Premier Farnell announce winners in ‘Change the World’ global design competition
Premier Farnell, The Development Distributor, have completed the process of shortlisting entries for their global design competition ‘Change the World’. The competition was launched in 2016 to inspire design engineers of all ages and experience, to explore their ideas and put their design skills to the test with a solution that could change the world for the better with just $1000 of products from Farnell element14 in Europe, Newark element14 in North America or element14 in Asia Pacific.
Entrants were asked to select products from the company's broad range of semiconductor, interconnect and passive products, as well as development boards, single board computers, test equipment and tools, and were tasked with explaining their idea in just 500 words or less.
A shortlist of 25 finalists was announced by Premier Farnell in March, and the judges have now completed their selection process by picking ten winning projects from countries including Bolivia, Greece, India, Italy, Kenya, Poland and the United Kingdom.
Steve Carr, Head of Marketing for Premier Farnell says:
“We have received a variety of world changing competition entries from students, makers and design engineers all over the globe. The winning ideas range from a low-cost portable diagnostic center for rural villages to a precision apiculture system to help reverse the bee population decline, to a 3D printed incubator to address the lack of medical technologies in less developed parts of the world. We are now in the process of talking to each of the winners to understand how the team at Premier Farnell can support them in the development of these ideas, to turn them in to real projects that could change the world.”
The winning projects include:
- Poland: The winning Polish projects included a multiprocessor system that uses a combination of signals from different sources to help blind and visually impaired people to navigate their daily lives and ‘SmogCleaner’, a self-cleaning and self-regulating intelligent electronic filter that aims to combat atmospheric pollutants.
- Italy: The winning Italian project, called BOB (Baby on Board), is a low-cost, open source, 3D printable neonatal incubator, designed to addresses the lack of medical technologies for children in the first moments of their life, in the less developed parts of the world. The development of this incubator will support newborn children who are critically ill, reducing infant mortality.
- UK: A solar powered, Raspberry Pi & cloud configured IoT network to transfer educational resources to schools in remote villages all over the world to increase educational opportunities that would not otherwise be accessible.
- UK: An adapted smart metering system that uses intelligent software to recognize a change in routine to suggest that a vulnerable or elderly person is ill or injured and trigger an alarm system as well as sending a warning message to family/friends.
- UK: A low-cost digital stethoscope that can be used at home to monitor heart activity, breathing etc. The digital stethoscope will also be able to send data to a doctor vi a mobile phone, enabling expert consultation without the need for a hospital visit.
- India: The winning Indian project plans to use the Internet of Things to build a low-cost diagnostic center that can be deployed in every village in rural India to enable faster and better diagnosis of medical conditions, to improve the healthcare available.
You can find out more about all the winning ideas on the Change the World competition website element14changetheworld.com/winners/. The winners will also be documenting their journey for you to follow on the element14 Community.
Farnell Global is a fast and reliable distributor of products and technology for electronic and industrial system design, maintenance and repair. From research and design through prototype to production, Farnell helps its customers access the products and services they need 24/7. With more than 80 years of experience, 47 localised websites, and a dedicated team of over 3,500 employees, Farnell provides every component its customers need to build the technology of tomorrow.
Farnell Global trades as Farnell in Europe, Newark in North America, and element14 in Asia Pacific. It also sells direct to consumers through its CPC business in the UK.
Farnell Global has been part of the established global technology distributor, Avnet (Nasdaq: AVT), since 2016. Today, this relationship allows the company to support its customers at every stage of the product life cycle, offering a truly unique distribution model, as well as expertise in end-to-end delivery and product design.
For more information, visit http://www.farnell.com/
