IoT app development contest announced by Sigma Design and Make:

Sigma Designs and Make: have announced a smart home Z-Wave app design contest for Makers and Developers. Sigma has launched the Z-Wave Smart Home Maker Challenge in cooperation with Make: and in unison with the flag-ship World Maker Faire that takes place in New York City September 23-24th. The smart home design competition will be hosted on the all-new Maker Share community platform where participants will have the opportunity to submit their idea for a smart home application that would turn their dream smart home experience into reality. Finalists from the idea round will receive a free Raspberry Pi equipped with the Z-Wave Developers Kit (a $130 USD Value) and their choice of one Z-Wave Certified device supplied by secondary sponsor Zwaveproducts.com to build their application and submit it for judging.

The grand-prize for the competition is a hosted trip to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, January 9-12, 2018, along with a chance to showcase the smart home project in the Z-Wave Alliance Smart Home Pavilion. The second-place winner will receive Z-Wave devices worth $2,000 USD and the third-place winner will receive Z-Wave devices worth $1,000 USD to build their own smart home system.

“Sigma Designs publicly released the Z-Wave specification to grant developers access to the full Z-Wave interoperability layer for the development of smart home applications,” said Carsten Steffensen, Moderator of the Public Z-Wave Forum for Sigma Designs. “The Maker Community is renowned for its inventiveness and creativity which is why we’re excited to see what they come up with when given full access to the power of Z-Wave. We’re thrilled to launch this competition and look forward to evaluating the imaginative solutions submitted by the Maker Community.”

"The entire Make: team is excited to work with Sigma Designs on the launch of the first smart home-centric mission on the Maker Share platform,” said Clair Whitmer, the Maker Share platform manager. “Our goal at Maker Share is to connect makers with each other and with opportunities in the community and this is a perfect example of such an opportunity. This project will showcase the maker community as a source for innovation for the home and technology. We’re thrilled to partner with Sigma Designs, a company deeply entrenched in the smart home, and to launch this mission just as our Make: issue focused on the home hits newsstands and World Maker Faire opens in New York. We welcome every new maker and every new idea to Maker Share."