With another year behind us, we are once again at the beginning of a new design challenge season here at Element14. Before we get started with week one, I want to take a moment and fill you in on the details of our first design challenge of 2018. Called the Pi Chef Design Challenge, this challenge is centered around the Raspberry Pi SBC, and task its challengers to use the Raspberry Pi as the main ingredient to improve and expand their creativity in the kitchen. We had an amazing set of design challenges in 2017, and I am sure that 2018 will be no exception! So let's jump right in and find out what this challenge is all about.

Pi Chef Design Challenge

About The Challenge

Featured as the first design challenge of 2018, the Pi Chef Design Challenge opened for project idea submissions in October of 2017, which was met with many submissions from community members. As I mentioned earlier, the challenge is based around the Raspberry Pi 3 Model BRaspberry Pi 3 Model B SBC. Challengers have eleven weeks to develop their project, and share their progress in a series of weekly update post. By posting a minimum of ten update post, challengers become eligible to win several awesome prizes, and the chance to become one of our prestigious design challenge winners.

Entering the challenge is not limited to just the ten chosen community members though, anyone can join the Challenge as a non-sponsored Challenger. Here's how: Simply get buy a Raspberry Pi 3 model B and integrate it into your project, as well as post 10 blogs chronicling your project’s progress into the Pi Chef Design Challenge space (tagging your blogs 'IoT on Wheels'). All Challengers must build their projects in accordance with the Challenge's terms and conditions, and all projects must include the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B.

The Official Kit, and The Prizes

On January 10, 2018 Element14 announced the 15 community members that were picked to participate in this challenge, and those challengers received a kit of sponsored components to use in their design which was based around the Raspberry Pi 3. If you would like to purchase the official kit, click here.

Each kit contains the following items:

To learn more about each of these components or to purchase them to use in your own project, visit the official kit announcement at the links above.

Each challenger is competing to win one of three prize packs that feature the following prizes:

Grand Prize

Breville Barista Express Espresso Machine







$1500 USD Newark element14 / Premier Farnell Cart

Runner Up

Whynter Ice-Cream Maker







$750 USD Newark element14 / Premier Farnell Cart

Third Place

Breville Tea Maker







$500 USD Newark element14 / Premier Farnell Cart

A finisher who has completed their project, used the Raspberry Pi, posted 10+ updates in the Pi Chef space and adhered to the requirements in the Terms and Conditions will receive a mystery package of element14/Premier Farnell products valued at $65 USD.

The Judges

Judging for the Pi Chef Design Challenge will be performed by a Specialist Judge from the Raspberry Pi Foundation as well as a few Community Judges from the Element14 Team.

For any general questions about the challenge, judging or anything else, you can post a 'comment' on the About This Challenge page. Your fellow Challengers or anyone following the challenge are likely to respond.

The Challengers and Their Projects

I have listed out each project with a link to its respective challenger’s profile page. Below each project is a brief description of the project in its creator's own words. I will update this info once project names have been set in stone, and their blog pages created.

Project:Cracked Pepper Sir by Adrian Blackburn (crackedpepper)

Adrian will be building a smart robotic arm that takes all the effort out of adding freshly cracked black pepper to your meal.

Project:Smart Food Scale by - Amol Disale (disaleamol)

Amol will be building a smart scale that will determine your Protein, Fats, and Carbs for each meal.

AnnaLisa will be creating a combined XY Cookie dough plotter and oven to create custom CNC cookies.

Project:Bake Mate by - Avner Fernandes (hans_ober)

Avner will be building a friendly Smart Scale and cooking system that holds your hand while guiding you through the cooking process.

Project:Stove Assistant by - Bernhard Mayer (bernhardmayer)

Bernhard will be using a Panasonic Grid Eye, Computer vision and the Raspberry Pi to create a smart kitchen heat sensor system.

Project:PiCA by - Budiman Putra (giganggu)

Budiman will be building a system that uses computer vision to check food stocks, helps you plan meals, then orders more stocks when used.

Drew will be building a remote IoT Heat sensor using Nio platform and a mobile interface to check if you/elderly relatives have left the stove on.

Project:Kitchen Brainiac by - James Belcher (fixstuff)

A multi-device controller using ESP8266 and Modbus TCP control that could repurpose any kitchen appliance as a smart IoT device.

James will be building a Smart Range Hood for his partner with air quality sensors and a MQTT “Dinner is ready” message system.

John is upgrading his existing cabinates with a Flipdown Kitchen Console (KCON) with Voice recognition, touchscreen and a library of listed recipes.

Project:Connected Cooker by - Jonathan Schooler (jschools)

Jonathan is creating a Kitchen sensor unit that will monitor oven and food temperatures with a heads up display and A NFC sync tab.

Project:iTender by - Justin Berger (justin.berger)

Justin will be expanding and improving his iTender Automatic Cocktail maker prototype with Recipes, Cooling, NFC and Interface.

Project:Smart Kitchen Cabinet Mat by - Karthic Kumar Durai Pandian (dkarthickumar)

Karthic is building a set of Smart Shelves for stocks control with NFC containers, Connected Scales and Voice control.

Marks project is a Cloud infrastructure based Freezer and chill room Monitoring System to help protect his family’s restaurants from disaster.

Project:NutriFresh by - Shervin Oloumi (supersonnic)

A refrigerator conscience Kitchen Assistant, that uses computer vision to track and deter food waste and missed food expiration dates.

As I mentioned earlier, entering the challenge is not limited to just the ten chosen community members though, anyone can join the Challenge as a non-sponsored Challenger. Here's how: Simply get buy a Raspberry Pi 3 model B and integrate it into your project, as well as post 10 blogs chronicling your project’s progress into the Pi Chef Design Challenge space (tagging your blogs 'IoT on Wheels'). All Challengers must build their projects in accordance with the Challenge's terms and conditions, and all projects must include the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B.

That is going to wrap up this intro to the Pi Chef Design Challenge. Remember to check back each and every week for the duration of this challenge for a summary post from the previous week’s updates. If you would like to learn more about this challenge, and to see what progress has already been made, head over to the its official challenge page, and as always, remember to hack the world and make awesome!





Weekly Summaries About This Challenge







