Good ideas are contagious the saying goes, and The Hackaday Prize is a competition where you can test and spread your great ideas. On April 23rd the global Hackaday brainstorming and kick-off session launched, and in Austin several hacker and maker spaces came together at Silicon Labs to socialize, collaborate, and test ideas that could turn into impactful projects.

Over the years this friendly competition has become synonymous with “creating for social change”, and by using hardware, coding, scientific, design and mechanical abilities, designers create prototypes that affect people's life.

Austin's first Hackaday meeting ready to kick off.

Over the course of several months, you can participate in several technology challenges, and every 5 weeks you could be expanding the frontiers of knowledge and engineering. On October 10th, the top 100 projects will reviewed by the Hackaday judges who will choose the top 5, who compete for the grand prize of $300.000 USD

Attendees brainstorm how to use Silicon Labs' demo designs with temperature, accelerometer, and other sensor inputs pair with Bluetooth and cloud services to create sustainable products

To help you turn your ideas into working projects, Silicon Labs offers several building blocks that you can use throughout your prototyping phase . These components range from sensors for heart rate, UV light, proximity sensing, humidity and temperature sensors, to energy efficient 8-bit and 32-bit embedded microcontrollers with loads of functionality, to wireless connectivity devices for Bluetooth or mesh networks. 

Speaking of cool projects, check out James Langbridge's guided tour of the Blue Gecko Wireless Starter Kit.