Smart Citizen 3.0 Open Innovation Challenge

Participate in a climate tech new product creation in this open innovation challenge!

Smart Citizen, Meshtastic, Seeed Studio, Hackster, the University of Glasgow, are excited to announce the Smart Citizen meets Meshtastic Hackathon, a collaborative effort to develop open-source tools in a joint effort. The endeavour aims to make environmental data collection less reliant on Wi-Fi, leveraging LoRa capabilities by using the popular Meshtastic protocol, offering community scientists and researchers a tool that opens endless applications and possibilities, from remote sensing in locations where Wi-Fi is not available or sparse, to data gathering in fire-prone areas, and more.

Smart Citizen as a project aims to empower communities to better understand their environment by collecting, understanding, and sharing environmental data. It provides tools at different technical levels for raising awareness and creating empowerment through environmental data, as well as more advanced tools for environmental research. The Smart Citizen sensor portfolio aims to create a boilerplate for individuals and communities with varying levels of sensing expertise in a modular, expandable and intuitive way.

The project has been used worldwide, now the next gen aims to enable data logging options beyond Wi-Fi. With the rise of Meshtastic, and our partnership with Seeed, we decided it was time to develop a new version of the Smart Citizen Kit, including LoRa capability by leveraging the popular Meshtastic protocol, and we want to do it together with talented contributors from all over the world!

Challenge Objective:

Develop the first proof-of-concept for SCK3.0 with Meshtastic capabilities!

• With off-the-shelf Seeed hardware
• Run a modified version of the Meshtastic firmware integrating Sensirion new line of environmental sensors such as Sensirion SEN6X series!

Your project is to contribute to the smartcitizen-meshtastic fork and work together with us on this. The final outcome will be a complete, passing, pull request to the main Meshtastic repository, from our fork, which will feature your work as part of its main distribution.

Proposal Process:

Step 1: Submit your proposal on the challenge page. You'll be answering a questionnaire in regards to your experience and familiarity with firmware, sensor integration and Meshtastic development.

Step 2: We will select 3 top proposals to become "Contenders". Once you become a contender, you will need to join either online meetings or Fab25 in person to work closely with the core development team.

Step 3: Each contender will receive a full Xiao ESP32-S3 + SX1262 with Expansion board kit, along with a set of Sensirion sensors to work with.

Step 4: You should work with these kits, on the smartcitizen-meshtastic fork.

Step 5: Complete a viable, tested pull request in the smartcitizen-meshtastic fork, which will then be proposed to be merged into the Meshtastic firmware main branch.

Step 6: Fully document your implementation in your Hackster Project, in the pull request, and include all of the necessary user instructions in your final submission, to be then moved over to the smartcitizen documentation (not needed).

Step 7: Once your solution is verified by the Smart Citizen and Meshtastic teams, you will receive the base award. The Smart Citizen team will select 1 final winner for a bonus award.

Technical Description:

This project has 2 main areas of development:

Firmware development

• Integrating at least one sensor from the new Sensirion product line in the Meshtastic telemetry module (or a new module for environmental data collection purpose), following the requirements for sensor operation (defined by Smart Citizen and Sensirion teams), and matching those to the Meshtastic Firmware (defined by Meshtastic Team). The main sensor to implement is the Sensirion SEN6X series. This is your main task.
• Making adaptations to the uplink payloads to meet Smart Citizen Platform needs for data ingestion, as well as making it easily applicable to other platforms with configurable flags. This will be worked on together with the core team.
• Mapping hardware IDs appropriately for securely collecting data, while leveraging Meshtastic network features. This will be worked on together with the core team.
• Generating necessary configurations (via firmware flags, deployed keys or config files) for plug-and-play scalable use. This will be worked on together with the core team.

Hardware assessment and integration

• Collect hardware requirements based on the sensor integration above using ESP32-S3 + SX1262 (Seeed SKU 102010611) as a base module for this integration

Schedule:

Starting on 16th June, running up until the main event in FAB25, running between the 4-11th July, then finishing off end of July.

Prizes

Base Award

3 winners

Hardware + Contribution Recognition

All selected contenders (3 in total) who successfully complete their development, documentation, and pull request will receive:
- 1x Smart Citizen Kit 2.3 – a modular environmental sensing device that allows you to measure air quality, noise, temperature, humidity and more, designed for citizen science and research
- 1x Wio Tracker L1 (with OLED) - a low-power, scalable Meshtastic node featuring LoRa (862–930 MHz), an nRF52840 for efficient processing, and an L76K GPS for precise location tracking.
- Special recognition on the Smart Citizen and Meshtastic platforms

Bonus Award

1 winner

Fab Academy Scholarship + Maker Faire Shenzhen Showcase

One final winner will be selected by the Smart Citizen team for outstanding contribution and implementation. The prize includes:
- A 50% discount for the Fab Academy programme at Fab Lab Barcelona – a hands-on, MIT-inspired course led by Prof. Neil Gershenfeld that teaches you how to make (almost) anything. From digital design and computer-controlled cutting to electronics, embedded programming, 3D printing, and mechatronics, Fab Academy takes you from zero to maker through weekly global classes and local mentorship
- Support for your participation in Maker Faire Shenzhen 2025 (15 - 16 November), : Free standard booth x1; Accommodation near MFSZ venue x 3 nights

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