Winners of STMicroelectronics' IoT competition announced

Building on the power efficiency, performance, extensive development ecosystem, and value of the STM32 series of MCUs, about 100 individuals designed and submitted innovative IoT applications. The design challenge inspired participants to unleash their creativity to invent products containing STM32 and other ST products well-suited for IoT use. These products include MEMS motion, acoustic, and environment sensors, NFC dynamic tags, image processors and sensors, low-power Bluetooth, low-power RF transceivers and broadband power-line communication chips. The winners were selected on the level of innovation of their application and on the number of ST components they used in their design.

The two winning projects include Maja and Blinker 2.0. Maja (Poland) is a wireless hive-monitoring system which was developed at the KNE AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow. Based on an STM32Nucleo development board and equipped with movement, sound, temperature, humidity and weight sensors, the fully automatic monitoring system can be connected to an online database through a GSM/GPRS modem and has the capability to create local sensor networks.

Blinker 2.0 (Ukraine) is a system for monitoring the storage time of food in the fridge, which was developed by Ukrainian Creative Kids & Mentors from Kiev, where teenagers learn to code programmes for embedded systems. The main part of the design is the Cooler Blinker, a small board with an STM32 MCU, low-energy Bluetooth module, buzzer, battery and green, yellow and red LEDs. This smart tag, which is attached to the food, measures storage duration and provides safety-related indications by blinking in different colours. Blinker 2.0 is a full ecosystem available with a set of Cooler Blinkers, a cloud-based database and the mobile app Cooler 1 2 3 for remote viewing of the actual food status.

"Encouraging the creative capabilities of the entire region to solve important IoT-related challenges using ST's extensive product portfolio-which, with STM32 MCUs, sensors and communication technologies, along with a spectacular ecosystem of partners and tools, happens to be suited to the IoT had to produce extraordinary results," said Jacky Perdrigeat, EMEA Region Vice President, STMicroelectronics. "The contest results clearly demonstrate the importance of the STM32 ecosystem 'embedding' other ST products, providing flexibility and easy-to-design approach to the technical community, including the next generation of 'Makers', the youngest developers participating to the 'new industrial revolution'. The journey has just started: fortifying its leadership by the recently announced world's first ARM Cortex-M7 MCU, the STM32 F7 series, ST will continue to unleash and support creativity and lead developers towards outstanding performance."