Hello and welcome back to the Digilent blog!
If you happen to be a fan of amazing hardware projects, keep an eye out for the upcoming Digilent design contest. Part of the larger Open Hardware 2016 Design Contest – East European Regional, the regional contest is in its illustrious 12th year.
The Open Hardware 2016 East European Regional Design Contest is an exciting European student hardware design competition open to ALL full-time students and PhD candidates from Eastern Europe who are passionate about electronics, digital design and electrical engineering in general. The competition gives students the opportunity to showcase and improve their technical and creative skills and face new challenges in developing projects using the latest technologies.
Contestants of any study level (undergraduate, graduate, PhD) are eligible to enter and attempt to impress the judges with their Digilent fueled designs. There are two entry categories (Digital Design and Embedded Design) in order to provide ample opportunity for clever and useful projects!
This year we have added a new platform to the mix of contest FPGA development boards. Meet Arty!

Participants will have the chance to present their work mid-May 2016 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. For 2016, the following platforms that are available include Arty, Basys3, Nexys 4 DDR, and the Zybo. Winners will receive recognition and cash prizes.
In addition to the board, or “brain” of each project, contestants can add Pmods for added functionality.
These small I/O interface boards offer an ideal way to extend the capabilities of our FPGA boards. Sensors, I/O, data acquisition & conversion, connectors, external memory, and more can be added to any project with Pmods.

Registration closed December 15th but with 30 teams signed up and the rapidly approaching project deadline (May 8th) there will be a lot more excitement (and incredible projects!) in the near future!

if you did not get a chance to register this year, please consider participating next year, and check out our recap from the 2015 contest!