A contest with a prize pool of over €8000 has just opened. To enter you need to come up with an embedded software idea that  Ada and/or SPARK are the principal language technologies. 

 

This embedded software project competition is sponsored by AdaCore, provider of commercial software solutions for Ada as part of an:

initiative initiative to foster the growth of Ada and SPARK for developing embedded systems and more generally for developing “software that matters”. 

The deadline for the contest is September 15th and is open to individuals aged 18 and over (or the age of majority in their country of residence) and small teams of individuals (not organizations) with up to four members. 

Projects for the contest must use the Ada or SPARK languages. They can optionally use components written in other languages (such as third-party libraries), but only the original part of the Project using Ada or SPARK will be evaluated using the following four criteria: 

  • Open
    Does the Project have a Free Software License, as defined by the Free Software Foundation  or an open-source licence, as defined by the Open Source Initiative?  Does it have  an open design?  Does it use open tools, hardware and platforms?

  • Collaborative
    Is the Project usable by other members of the programming community?  Does it have clearly-defined interfaces and documentation? Is it available in a public repository through a version control system such as svn or git? Does it have a bug tracking system? Can it be built with tools available to the community?  

  • Dependable
    Does the Project make use of processes and technologies that provide high confidence that the software meets its requirements (for example formal methods, contract-based programming, testing, and coding standards)? Is its documentation accurate?

  • Inventive
    Does the Project demonstrate out-of-the-box thinking, does it bring new solutions to an existing problem, or apply existing solutions to a novel one?

This is the second annual Make With Ada contest so get a feel for what's required we took a look at last year's prize winning entries.It was won by Stephane Carrez with an EtherScope monitoring tool which analyzes Ethernet traffic by reading network packets (TCP, UDP, IGMP, etc.), performing real-time analysis, and displaying the results on a 480x272 touch panel. Second place was awarded for a framework was developed in Ada 2012 for developing control software for the NXP cup race car and third place went to a Bluetooth Beacons project.

Commenting on the 2016 contest, competition judge William Wong said:

“Judging last year’s Make with Ada competition showed me how developers new to Ada and SPARK could quickly come up to speed with these languages and produce some ingenious embedded applications" 

 

 

More Information

Make With Ada website

AdaCore

 

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