What happens when you challenge a group of electrical and computer engineering students to come up with the most innovative and imaginative product with just a handful of electronic parts, miscellaneous items, limited funding and tight deadlines? Build18 , an annual engineering festival held by the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department at Carnegie Mellon University is a fast-paced challenge where students have seven days to build an inventive and innovative product. This week-long hardware hackathon is run by students for students. This year, Cadence was one of the corporate sponsors of this freestyle tinkering festival where more than 200 CMU ushered in their spring semester by creating new innovative prototype projects. Yu Liu, Robert Blackburn, Nick Moellers, and Elias Fallon from our Cadence office in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania attended the Build18 Project Symposium on January 16, where students demonstrated their projects to other students, faculty, sponsors and public. Among this year’s projects included a Thor’s Hammer: An electromagnet built into a toy ‘Thor’s Hammer’ so you can’t pick it up unless de-activated by a RF-ID card, a Smart Pill-case: Motion sensor built into the bottom of a prescription bottle, and connected to a smart-phone app to track and remind people to take their medicines on time. Elias Fallon, Software Engineering Group Director, Cadence, said, “The variety of cool technology that teams put together and got at least partially working in a week was amazing. It was a great opportunity to talk with the next generation of electrical and computer engineers, see what they are excited about and let them know a bit more about Cadence.” Please visit the garage for a database of past Build18 projects. Robert Blackburn talks with a team building an autonomously steered racing buggy. Nick Moellers gets a demo of a gesture-driven on-screen puzzle game.![]()
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