Contest entry lost?
Posted by tubelab.com at
I registered for the DesignSpark web site on November 29 and submitted an entry to the Microchip design contest on the same day. I received a confirmation for the DesignSpark registration, but nothing regarding the contest entry. Nothing shows up under my projects either. The contest entry was regarding a vacuum tube (valve) based guitar amplifier with energy saving features and other unique aspects all under PIC chip control.
George
Replies
-
The same thing happened to me too.
-
I submitted another one, still did not show up anywhere and no email confirmation.
-
And, I suspect, to me as well. Oh well.
Philip
-
Send an email to chipkitchallenge@designspark.com and ask what happened to your entry. I did this and got a rather strange reply. It seems that my entry was received. Someone decided that it did not fit the contest criteria, so it was simply placed aside and ignored, no rejection notice or even an acknowledgement of receipt. Your entries are likely stuck in the same basket.
I was told in this email that my entry has no chance of winning since it "doesn't fit the contest criteria", but if I acknowledged this fact my entry would be allowed to go forward since it may be worthy of publication.
Granted valve based guitar amplifiers are not consuming all of the worlds energy, but they are not going away either. In fact they are becoming more popular. They are also horrendoulsy inneficient turning 50 to 90% of the energy consumed into waste heat. I would not have proposed this project if I hadn't already seen 50% efficiency gains in my experiments. This sounds a lot like "reducing the energy footprint of a system" to me.
I have not decided whether to admit defeat and enter, or just build the amp anyway and keep it to myself.
OH, the last energy efficient valve amp I built DID win a prize in a Circuit Cellar / Microchip contest, AND it was published in the magazine! I have learned a lot in the 5 years since then.
-
Hi All
Circuit Celler are still approving entries, we have been inundated with entries, and the jusges want to make sure the kits are allocated to the projects that best fit the criteria. All of you had your projects approved over the weekend and will recieve a kit, and the syncronization to the site and email conformation should happen sometime today.
-
Hi Tubelab
On reading your proposal in more detail, our appologies, you are correct, your project does indeed fit the critera. Please note that there is no close date as such for entry proposals, you can enter on the last day if you wish!, but won't obviuosly receive a kit. Our plan is to allocate all 1000 kits by the end of this week, then advise those who have not been successful in receiveing a free kit, that they are still welcome to take part, but would need to buy their own kit.
-
I received my Chip Kit yesterday and have already got it talking to MPLAB through an ICD3. I have also done a complete rethink on my project idea. I think that a valve based guitar amp with advanced features and a 50 to 100 watt power savings is a cool idea, but it draws zero interest here. Only 3 views and 2 were ME! I just received my ChipKit, and I am still missing a few other parts, but nearly half of the design time is gone. I have come to the realization that a project this ambitious will not be finished in two months, so it will be built, but not for this contest.
I will enter this contest, but with a less ambitious project. I need something that I am interested in, something I have already started on, and more importantly, something I can finish in the contest time frame. I have been working on a full featured SDR for ham radio use. The main CPU is currenly an Intel Core i3. I will look into a reduced feature set version with slightly reduced specs for portable use, that is ChipKit powered.
Look for a new contest entry in the next few days.
-
Actually, I admit that both of your entries sound quite intriguing!
I look forward to reading about either/both in the near future.
As the grains of time slip between our fingers, I am seemingly no closer to getting my project approved. The freebie kit would have been a bonus, but was not a show stopper. Having an approved entry, is.
<sigh>
-
I can't say that I understand the entry / approval process either. It seems that some people got their entry approved in December and got their kits shortly thereafter. Othere are still waiting for a clue as to if they were accepted, or why they were not. This has lead to a different timeline for each compettitor. This is difficult in a contest with an already short deadline. Some people have proto hardware and test software already, I am just starting, and others haven't started yet. My previous experiences with Circuit Cellar contests have been excellent, I don't know what happened here.
Either way my original plans have been shelved because there is no way I can have anything reasonable completed in the time frame left. I have been building vacuum tube amplifiers off and on for nearly 50 years. Several are already on my web site and the guitar amp mentioned here will be posted there when it is alive enough to discuss. With my current work schedule it won't be soon.
So now I find myself ripping apart a ham radio project that had stalled for lack of time and downsizing it for this contest. I quickly realized that this isn't going to work either. My original design was optimized for extremely high performance without regard for current drain. In fact it uses a pair of 22 volt 5 Amp Hour LIPO batteries or AC power, and runs Windows on a 10 inch LCD screen. Not exactly green!
It remains to be seen what I can learn from the old project that can be applied to this contest. I would like to arrive ad a functioning ham radio transceiver that can operate from a small battery and / or solar power. Obviously the 100 watt power amp and Windows display are out.