ELE_CON Festival/ELE CONTEST 2010

On December 5, we went to see ELE_CON Festival 2010, a DIY electronics festival. This was held at TOKYO CALTURE CALTURE, an event hall, located at Odaiba, Tokyo. This festival was a part of ELE CONTEST 2010, which is a DIY electronics contest. At the festival, the final of the contest was held. The 5 finalists presented their works in front of the jury and competed for the Grand Prize. After the winner of the Grand Prize is announced, the Award Ceremony was held and the other prize-winners were also announced.

Recently, DIY electronics has gained plurality here in Japan. These types of events are frequently held, and general media start reporting these events in their news. At that day, NHK (kind of Japanese version of BBC) was at the sight. These are the Grand prize winner and the Special Jury prize winner.


Grand Prize: "Rhinon" (left), Special Jury Prize "" (right)

We thought that there were two major trends in DIY electronics. One is that art and design become more important in DIY electronics than ever. Please look at a picture of the Grand Prize winner (up and left). As you gently touch the wood object, the music box inside the body of the object starts playing a music. It is true that this employs very sophisticated technologies. In this work, the design and interface of this work is more critical to the work then the technology. Art or artistic design are once considered for some commercial products. Today, this concept is widely accepted and practiced in DIY electronics. The other trend is the use of PSoC (Programmable System-on-Chip). Three out of the five finalists used PSoC. Some PSoCs are widely used for the consumer electronics, such as TiVO set top-box and the touch-sensitive scroll wheel on the Apple iPod click wheel. The line between commercial products and DIY electronics are getting blurry.

Complete lists of the prize winners and entrants are available (in Japanese). There are other prize winners and nominees shown below below. These pictures are selected arbitrarily.