SIK Capstone Contest Winners
Back in January, we announced a small contest for teachers and educators using the SparkFun Inventor's Kit in their classes. We wanted to highlight and reward teachers for their hard work and dedication to promoting STEM education in the classroom.
In January, we announced the SIK Capstone Contest to teachers, educators, and community members to highlight projects that they are doing with students using our SparkFun Inventor's Kit. We know that the SparkFun Inventor's Kit is our most popular product used in the classroom for introducing electronics, programming and physical computing, and we just wanted to see what you all have been doing with it.
So - we asked people to show us their best and most creative projects using the components of the SIK. We want to see how you and your students modified, extended, or made better any of the 15 circuits in the SIK.
We had a lot of great projects, and the judging was really difficult, but here are the finalists:
1st Place -- $1000 in Sparkfun Credit
Alle Meine Enten -- Kihei Charter School - Maui, HI
Our project uses the motor to spin the ducks, Peizo element to play the song, and the LCD screen to display the name of our project. We learned how to combined programs and circuits. Some struggles were the peizo element wasn't playing loud enough, and the motor was draining power from the LCD screen.
ReplaceMeOpen
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2nd Place -- $500 in Sparkfun Credit
Sparkfun Capstone: Bell of Awesomeness -- Northwood Junior High -- Highland Park, IL Mr. Steinbach's class
We wanted to make a device that would ring a bell when it gets too loud in the classroom. The SIK doesn't have a sound sensor, so we made our invention work when the lights turn off instead. We used the guide to help us learn how to use the light sensor and the servo motor, but it took some time to figure out how to make them work together. We also had to learn how to use Tinkercad to be able to print a stand that would hold the bell and the servo motor. Our circuit includes the servomotor, light sensor, a bunch of wires, and a resistor. The code gets a value from the light sensor and then if the level is low enough, it has a loop that moves the servo motor a certain amount to hit the bell, pauses, moves back, pauses and then repeats.
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3rd Place -- $250 in Sparkfun Credit
Telegraph -- Academy of Arts & Academics -- Springfield, OR
This is a real world application of several components used throughout the SIK labs. It demonstrates how we can use these components to communicate. My inspiration was to use older technology in a modern format.
Parts Used: Arduino, 2 x LEDs, 12 x wires, 1 x relay, 2 x 330 resistors, 1 x push button, 1 x piezo buzzer, 2 x transistors, 1 x diode
Other: I have designed schematics using Fritzing and comments in the code as well."
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Finalists in 4th through 10th place ($25 each) -- in alphabetical order are:
Congratulations to all project submissions! Please stay tuned for future contests. Keep doing what you're doing! And, please share your amazing projects with us!
I need to get the girl from the "Bell of Awesomeness" video to do a new product video...
just wanted to let you know your beard is alive
It watches us.
"Is that your beard or are you just PIC24FJ256DA206-I/PT?"
Little did he know that this simple, seemingly innocuous act would result in his emminent death.
That acting cracks me up every time I watch it! She'll be glad to hear that the humor was appreciated. (her teacher)
I am blown away that Maui, Hawaii got not just 1st prize but THREE winners in the top 10. Thank you Sparkfun for all you have (and continue to do) with your friends out in the mid-pacific. I'll see some of you next week at Maker Con/Faire, and hopefully more of you out here sometime!
Great projects! I want to say "Thank You" to SparkFun for sponsoring this contest (and for making the SIK in the first place). It's heartwarming to see kids enjoying electronics as much as I do.
-- a teacher
Bonus points for the Geenhouse project for re-purposing thrift store items. Awesome hack!
i love the telegraph project!