The Smart Home and Office of the Future Is Here!

When the world of tomorrow comes to mind, you might picture several household gadgets working together like in The Jetsons or Back to the Future. As we head towards a fully-automated future with smart homes and offices (and pretty much everything else), MediaTek, Seeed Studio and Hackster have teamed up to launch a brand new contest. We want to see what you can connect to the Internet using the LinkIt Smart 7688 DUO.

Want your coffee maker to talk to your toaster in the morning? Wish your closet could know the weather and recommend your outfit for the day? Or, perhaps you imagine your dog’s collar vibrating whenever you’re on your way home from work? Whatever you dream up, we want to see it!

To help get things started, we’re giving out 100 dev boards to the top 100 ideas submitted by November 15, 2016. So get pitching! What’s more, the three winning entries will walk away with Apple MacBooks!

For those unfamiliar with the , the board runs the popular open-source OpenWrt on a MT7688AN SoC. This powerful base enables you to build apps for the LinkIt Smart 7688 DUO in several different languages, including Python, Node.JS, and C. Plus, with an onboard ATmega32U4 MCU lets you program using the popular Arduino IDE.

This little board has pins for I2C, SPI, SPIS, UART, PWM, and Ethernet, and supports USB host mode — so you can plug in all sorts of USB peripherals. It has built-in Wi-Fi, but with a generous 32MB flash and 128MB DDR2 RAM, it boasts enough memory and packet storage for robust video processing! How’s that for powerful? And should your project require even more storage, there’s a MicroSD card slot, too.

Ready to get underway? Check out the contest page for more information! Winners will be announced in January 20, 2017.