
Interested in making your own project with a SparkFun SparkFun MicroMod Single Pair Ethernet Kits? Even though project submissions are closed, you can pick one up and get your hands on this innovative technology! We've also put together an annotated list of resources to help you learn more about SPE and make your project ideas a reality!
Thanks to all the applicants! We will be reaching out soon to send you your kits and next-steps. We can't wait to see how these ideas turn out - best of luck!
