This year I have participated as guest judge in the Arduino contest arranged by Libelium, one of our European distributors and manufacturer of a whole bunch of interesting shields. There are three winners of Arduino-compatible goodies including GPRS, GPS, SD modules and Solar panel kits.

(c) 2009 by the author, video for Libelium’s 2009 Arduino Contest Winner

This year’s winners are Francisco Reinoso (1st), Joe Cochran (2nd), and Carlos Tricas (3rd). We have chosen them for their novelty, ease of replication, and level of documentation.

Francisco presents an interesting project where an Arduino 2009 is used to wireless-ly interface a centronics printer. Personally I can imagine a lot of people rescuing their old printing gear thanks to that hack. Joe introduces his Sketchduino, that will for sure be a hit in exhibitions and shows in the coming months. Finally Carlos has made a very simple hack using a fan, an ultrasound sensor, and PD to make a table-sized music instrument.

You can download the full documentation of the projects, as well as see the movies here.