The challenge
📚 Background on "IoT Into the Wild Contest for Sustainable Planet 2022"
“𝐆𝐥𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐫𝐮𝐧𝐤 … 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬, 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐫𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫. 𝐆𝐥𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐬 𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐟𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦: 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞’𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦. 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞, 𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝, 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐥𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐥𝐲, 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐦 𝐨𝐧 𝐚 𝐓𝐕 𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐧. 𝐈𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐟 𝐮𝐬.”
- Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland (Former Chair of the UN’s World Commission on Environment and Development, Former Director-General of WHO)
In this contemporary era, our humanity is increasingly becoming aware of the indivisible, delicate, and complicated relationship among humans, animals, biodiversity, and the environment. As our environmental habitats, endangered animals, and climate crisis are threatened by the costs of our own actions on this planet, it is all the more serious and necessary than ever before, for us to come together to undertake emergency actions for our real-world.
Moving on with this trend, emerging technologies like IoT and AI have been increasingly receiving significant attention and recognition from multi-stakeholders as a ‘new toolset’ to obtain real-time and chronological data on every element we need from the wild and the environment. Why? For their accessibility, affordability, bottom-up innovation, resource efficiency, and sustainability features.
But there's a serious gap between conservation landscapes and technological applications. Up until now, open source technologists, glocal maker communities, and field experts (scientists, environmentalists, conservationists) have been working in silos most of the time. In consequence, the world is seriously lacking applicable, scalable, plug-and-play, and easy-to-deploy AIoT solutions that might be helpful for solving challenges in the wild.
To bridge the gap, Seeed Studio and Hackster.io are very happy to jointly organize "IoT Into the Wild Contest for Sustainable Plant 2022", supported by Project 15 from Microsoft, Zambezi Partners, Edge Impulse, Fab City Foundation, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC), the Paradise International Foundation, Nova Labs, and Helium. We believe that open tech can leverage more positive transformations for our ultimate pursuit: harmony of nature, humans, animals, and biodiversity. We hope that open tech - defined by a set of principles for decentralized tech, transparency, collaboration, community-spirit, agile prototyping and scale-ups - can lay an important foundation for achieving the UN's 2030 Agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
In this Contest, you can focus on making easy-to-deploy AIoT solutions that can contribute to tackling any of the following Challenges or challenge topics. There are 5 Challenges in total, among which you can freely choose to concentrate on topics of one Challenge or combine several Challenges that are specified in this Contest. Make sure to mention the specific Challenge and challenge topics in your project submission.
🔴 Challenge 1: Climate Crisis Prevention/Mitigation
- Global warming
- Carbon neutrality
- Natural disaster prevention/mitigation
- Sand depletion crisis
- Environmentally-unsustainable tourism mitigation
🔴 Challenge 2: Wildlife/Biodiversity Conservation (Unlimited to various types of flora and fauna)
- Non-intrusive monitoring of endangered wildlife/biodiversity species from various threats
- Animal movement, behavior and emotion detection
- Environmental habitat monitoring
- Human-wildlife conflict prevention/mitigation
🔴 Challenge 3: Marine Conservation
- Sea level rise
- Ice and snow melt
- Marine pollution
- Harmful algal bloom
- Plastic pollution
🔴 Challenge 4: Open Science
- Low-cost, open science hardware solutions as scientific research tools designed for outdoor scenarios in the wild (ex. microscopes, science equipment designs, sensors for environmental monitoring, etc.)
🔴 Challenge 5: Sustainable Agriculture
- Climate-smart commodities
- Precision farming
- Smart husbandry
- Autonomous greenhouse
- Local food production
- Sustainable food supply chain management
Step 1️⃣ Click the blue button "Register as a participant" on the upper part of this webpage.
Step 2️⃣ Click the "Overview" tab, and on the right hand side:
Option 1: If you're planning to make a new project from scratch, OR share your existing project that is not yet published on Hackster.io, then click "Create new project".
Option 2: If you're planning to develop and upgrade your previous project (that is already published on Hackster.io), then click "Add existing project".
***FYI: Hardware application is a separate application (refer to the next section on 'Apply for Free Hardware'), which is different from "Project Submission". Please submit your project(s) once they're complete.
Step 3️⃣ If you want to submit multiple projects, feel free to do it by repeating Step 2! We're open for diverse projects, and we certainly appreciate your enthusiasm for our sustainable planet. Click the "Rules" tab above to view judging criteria.
In order to encourage a broader range of participants from various sectors to join this Contest, we place no limitations or restrictions on hardware or software products you'll be using for your projects. In other words, feel free to explore and use the best tools you find fit for your projects - whether they're from Seeed Studio or not! 😇 However, in case you’re using Seeed products for your project, or if you've already testified your project on the field, there will be some bonus points.
For your reference, in order to inspire the participants, we're giving away 100 pieces of Seeed Studio LoRaWAN Dev Kit for FREE, which you can use to build your projects for this Contest. For those who are interested, submit your project proposal in the "Apply for Hardware" tab above. Of course, those who win this Kit are obliged to use this Kit for this Contest. Pay attention to the 'Discussion' tab of this Contest page, for any news on sending out the hardware in advance - to help facilitate the early birds to start the project ASAP.
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Prizes
Together with "IoT Into the Wild Initiative Fellows", Seeed Studio will provide multiple resources to incubate and scale up the best winning project for 'Excellent Sustainable and Scalable Project Award' - all the way from industrial prototyping to on-site deployment, industrialization, and distribution at larger scales! This thought is deeply rooted in our values for co-creation of sustainable and scalable AIoT solutions through bottom-up innovation and multi-stakeholder partnership. So, what are the prizes belonging to this Award, as well as other amazing Awards? 😍
Excellent Sustainable and Scalable Project Award
1 winner
👉 Seeed's latest "IoT Into the Wild" product samples for on-site testing (value up to US$ 1500)
👉 Product customization, manufacturing, and distribution services (value up to US$ 5000)
👉 Technical and industrial-upgrade support (value up to US$ 3500)
👉 Pilot project opportunities
👉 Co-branding and promotion of products/projects on corporate SNS channels
👉 Funding and investment opportunities
Innovative and Creative Project Award
Enthusiastic Project Award
Judges
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Sarah Maston is the founder of Project 15 from Microsoft and the co-inventor of the Project 15 Open Platform. Her other inventions at Microsoft include Project Edison, a safety notification IoT solution accelerator for safe schools and workplaces, for which she won the Microsoft Polaris Award. In her 20 year career, she has architected many data warehouses out in the world including those at Monster.com, CouchSurfing.com, and Boston Medical Center. Prior to joining Microsoft, she won an Excellence & Eminence Award at IBM for the invention of the Nutrition Graph and an Outstanding Innovation Award for the invention of Simple Data Pipe.
🔗 Stay connected with Sarah Maston on LinkedIn.
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Eric Pan is the Founder and CEO of “Seeed Studio” and “Chaihuo x.factory”, as well as the Producer of “Maker Faire Shenzhen”. He believes in the potential of open source technology and social innovations in achieving the UN's SDGs. Moreover, he is one of the recognized leading figures of the Maker Movement and Maker Culture in China. In the era towards the UN’s 2030 Agenda, he is keen on cooperating with multi-stakeholders and technological partners to provide open source solutions for a variety of SDGs-related projects, through which ground-breaking solutions can be co-created and scaled up at global level so as to contribute to a sustainable future. In 2013, he was selected by Forbes Magazine as "China's 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30" and appeared on the cover of the Forbes China. Likewise, he was listed on "2017 China’s Business List of 100 Creative People".
🔗 Stay connected with Eric Pan on LinkedIn.
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Bastiaan den Braber is the Founder of Zambezi Partners. In 2003, when he first began doing safaris in Africa, he had the vision to use the best of the world’s technologies - in combination of entrepreneurship and investment - to combat African wildlife poaching. Thereby, he became a FGASA Level 1 trained Field Guide as a part of this journey, and formally devoted his life bringing together the technology partners for Zambezi: a 5th Industrial Revolution, AIoT solution company with a well-managed platform for sustainability: Platform Zero. Zambezi is Microsoft's first commercial partner of the Project 15 Open Platform. Zambezi works with conservation organizations and for-profit sustainability entities to institute data-driven exponential technologies to drive scalability and efficacy in solving the world's most complex issues.
🔗 Stay connected with Bastiaan den Braber on LinkedIn.
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Peng Zhao is the Senior Consultant of the Paradise International Foundation. Since 2005, he has led several influential initiatives in the field of ecological and environmental protection in China, including his support to "China's Biodiversity Conservation Strategy and Action Plan" published by the State Council; creating China's first land trust preserve which has been identified as the innovative conservation model by Ministry of Natural Resources, and; establishing China's first water fund for rural areas, as well as the first water fund for mega city for water source protection. In addition, he extended the conservation focus to the urban, marine and carbon neutral sectors.
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Adam Benzion is the Chief Experience Officer (CXO) at Edge Impulse, the Co-Founder of Hackster.io, a Microsoft alumni, a recovered hardware entrepreneur, and an investor. His expertise lies in building meaningful technological solutions, that can solve pressing challenges of our time - such as wildlife and environmental preservation, by means of using open source principles and community-building initiatives. From time to time, he enjoys writing for Fast Company, Power Magazine, TechCrunch, EE Times, and The Next Web.
🔗 Stay connected with Adam Benzion on LinkedIn.
Travis L. Teague is the Developer Growth Lead at Nova Labs and Helium. He has an extensive background in embedded systems, enterprise and mobile software and IoT solutions. Moreover, he was the Co-Founder and Technical Lead of a handheld medical device company, and is an active leader with Houston-based IoT and STEM training initiatives. His first machine was a TI-99/4A, which he thought was pretty cool, and inspired him to continue playing with hardware. Fast-forward to current day, one will find his house filled with CNCs, microcontrollers, drones, and radios strewn across every surface that will hold them.
🔗 Stay connected with Travis L. Teague on LinkedIn.
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Tomas Diez Ladera is a Venezuela-born Urbanist, who specializes in digital fabrication and its implications in the future of cities and societies. He is the the Founding Partner and Executive Director of the Fab City Foundation, and the Meaningful Design Group Bali. Furthermore, he is the Co-Director and a Board Member of the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC), where he also works as a Senior Researcher and a Tutor. In fact, he is the Co-Director of the "Masters in Design for Emergent Futures" and the "Masters in Design for Distributed Innovation". On this backdrop, he collaborates with trans-sectoral partners for joint projects, events, and programs worldwide with the Fab Foundation, such as, Fab City, Fab Conferences, and Fab Academy, to mention a few.
🔗 Stay connected with Tomas Diez Ladera on LinkedIn.
About us
Seeed Studio is the AIoT hardware partner for digital innovators.
Since 2008, they have been working closely with global technology ecosystems to provide hardware modules, devices and related services. They integrate the latest technology into thousands of open source hardware modules, so that millions of developers, makers, and innovators coming from different backgrounds can innovate interdependently.
With professional and industrial expertise in Embedded Machine Learning, Edge Computing, LoRaWAN sensors and networks, their ready-to-deploy products are increasingly accelerating myriads of emerging digital solutions in the real world. On this backdrop, their work has been well recognized by both - technology and mainstream media, thanks to their avid services for precision agriculture, smart cities, STEAM education, environmental and meteorological monitoring, scientific researches, smart energy, digital factory, and smart retail, to mention a few.
To continue supporting decentralized and sustainable innovation, they founded “Chaihuo x.factory”, and started China’s first Maker Movement in 2012 by annually organizing “Maker Faire Shenzhen”. Stay connected with Seeed Studio on Discord, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter.
Contest Status
Timeline
Contest begins
June 8, 2022 at 7:00PM PT
Applications for hardware close
July 22, 2022 at 11:59PM PT
Hardware recipients announced
July 27, 2022 at 8:00PM PT
Submissions close
September 27, 2022 at 11:59PM PT
Winners announced by
Oct 10, 2022