Dear Community,

As you know, since 8th of June this year, Seeed Studio has been running an open source innovation contest – “IoT Into the Wild Contest for Sustainable Planet 2022”. Since there are only 6 days left for the FREE hardware kit applications (due on August 8, 2022 at 23:59 P.M., PT), we’d love to take this special timing to share some updates on: i) the new Judges and/or Supporters; ii) the last call for free hardware applications, and; iii) some product updates for ‘SenseCAP K1100 – The Sensor Prototype Kit with with LoRa® and AI’.

1️⃣ New Judges and Supporters of the Contest!

From the beginning, our Contest has been warmly supported by Hackster.io, Project 15 from Microsoft, Zambezi Partners, Edge Impulse, Fab City Foundation, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC), and the Paradise International Foundation. Later on, as the Contest has been increasingly gaining more attention and popularity on the potential of open tech and AIoT technologies for accelerating the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a lot of interesting multi-stakeholders have joined the Contest as either ‘Judges’ and/or ‘Supporters’: a big shout-out to Semtech, Helium, SOSV, Nova Labs, HAX, Himax, and Chaihuo x.factory! Andy Gan from Semtech, Joey Hiller from Helium, Cyril Ebersweiler from SOSV and HAX, and Travis L. Teague from Nova Labs will join as ‘Judges’ to select 27 project winners in early October.

By joining heads, hearts, and hands with the 14 supporters, 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 leveraging positive and meaningful transformations worldwide for our ultimate pursuit: harmony of nature, humans, and wildlife/biodiversity.

2️⃣ Last Call for Free Hardware Kit Applications: 5 Days Left!

Thanks to the passionate participation from open tech communities, academia, and private sectors (among other multi-stakeholders), we’ve received 153 free hardware applications, and 440+ people registered as the Contest participants to date. Currently, 22 free hardware kits (‘SenseCAP K1100 – The Sensor Prototype Kit with with LoRa® and AI’) are left up for grabs!

That being said, we’re going to announce the final 4th batch of hardware winners NEXT WEEK on August 9th (5 DAYS LEFT TO APPLY)! Now, for those who are not yet registered to this Contest, or haven’t submitted your project ideas to apply for the free hardware yet, register to join the Contest, and submit your project ideas ASAP to get the free hardware and win the following Awards and prizes!

1. Submit your free hardware application by August 8th, 2022 (23:59P.M., PT): https://www.hackster.io/contests/iotinthewild/hardware_applications#challengeNav
2. Submit your project documentation by September 27th, 2022 (23:59P.M. PT): https://www.hackster.io/contests/iotinthewild

3️⃣ SenseCAP K1100 Kit Updates!

‘SenseCAP K1100 – The Sensor Prototype Kit’ is a tool that we recommend you to apply for building up your sustainability projects for this Contest. It’s a perfect combination of LoRa® and Edge AI, which enables you to rapidly deploy your LoRaWAN-powered IoT projects through plug-and-play systems. Moreover, it supports obtaining the data in only 4 steps through ‘SenseCAP PaaS’.

Currently, our team is working on firmware updates on GitHub for the Kit with an aim to make it even more convenient, and easier for you to get the data. We’ll have a software development kit (SDK) and a guide for you to connect the Kit to Azure IoT Central, Ubidots, Blynk, and even Twilio. Additionally, Edge Impulse will be able to natively support ‘Grove Vision AI’ sooner than later. As you can see below, here are some pictures of the progress we’ve made so far. Any suggestions on other platforms that we should add to the development list? Join our Discord to have more in-depth and engaging conversations with our Product Managers, as well as to get more technical updates of the Kit in real-time!

Better yet, to help assist more participants to use the SenseCAP K1100 Kit during the Contest, we’re offering a special discount ($30 off) and free FedEx shipping option for those who haven’t been selected for the free hardware kit, or who do not have intention of applying for a free hardware. To obtain these benefits, enter the promotional coupon code ‘IoT2Wild’ on your checkout page, and select the free FedEx international shipping option. (*Disclaimer: Unfortunately, some countries may not have the free FedEx shipping option due to the fact that they are not serviced by FedEx at national level.)

That’s all for today! Apply for this Contest now to make applicable, scalable, plug-and-play, and easy-to-deploy AIoT solutions that might be helpful for solving the real-world challenges we’ve faced today! As always, we can’t wait to see what you make for the Contest. Shoot us a tweet @seeedstudio, or let us know on LinkedIn, Discord, or publish your project on our Project Hub on Hackster. We’ll see you soon with even more exciting news. Cheers!

Attribution: The ‘LoRa®’ mark is a trademark of Semtech Corporation or its subsidiaries.