Gadget Renesas supports our motto “BIG IDEAS FOR EVERY SPACE”

Renesas Electronics Singapore  announced the winners of its  GR PEACH Embedded Design Contest 2017 in ASEAN. Recognizing the growing engineering talent for Internet of Things (IoT), Renesas hosted its first GR Embedded Design Contest in South-East Asia this year. Renesas has held contests in Japan and India (three in total), and following the success of last year’s GR PEACH contest in India now expanded its contest to South-East Asia.

With the contest, Renesas recognizes and supports engineering talent in Asia, and students, hobbyists, and experienced engineers from all over South-East Asia have applied for this year’s contest.

Electronics Maker interacted with Mr. Akihiro Matsuyama, Leader of Gadget Renesas to share more details about the contest and its success.

1. Give the outline of Gadget Renesas and GR Embedded Design Contest?

   Gadget Renesas was established in March 2012 to expand the footprint of microcontrollers (MCUs) in projects that connect ideas and electronics.The contest was organized to highlight the creation of innovative and futuristic IoT designs by students, hobbyists, and professional engineers using a Gadget Renesas (GR) board.

Please refer to our website:http://gadget.renesas.com/en/

The GR boards are made by users for users.We would like to get feedback from users on boards before they are released for mass production.We call the users that contribute to our GR boards “producers”. Feedback from users is invaluable.Producer meetings are held two or three times for each board to receive and discuss feedback.

The contest started in India in 2013, and has been held three times in India, twice in Japan, one time in ASEAN.

2. What is the idea/moto behind Gadget Renesas and the contest?
   

   Our aim at Gadget Renesas is to enable rapid prototyping: we want help users to develop prototypes faster. It only takes five minutes to develop on the GR board when using the web compiler, as there is no need to install a development environment and so forth.
   We would like to give in experienced users the opportunity to learn how to use an Renesas MCU by sharing examples of advanced users.
   

3. What were the selection criteria and how was the contest conducted?

   The selection procedure was based on five criteria:

1) Demo Relevance, 2) Feature & Functionality,3) Innovation, 4) Business Value, 5) Design & Implementation.
The contest was held in three stages:

1. Contest applications: contestants submitted their abstracts.

Renesas reviewed the abstracts and passed out a free GR board to each contestant selected for the next round.

2. The demonstrations were uploaded on the web and the judges did a second examination.
   Renesas invited the top ten contestants to the grand finale.
3. Final selection during the grand finale

4. What is Gadget Renesas and how does it help engineers?
   

   Gadget Renesas provides an environment for engineers to develop prototypes. Renesas delivers not only the board, but also the web compilers, libraries, and project samples. You can ask fellow engineers from the community to help you with your development on Renesas Rulz, the community website of Renesas.
   

5. What was the supporting role from Renesas for this project?
   

   Gadget Renesas is operated by Renesas employees. Renesas employees arrange the board planning (including mass production and delivery), design and deliver the development environment, manage the contests, and do the consultation for mass production of prototype machines.
   

6. GR PEACH Embedded Design Contest was also held in India last year, what you would like to highlight about the success of this contest?

   Last year was the third time we held a GR board embedded design contest in India. The GR PEACH Embedded Design Contest 2016 had 675 contestants and 272 teams. As the event was so successful, we decided to expand the contest further to other regions. Southeast Asia is becoming an upcoming player in the IoT market and has a large population. Therefore, we decided to hold the contest in ASEAN for this year.

7. What is your outlook on IoT?

IoT is becoming an upcoming industry in various regions. What is important is not where the idea was born, but what the idea is. With projects like Gadget Renesas,Renesas aims to promote and contribute to IoT development in a variety of regions. This supports our motto “BIG IDEAS FOR EVERY SPACE”.

8. Tell us about your future design contest plans.

For 2018, we plan to hold our firste-AI Design Contest in the Americas. Please refer to the below link for more information:

http://gadget.renesas.com/en/contest/2018/USA/

We are also planning to hold an embedded design contest again in India next year.