element14 Announces Winners of Annual Community Awards

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element14.com, an Avnet community, has announced the winners of its annual Community Awards for their 2019 Year in Review. The top innovators and designers are celebrated in multiple categories: Member of the Year, Design Challenge Project of the Year, Project14 Decider, Founder and Influencer of the Year, Project14 Project of the Year, Favorite Road Test Product of the Year, New RoadTester of the Year, and element14 Presents Video of the Year.

“It is so rewarding for us to take the time to reflect on the incredible achievements of our community over the past year,” said Dianne Kibbey, Global Head of Community and Social Media for element14. “Our global community continues to blow us away with their innovative, original designs and their collaborative spirit. We’re looking forward to seeing what they all come up with in 2020 and into the future.”

The winners of the element14 2019 Community Awards are:

• Member of the Year – Shabaz Yousaf – An integral member of the element14 Community, Shabaz always shares his designs, encourages and assists other community members with their designs, and contributes to many community discussions. His numerous contributions to the element14 Community in 2019 include building a world-band radio receiver, creating a handheld electronic game, building an LCR meter as well as a logic analyzer and protocol tester.

• Design Challenge Project of the Year – Art-a-Tronic by Enrico Miglino – Enrico was the winner of the PiCasso Design Challenge with his entry, Art-A-Tronic, an interactive art installation in Gent, Belgium. Enrico’s art exhibit included an augmented mannequin that is able to host Raspberry Pi computer vision, has binaural hearing and turns to face you, as well as an MQTT connection to the "Borg Communication Nexus," an aptly named Cube featuring an MQTT Server. Aside from the articulating mannequin, the Communication Cube talks with a Raspberry Pi Smart Mirror and a cage full of Arduino controlled Bird Automata.

• Project14 Decider, Founder and Influencer of the Year – Project14 is an ongoing series by the community, for the community, where members submit ideas and vote on future design challenges and creative projects. The Decider of the Year, DAB, is one of the often-unsung heroes of Project14 who volunteer for the monumental task of deciding who will win the numerous competitions. Douglas Wong, Founder of the Year, helped to come up with ideas for the greatest number of element14 competitions in 2019. And Dubbie, Influencer of the Year, was the most active member in Project14, completing the most projects, blog posts, videos and theme ideas for competitions.

• Project14 Project of the Year – 5000W Dual Drive Electric Car by Deo Lee – Deo Lee modified and upgraded a 50W BMW i8 electric child’s car, which originally could barely move when he sat on it, to a fast and furious 5000W dual drive electric car which can reach top speeds of 60km per hour. Noted as one of the most unique Project14 submissions ever, it is a testament to the ingenuity the program has brought out of the skilled and knowledgeable community members.

• Favorite RoadTest Product of the Year – 3 Series MDO Mixed Domain Oscilloscope – This impressive piece of test equipment from Tektronix received a whopping 113 applicants for RoadTest reviews. It has many remarkable features, including a high-definition display in a compact package, built-in spectrum analyzer option for RF analysis, a wide range of available serial bus decode and trigger options, and more.

• New RoadTester of the Year – Gary Yohe – Gary joined the element14 Community in 2018, and completed his first RoadTest in 2019. A recently retired test engineer, he now does part-time consulting and has been leading the Roanoke Robotics and Makers Club for several years. He also frequently teaches classes at the local library. When working on his detailed RoadTest reviews, he often asks questions to dive deeper into a product’s capabilities and helps other members get involved in the program.

• element14 Presents Video of the Year – Raspberry Pi 4 Experimental Resin 3D Printer – Small resin-based 3D printers may be on the rise, but these printers are notorious for not being able to scale up to handle larger projects. This video followed the idea to circumvent these technical limitations with a groundbreaking giant 4K Resin 3D printer. Utilizing 2 Raspberry Pis (a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Computer & Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+,) this project proves that FEP foil can be replaced with a specialized liquid, making the LCD-masking technique viable for large format 3D printers.

The annual community awards are one of the many ways that element14 celebrates the success of its community of makers, designers and engineers as they harness the power of electronics design to make a positive impact on their communities and the world.

To learn more about the 2019 Community Awards, visit the element14 Community.