Board Designer Competition

The Board Designer Competition challenges you to design and create a printed circuit board (PCB) that stands out in terms of innovation, functionality, and aesthetic appeal. Whether it’s a compact board for a wearable device, a high-performance SBC, or an artistic PCB that doubles as a functional piece of art, we want to see your best designs come to life.

Here’s how it works:

• Pitch your idea: Use the Apply for hardware tab to submit your application for a chance to receive funding from PCBWay to print, populate, and assemble your designs.
• Bring it to life: Test, refine, and perfect your boards once they’re in hand, and submit the final masterpiece for judging.
• Win big: Category winners score $800 in PCBWay gift certificates to take their designs further. The grand prize? A trip to Edinburgh, England, for the Open Hardware Summit, courtesy of our partners.

Ready to turn your vision into reality? Let’s see what you’ve got!

How to participate in this competition:

Step 1: Create a Hackster Project from your contest page dashboard, include a robust description of the populated PCB you want to build. Please read the submission requirements and judging points criteria in the competition prize categories carefully during your design phase.

Required in your application:

• Design narrative (in "Story" part of your Hackster Project)
• Bill of Materials (BOM)
• Include your block diagram(s) and layout in the "Schematic" portion of your Hackster project.
• Your board can be designed in any software, but you will receive bonus points for using Autodesk Fusion.
• You will also receive bonus points for leveraging PCBWay's color printing capabilities.

Step 2: Submit your application using the "Apply for Hardware" tab, and fill out all the questions. Your hardware application will be judged by the quality of your schematic design.

Step 3: The judging committee will select up to 100 hardware application winners. Our judging committee consists of Hackster PRO members.

Step 4: Each application winner will receive manufacturing credit worth up to $200 from PCBWay to create a custom PCB in their application.

Step 5: Once you receive your board, finish any project assembly and document your testing process in your Hackster Project. Once you are happy submit as an official entry.

Step 6: The judging committee will select the final top winners based on the implementation documented in your Hackster Project.

Prizes

Board Designer Grand Prize

Win a trip and ticket to Edinburgh, Scotland to attend Open Hardware Summit 2025! This Grand Prize for the Board Designer Competition will be awarded to the PCB project with the highest overall score.

1 winner

Board Designer Grand Prize

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$4,000 value

Travel voucher and event ticket worth $4000 to Edinburgh to attend Open Hardware Summit 2025.

The Kitchen Sink Award

For the board that includes every possible feature and then some—why choose when you can have it all?

NOTE: To win this category your board must include a functioning nRF54L15 SoC in the final build.

1 winner

The Kitchen Sink Award Winner

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$1,799 value

$800 PCBWay Gift Card & Saleae Logic Pro 8

The Unofficial Open Hardware Summit Badge

Create the ultimate unofficial Hackster + Open Hardware Summit badge. The winner will get enough copies to hand out at the event and become the most popular attendee!

1 winner

The Unofficial OHWS Badge Winner

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$1,113 value

$800 PCBWay Gift Card & Open Hardware Summit Super Attendee Ticket

The Bling Bling Board

For the board that dazzles with the most LEDs, shiny components, or over-the-top design aesthetics.

NOTE: Your board must use PCBWay’s new PCB Color Printing capabilities in order to be considered for this award.

1 winner

The Bling Bling Board Winner

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$800 value

$800 PCBWay Gift Card

The Ultimate RestoMod

New tech in an old body! For the board that upgrades retro hardware—bringing new life to computers, game systems, toys, musical gadgets, and other devices. Repurpose that beeper, CRT monitor, or home speaker system.

1 winner

The Ultimate RestoMod Winner

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$899 value

$800 PCBWay GiftCard & Arduboy FX

The Frankenboard

For the board that looks like it was stitched together in a mad scientist’s lab. Think modular then keep on thinking and designing and adding until you have a beautiful mess of complexity!

1 winner

The Frankenboard Winner

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$800 value

$800 PCBWay GiftCard

The Murphy’s Law Survivor

Projects that suffered every possible challenge yet still came to life, eventually. Show your bodges! This is a bonus prize category. You can't plan to win this category; it just happens. Share your design journey (and all the struggles) in the project description. The most heroic story wins this category!

1 winner

The Murphy’s Law Survivor Winner

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$800 value

$800 PCBWay Gift Card

Judges

The judging panel features an exclusive lineup of Hackster PRO contributors, bringing unparalleled insight and expertise to the competition.

David Groom, editor at Make: magazine, is a champion of creativity, innovation, and the maker movement. With a passion for hands-on projects and cutting-edge technology, he curates content that inspires readers to turn ideas into tangible creations.

Thea "Stargirl" Flowers is a creative technologist, open-source advocate, and entrepreneur based in Atlanta, Georgia. A Python Software Foundation Fellow and President of the Board of the Open Source Hardware Association, Thea is dedicated to empowering creativity through hardware, software, and community contributions. Thea is the founder of Winterbloom, an independent synthesizer company that creates open-source Eurorack modules.

With a background in robotics and RF from her college studies, Whitney Knitter specializes in FPGA and firmware design, seamlessly blending her professional expertise with her lifelong hobby. She began her content creator journey by documenting projects on her blog to track her own work, which evolved into a knowledge-sharing channel to help fellow embedded engineers on Hackster understand deep technical topics such as AMD Kria based designs.

Cameron Coward is a maker, Hackster News writer, and former mechanical designer with experience in the medical, automotive, and furniture industries. His personal projects, such as the "KaboomBox" RFID 8-track player and the "Smart Glove" computer mouse, demonstrate his innovative approach to integrating modern technology with retro hardware.

Ayesha (Iftiqhar) Wilson is an electrical engineer focused on climate tech and sustainability. She also designs PCB badges for STEM outreach and creates projects that combine art and electronics as a STEM-ED content creator.

Resources