Hi as you may know, I was a judge in the recent Renaissance RX Micro Design contest and it was one of the biggest design contests in Industry history. Over $100,000 in prize money uh from Renaissance and various Partners a whole bunch of Partners were involved. Almost everyone who entered I think won a prize. It was absolutely incredible and Renaissance gave away uh, hundreds of these RX 62n uh micro development boards to enter the contest with and a whole bunch of people did just that.

And there were dozens of brilliant, absolutely brilliant entries. Uh, and there were I wasn't the only judge uh, there was um Mory Wright who's a fellow blogger uh Kent lman who actually uh designed this board and a bunch of other judges. They tallied all the scores together and they announced Ed the winners at the Uh ESC the Embedded Systems Conference a couple of weeks ago and I thought I'd do a very quick video of just highlighting the top uh three places cuz I think they were really good examples of how you can actually enter and win these design contests. So if you're plan on entering future design contests, stick around.

might have a few hints for you about how to do very well and possibly win one of these industry design cont contest. So let's go through them. The top three winners for the RX Micro Design contest. See you Okay, let's start out by taking a look at the third place winner Matt Pratt with the Brew bot.

Now this one is an absolute Beauty. It's basically uh, brewing your own beer at home and he uses the Renaissance RX board to control the whole thing. uh, basically in ter terms of motor control and web uh, interface to control it and operating system. and the whole thing like that.

which we'll go into now. he uh, ticks all the boxes which you need to win these design contests. He's got an excellent video. It's nice and clear.

It's uh, concise. It's got uh, audio as well. Um, it shows the operation of the thing, the construction, all sorts of stuff. So you got to have a good video to be really in the running for these content.

And he's got that. And he's got the Uh. even though the schematic uh isn't much at all. um, but he's got the bill materials.

He's got the zip file with the source code, so it's all there. He's met all the conditions of the contest and he's got excellent documentation. Now here it is. It's a PDF file and this is the Uh basic.

It starts out with a photo of the device. There it is. there's the Renais RX board down there controlling and it's got a whole bunch of uh, stainless steel um Contraptions and uh, Shoots for the um, all sorts of stuff and it's all automated, motor control and all that sort of stuff from the Renaissance RX series board. Now the thing with these.

you always in the design contest. You always get a big build like this. somebody builds something big and impressive looking and you immediately see it and you go wow, Look at this. you know, how can this guy not win and uh, well, it's true.

You're going to. if you build something impressive like this, you're really going to be right up there straight away. But it's not all about just, uh, a fabulous construction. If this, if the Renaissance RX series board down here controlling this thing only uh, flashed a few LEDs and turned a few Motors and was basically used as a PL uh sorry, a um, a programmable logic controller a PLC then it wouldn't have been very impressive at all cuz this is an Electronics design contest.

So a really big impressive build like this with lots of wood and lots of metal and motors and things that turn and do stuff that's fantastic. But if you don't do much on the electronics um or and or software side then uh, really, you can be uh, left out. You can not win, you may not even place and he just scraped into third place with this thing. Um, it was a pretty solid third.

Third place actually didn't just scrape in, but um, it was an excellent effort because he had pretty much consistent across the board, the video and the documentation. Now let's take a look at it. He's got a table of contents about this document. Uh, it's 23 odd pages long.

Fantastic. It's detailed. He's got the background of why he's doing it. Um, he's got the objectives of his thing.

It's well written, it's well written in English which is a big deal. Some people just have terrible documentation skills and it comes across very poorly. but not in this case. It's excellent safety.

he's mentioned. he goes into the design of it, the Uh servos and the solenoids used um further on down here. he details the construction, the materials used all sorts of stuff like that. and then he's got a uh, a descriptive photo of the all sorts of I don't even what's a Gr bag I Mash ster I Have no idea these are all uh, terms used for, um, a mash motor used for uh, brewing beer.

but uh, he's gone to the effort to label all this stuff and that really comes across across quite well. And there's more detailed photos. photos are easy to do when you're documenting your project. Make sure you photograph it and you, uh, you know, photos are easy to add.

They're simple, you just take a photo I got Golden Rule of any documentation be it at work or when you're entering contests like this. just snap a photo a Picture Tells A thousand words. It really does. And there's more detailed uh photos of uh, his complete build.

It's very impressive. There's the Uh Hopper system that I assume you put the Uh required elements for the beer in there and it tips them out at the required time. Fantastic. But uh, it's not rocket science, really.

a controller that just controls um a Beer Bot Like this is not overly, uh, complicated at all. As I said, it's just a PLC There's his Verab board. uh, build down the bottom with just the extra driver circuitry on it. Uh, the Renaissance RX board does most of the thing, but I like how he went to a lot of trouble to build it.

It's got a perspect panel on the front, the wood construction's very nice and all that sort of stuff. So as I said, it's not all about the uh, just the act of actually brewing beer. You can do that with any PLC. But what he's done in this case is that he's actually used um, a the free OSS Um, he's used a realtime operating system and developed an entire web server for this thing so he can control it um, via the web and it also integrates with uh, some existing open source, uh software so and is actually uh, re-releasing that back to the community so people can develop on this thing.

So that is a really excellent way to gain uh, valuable points in a contest like this is. uh, use all the features of the development board you've been given this case. it was a classic. It's got Ethernet, it comes with web server.

It was begging. Any application for this contest was just begging to have the web server enabled. So that's what he's done. And he's used a realtime operating system and the uh, gnu tool chain.

It's fantastic. And there is his um, this is the Uh Brew Target I think is the software that um existing software which he has interfaced to and can control his um uh Brew mechanism from. So it's fantastic and he gives that back. And here's another big bonus: Point Graphs Personally, when I'm judging a test like this, if I see that you've measured the performance of this thing.

Graphs are brilliant. You earn huge points for doing that. It shows you you're uh, dedicated to the project. You're not just slapping it together to put it in there.

It shows that you really, uh, care about the design. You've taken the time to measure its performance and optimize it and all that sort of stuff. And as you can see, it's really quite nice. You can actually see how it, uh, overshoots there at the start.

He didn't use a PID algorithm in this case, but there's the oscill around the target temperature and there's the uh ramp up as it, um as it Bru the beer I Guess Fantastic. So and then he talks about uh design improvements as well. So there you go. It's got pretty much everything, including a conclusion and acknowledgements.

and that is pretty much. uh, perfect textbook documentation for winning a contest like this. And that's why he got a solid third place. Well done.

Let's take a look at second place place now. Jing Z Zang if I pronounce that correctly. Uh with the RX ECG Silverlight web server for ECG, it's a bit of a mouthful. Uh, But it's an excellent project uh for several reasons and let's check it out.

Basically what it involves is it involves uh, using the Renais RX development board to interface to a Uh and ECG and electrocardiogram monitoring uh system That basically there's just a in a bunch of Um amplifiers on the input fed into Adcs and that's pretty much it. So it's a uh, pretty uh, simplistic front end. but he's using the Um Sega OS and the Sega Network stack as well to uh web enable this thing. And of course, Sega is one of the Renaissance RX uh partners and you get bonus points for using the Uh the partner tools which come with the board.

So he scored points there straight away. And the other thing is it scored big points for originality because how many people would do an EC a webbased ECG monitoring system, let alone one using the Uh using the Microsoft Silverlight web server? And really, it's also a good demonstration of the Silverlight web server which nobody else, um, even uh, thought of doing. It's one of the more obscure applications, so it scored big points there. But um, and on the technical Merit side, it also scored pretty big points.

Not so much for the electronics side of it, but for the software side requiring to interface with the realtime operating system, the web server, and then uh, going into the silver light um, uh, aspect of it as well. and it's a pretty useful device. So they they were three of the categories that scored high in originality technical Merit usefulness. But unfortunately, it, uh, didn't score as high as a third place brewbot in for me Anyway, in terms of um, the documentation.

While he's got two videos here, there actually are quite poor videos and let's take a look at them. I FR end for EC amplify and data s here and here. he talks about the board, but it's a very, uh, uninteresting, monotonous, kind of um, video audio um, voice over. So whereas compare that with the brewbot and where he was actually in the video himself actually talking about the project.

so that gained big points. So the videos weren't very impressive and they weren't very informative unfortunately. and same with the other one down here. it's just, um, basically just documenting how he, um, you know how to use the program which isn't really that exciting at all.

I've got to say um, so I wasn't thrilled by the videos, but he made up for it in the Uh written documentation which is duplicated on the main page here. but we can actually go to the uh, actually, we'll go to the schematic. He's also produced the schematic, so he met all the terms and conditions uh, to provide the schematic, the bill of materials, and all that sort of stuff. Once again, so it's all there.

But if you go to his documentation, which is also a similar length to the other one, 22 Pages There you go. Um, so that goes to show that length of documentation and the indepth part of it uh matters as well. Abstract in introductions, system descriptions H All sorts of stuff, performance and test. It's all there.

so let's take a quick look uh through. Talks about Silver Light. What is it? It's a Microsoft Development platform Etc I Didn't know much about it I Learned something from actually reading this documentation I Went on and had a look at Silver Light and exactly what it was and what it did. Um, and that's great.

He's using something that nobody else used. He's got some nice pretty Uh system block diagrams here of how it uses and how it accesses through the ports and uh, and how it can be used for doctors using a uh, just a web browser on in a remote location or something like that. so it's really terrific. And he's got uh, the system description down here.

cross domain boundary policy. Server talks all about that. Fantastic, detailed stuff and all the ports he used, it's all there. He uh, looks like he's I don't know whether or not he did that or he's taken that from somewhere else.

He probably did that himself. Um, about how all the Uh system requests and things like that uh work based on the client and the task and the you know, all all that sort of stuff. So that's really detailed and quite nice. how the data service works.

The Uh Analog front end: uh, that's clearly taken from the analog. That little schematic there is cut and pasted from the data sheet. That's another big tip. Take data sheets for your parts that you're using a full absolutely chalk full of beautiful Uh diagrams and internal descriptions.

Make use of them like he has here and he's just added. Basically, just here's the board and these are the lines: I'm using that interfaces to this chip. It's great. It's exactly what you need.

It's easy to document stuff like that. Once again, he's uh, taken the uh uh screen capture from the data sheet in terms of how it all works. So it there's some really, uh, easy documentation there on offer that you can just steal from the data sheets and it looks impressive. There's nothing wrong with doing that.

More system diagrams of how the buffering Works H So detailed. So this documentation, um, written documentation I would rate above the Uh above the third place ghetto for the Brew bot. but the video Let It Down otherwise he would have scored perfect marks on the Uh documentation and the video combined, which is all in one. Now this I Really love.

He really shows the hardware Construction and the dead bug. uh construction technique. Take a look at that, he's flip the chip upside down this little tiny .5 mm pin pitch thing and wired individual stuff that just I just went. That is brilliant when I First thing I saw that I thought he's getting bonus points for doing that.

Neat little Hardware Implementation: Nice little hack I Love it. And oh, there's a more detailed up close photo. isn't it brilliant? So that scored huge bonus points. He's got the schematic there it is, performance and test.

Again, he's talking about uh, he's got some screenshots, a whole bunch of stuff, how it all works, pretty much everything You need to judge this thing. He's left nothing out whatsoever, and that's why it, uh, just snuck into uh, second place. In fact, there's not much at all between. uh, third, second, and first.

In fact, there's only about 0.4 points. They basically all scored pretty much identically. um, and there was not much separating them whatsoever. And that's how you win a design contest.

or in this case, come a nice solid second. And that brings us to our first place winner. And it's Thomas Aldred with the Nimble Sig 3 RF analyzer. Congratulations Thomas Now this is a classic example of a project that is so highly technically refined that it's almost I Hate to say it's almost impossible to beat in these sort of contests.

Really, the only time you're going to stand a chance is if you have such an incredibly novel entry that it might score very highly on one of the Obscure judging categories like say uh, cost Effectiveness or something like that. um, which most of the Uh projects in this contest actually really didn't score anywhere on the cost Effectiveness cuz they all used the same development board the RX development board. So really, that was a bit of a nothing category in terms of this uh contest I thought anyway, um, other contests where you might have to just use a single chip or something like that, then really, uh, that's when cost Effective Cost Effectiveness can really a category like that can really come into it? but uh, the first time I heard the name Nimble Sig I thought aha I've heard of this before and sure enough I remembered that he had entered this project before in a circuit seller design contest back in 2006. Actually, it was the Luminary Micro Design Stellaris 2006 contest and here it is.

Um, that was the Nimble Sig Um, that was the original Nimble Sig And then he's got had the Nimble Sig 2 I Believe somewhere and this is than now the Nimble Sig 3. He's been refining this since at least 2006, so like you know, five or six years this Project's been refined and this is why it is so Dar good. Now, the original design. He actually the Nimble Sig 3 here.

um, that was in circuit seller. That one actually used a Um that used an Nxp semiconductor micro. So what he's done is he's retooled this uh project to use the uh, well, the technically Superior Renaissance RX uh series micro to enter this contest. And bingo, that's exactly what he's done.

He just he still called it the Nimble Sig 3. but here it is. it's There's nothing stopping you from entering a highly refined project you've been working on for years and if you've been working on for years, you're really, um, going to stand a very, very good chance of winning these things and beating the other people who just see the contest and go oh well. I'm going to enter this: I've got two months to enter and they've only got two months to work on their project or something.

You've been working on it for 5 years. Who's going to win? It's easy, but it's not because he's been working on for so long. It's a awesome, awesome project. Um, it's a complete RF analyzer from 200 KZ to 200 megahertz.

And there's lots of really magic analog stuff in here. So let's uh, take a quick look at it, shall we? What? First up, he's got, um, some excellent videos. Let's listen to them. Welcome to the Nimble Sig 3 RF analyzer demonstration video.

we? have put this video together to try and demonstrate some of the features of the Nimble Sig 3 RF analyzer. This RF analyzer consists of a output RF signal generator that can be operate over the frequency range of 200 KZ to 200 mahz. either generator can be. So there you go.

He goes into uh detail with a very good voice over of uh, how it all works and then he's got separate videos down here for how, uh, the user interface Works Check out the complete graphical user interface he's refined for this thing. It really is quite remarkable and you actually boot it up and it says welcome to the Nimble Sig 3 And there's the user interface. Fantastic stuff, really. Um, and he's got the required documentation.

So let's take a look at the Uh PDF document, shall we? Let's close down that one and load up this Nimble S 3 And here it is is got excellent photos. Check it. Check out the build of it. It's just a nice build as well.

It looks like he's put a ton of effort into this and he has because he's been spending years building and refining this thing. And once again, look at the documentation. 58 pages of it. Woohoo right! It's got absolutely everything you could possibly need.

Let's look at the build inside. He's got his own Uh custom. There's the LCD board he's using off the shelf uh touch screen LCD controller um type micro board um and there's the Renais RX series development board in the bottom of the box and he's rejigged it. He's used a prototyping board on top there which plugs into the two user headers.

He's the only one that actually used uh that board I I believe it was um, it was I think it was offered as part of the contest but um, he's the only one who used that that I actually saw and it's pretty uh simple interface. So but he's redone all of the software and the whole thing. He shows how he uh uses the RX um rdk as the controller and to talk to all these individual uh boards. He's got the um you know the active mixes in the RF gain and the phase detectors and the ah, it's awesome and the sign DDS signal generators and he just goes into detail after detail.

And there's some of the RF wiring in there, some of the coax wiring Brilliant. Let's take a look at some of the further build and there's the front panel. He's gone to a lot of effort to build that, the user interface of course we've talking about and uh, it's just there is no shortage of how can you not be impressed by this project I mean it, It actually plots. Look at this.

It actually plots the response of yeah, it's just an awesome project. He's uh developed a a complete a serious bit of test gear here that, um, seriously, you could buy this this thing. um, you know you would. Some people would spend many thousands of dollars buying something um of this magnitude of this product and it's all there.

And there's his custom board, the Nimble Sig uh 3 and it's in a custom Um alloy custom machined alloy case. Check it. Check out that for the shielding. Ah, absolutely brilliant.

and there's it. And then he goes into the complete schematics and the uh, there's the DDS I Think that's no, that's his phase magnitude detector board. So all these modules, um, are all customade and really, there's no way that you can beat that in a given Contest time frame, you can't. The only way you're going to get it is if you've been developing this for years and he already had those modules and he retooled it to use the renais uh RX board and that's just fantastic.

So really, that's a uh, there's that, um, there's that uh header. There's that that expansion board which went on top of the RX series board which is quite nice. It's got various Footprints and he's just using that as just an interface controller. um, as just an interface uh board.

Really, so pretty simplistic use, but a classic example of using an exist leveraging an existing project to win a design contest. So if you want to know how to win, enter rejig your existing project and you're going to be hard to beat. Thank Thanks! See you.