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Renesas Electronics America Spurs Design Innovation at GE's FirstBuild Hackathon: Hack the Home Event
[April 09, 2015]

Renesas Electronics America Spurs Design Innovation at GE's FirstBuild Hackathon: Hack the Home Event


Renesas Electronics America Inc., a premier provider of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced it will join FirstBuild and other members of the connected home ecosystem at the FirstBuild Mega Hackathon: Hack the Home event to support and encourage design innovation for the connected home of the future. During the event, Renesas will showcase its innovative embedded solutions and expertise, enabling participants to combine their out-of-the-box thinking with Renesas' easy-to-use microprocessor (MPU) -based platform and software tools as they create their innovative new appliances. The event takes place April 10-11, at the FirstBuild Microfactory in Louisville, Kentucky.

Hosted by FirstBuild, the 24-hour hackathon event spans two days and offers a forum for the growing communities of Makers, programmers, engineers, designers, techies and others to concept, design and create innovative appliances for the home of the future. The Hackathon can be viewed live at: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/first-build.

Renesas engineers will be available throughout the event to offer technical support for Hackathon participants using Renesas solutions in their challenge entries. Participants can use a GR-Peach kit - an ARM (News - Alert)® mbed™-compatible DIY-type board featuring the Renesas RZ/A1 MPU - and connect with Renesas team members to learn more about working with its solutions. The team will be demonstrating the Renesas mbed RZ/A1 technology as well as solutions for capacitive touch and other applications during the event.



Renesas will award the following prizes for the top three projects that represent the best designs using Renesas technologies: First Place: Quadcopter ($800 value); Second Place: $500 gift card; Third Place: $250 gift card. The judging panel will select the winners at the end of the challenge Saturday evening, April 11, 2015.

About the Renesas GR-Peach Kit


Leveraging the Renesas RZ/A1 MPU, the Renesas GR-PEACH is an mbed-enabled platform which combines the advantages of the mbed ecosystem and Arduino form factor, and enables quicker development of high-performance, high-functionality embedded systems for designers of connected devices.

More information on the Renesas RZ/A1 MPUs is available at http://am.renesas.com/products/mpumcu/rz/rza/index.jsp. For more information on Renesas, follow Renesas Electronics America at @RenesasAmerica on Twitter (News - Alert) and http://www.facebook.com/RenesasAmerica.

About Renesas Electronics Corporation

Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723), the world's number one supplier of microcontrollers, is a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions including microcontrollers, SoC solutions and a broad-range of analog and power devices. Business operations began as Renesas Electronics in April 2010 through the integration of NEC (News - Alert) Electronics Corporation (TSE:6723) and Renesas Technology Corp., with operations spanning research, development, design and manufacturing for a wide range of applications. Headquartered in Japan, Renesas Electronics has subsidiaries in 20 countries worldwide. More information can be found at www.renesas.com.

About FirstBuild

FirstBuild harnesses the expertise and creativity of an online and offline global community that is dedicated to conceiving, engineering and building the next generation of major home appliances. It enables engineers, designers, scientists and home enthusiasts to participate in the development of breakthrough appliances and solve deep engineering challenges. Participants will identify market needs, directly participate in the product development and watch via social media as ideas speed from mind to market at the FirstBuild micro-factory in Louisville, Ky.


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