Raspberry Pi Zero Contest Grand Prize Winners!

The Raspberry Pi Zero Contest presented by Adafruit and Hackaday came to a close last week, as the clock struck 11:59 am on Sunday, March 13, 2016. Since then our team of judges has been working to pick the top three entries. It was a hard job sorting through nearly 150 amazing creations.  In the end though, the judges were able to pick three grand prize winners. Each winner will receive a $100 gift card to The Hackaday Store.  So let’s get to the winners!

[JohSchneider] and [Markus Dieterle] both won Pi Zero boards and went on to win $100 gift certificates. [shlonkin] didn’t win a Pi Zero, but persevered and continued working on the classroom music teaching aid even without a Zero board. The top winners aren’t the only ones who are doing well. Everyone who entered has a head start on a great project for The 2016 Hackaday Prize.

I’d like to thank Hackaday’s own [Dan Maloney], [Kristina Panos], [Sophi Kravitz] and [Brian Benchoff] who joined me to judge the contest. The entire Hackaday staff is indebted to [Limor Fried] and [Phil Torrone] over at  Adafruit for coming up with 10 live videos, and providing 10 hard to find Pi Zero boards for our winners. The biggest thanks go to the entrants. If I could send a prize out to each and every one of you, I would!

17 thoughts on “Raspberry Pi Zero Contest Grand Prize Winners!

  1. You’d think that all this time should have been enough for the hype train to slow down or get the supply figured out… Its easier to cure cancer than get a zero board in Europe for a reasonable price.

    1. As it became clear since almost day one, the Zero is just a marketing trick to get press coverage and distract the audience from competing products by selling a reduced number of boards at an almost impossible price, probably even at a loss. Instead of investing on advertising they put money into a few boards that generate negative profit, paying them through other products sales (RPi2,3 etc).
      So don’t hold your breath and don’t base your projects on it because the Zero will never be widely distributed.

  2. Congrats to the winners!

    As for the supply of Pi Zeros… my theory is that they are actually sold at a loss, subsidized by proceeds from the other Raspberry Pi’s. So they have to carefully control the supply so as to not run into the red.

    They are more of a marketing gimmick than anything else, a way to undercut Next Thing Co’s C.H.I.P.s thunder, which at $9 is of course much more capable and useful than the Pi Zero will ever be. I have 2 Pi Zeros now (one I bought from the UK and one I won here) and I have to grudgingly admit I’m not very impressed. :-E They’re probably good for some microcontroller replacement jobs, but from the moment you need to get connected to anything you run into trouble. Power consumption isn’t any lower than the Model A+ either.

    I find it telling that many Pi Zero projects exist solely to get the Zero back to the functionality of the other Raspberry Pi’s. Many of the projects submitted for the contest would not actually work with the Pi Zero due to lack of features such as the camera connector. I would recommend that unless a Pi Zero would really be a perfect fit for your project, you move on to something more capable. It was just a gimmick to be able to stick a “computer” to a magazine, after all.

    1. After I got all excited about the price of the Zero, and faced the reality that they are “only” available if they are part of a “kit” that jacks the price an order of magnitude, I heard about the Odroid C2…
      And now I’m in the same initial excitement phase and facing the same lack of stock…
      B^)

  3. A shame there was no wireless connectivity built in to the pi zero. And for all of the pi line, is a shame there is no suspend with re-awake timer or trigger pin built in.

    1. Lucky for you, instead of wishing you can go and check out one of the other SBC on the market. Isn’t choice great, no need to be disappointed. Just pick the one that works for you. The CHIP looks very nice.

  4. Well done everyone! I’m impressed how each one of these projects built off the Zero’s strengths despite all the whining about limitations, availability, and false value.

  5. Great projects, hats of for hack a day for running this. :)

    Shame about the people how love to moan instead of looking for alternatives. So you can not find a zero, go get something else! I don’t want to hear it, is old and boring this moaning. Sound like frigging 5 year old’s “tommy has one, its not fair”.

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