Over 950 developers signed up to participate in the world’s first ever ESP8266-based IoT contest. One needs to only look at the quantity and quality of submitted projects to see the success of the contest for all parties involved. Developers were challenged to simplify the connected world using ESP8266 and the Cayenne IoT project builder. And our winners delivered exactly that! On October 24th, our judging panel which consisted of Andrew Miller, CEO of Makerspaces.com, Shamyl Mansoor, founder of LearnObots, Casey Kuhns, who competed in ABC's Battlebots with his team Poison Arrow, and Chris Aviles, maker, entrepreneur and founder of TechedUpTeacher.com announced the winning projects.

The grand prize was awarded to HAM, a Home Automated and Monitoring System created by Alex Rodriguez Navas, also known as “Neoxelox”, who received $200 in cash, a SparkFun promo code for the purchase of hardware worth $100, an ESP-WROVER-KIT ($50) and company swag. Alex commented that “creating my very own app using Cayenne’s API was a challenge I had wanted to do for some time. This IoT contest inspired me to take it on”. Alex’s HAM system combines four elements: Cayenne, ESP8266, Arduino, and Raspberry Pi. The HAM network is formed by five different nodes, each connected to a central hub. The HAM app brings together sensor data and a video surveillance system.

Muhammad Afzal was the first runner-up with his industrial IoT prototype which enhances warehouse and greenhouse monitoring. Muhammad earned $150 in cash, a promo code worth $50 for purchasing hardware from SparkFun, an ESP-WROVER-KIT and company swag. Humidity and temperature monitoring is an essential factor in salt/dairy warehouses and greenhouses, and Muhammad’s IoT solution automatically streams real-time statistics and sends alerts when something goes wrong.

Gustavo Ortenzi emerged as the second runner-up and received $100 in cash, $50 in the form of a SparkFun promo code, an ESP-WROVER-KIT and company swag. Gustavo’s IoT Smart Garden solution can really save your garden from staying unwatered due to your busy lifestyle. The concept combines a humidity sensor measuring the on-ground humidity levels, and ESP8266, which receives these measurements and eventually determines whether the water tap will be opened and for how long.

Larry Deaton and his team were the third runner-ups with iWet – An Automated Facilities Request System. They won $50 in cash, a SparkFun promo code worth $50, an ESP-WROVER-KIT and company swag. With the use of several ESP8266s and Raspberry Pi's, iWet ensures the timely service of an impressive 67 bathrooms, 131 paper towel dispensers, and 275 soap dispensers. The Cayenne dashboard relays statistics regarding paper towels, soap dispensers, and plumbing issues that are reported, worked on and solved. 

Mitch K., Amol Disale, Bin Sun, WJ4IoT, Ethan Fan, Hendra Kusumah, Ralph Yamamoto, Alain Mauer, bbtinkerer, 3magku, Barry Hannigan, and Shramik Salgaonkar submitted projects which ranked collectively in places 5 to 16. All of these winners have received the ESP-WROVER-KIT in addition to cash prizes and company swag. Furthermore, SparkFun gave away its ESP8266 Thing Dev boards to those developers who had submitted the top-75 project ideas halfway through the contest.

You can view all winning entries here.

Espressif wishes to congratulate all winners! We are thrilled to have been part of such a fun contest and thankful to our partners, myDevices, SparkFun, and hackster.io for putting on such a stellar event.