Last year when we launched the Hologram Nova we wanted to do something special for the developer community. We partnered with our friends at the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Hackster to launch the Exploring Cellular IoT contest (https://www.hackster.io/contests/hologram).The contest was a huge success with over 370 developers submitting project proposals. 🙌

Out of all the proposals we selected 200 to send contest kits to. Each kit contained a Hologram Nova, Raspberry Pi Zero W, GPS breakout, and a NodeMCU ESP8266. From there we let the Hackster community do what they do best, hack!

Photo of cellular contest kit

I remember our team checking the contest page each week finding amazing new submittals. See all 62 project submittals on the contest page (https://www.hackster.io/contests/hologram/projects). We've been truly blown away by the creativity, quantity, and quality of the projects. Thank you to all the wonderful developers who contributed to the contest. We at Hologram are super appreciative!With the contest is over and it's time to determine the best projects. All projects were grouped into four categories.

• 2 Best Gateway Projects
• 2 Best Remote Control Projects
• 2 Best Remote Monitoring Projects
• 2 Best Asset Tracking Projects

We scored each project 1 through 5 in the following areas.

• Level of Creativity/Uniqueness
• Level of Detail in the Story
• Level of Technical Complexity
• Quality - Ratio of Respects to Views

All categories had a really close race. In fact, a few categories had 3 or 4 tied for first resulting in our staff having to determine the top two. It was truly a phenomenal show of technical creativity on the part of all who submitted a project.Ok, enough talking. Time to share what you all have been waiting for!

The Winners are...

The 2 Best Gateway Projects

• Distributed Emergency Communication System (https://www.hackster.io/jim-ewing/distributed-emergency-communication-system-679627) by Jim Ewing
• Pi Zero WAN (PiWANOVA) (https://www.hackster.io/msurguy/pi-zero-wan-piwanova-9846b3) by Maks Surguy (https://twitter.com/msurguy)

The 2 Best Remote Control Projects

• Bring-Your-Own-Network Ethical Pentesting Tool (https://www.hackster.io/daniel-goodman/bring-your-own-network-ethical-pentesting-tool-b03003) by Daniel Goodman (https://twitter.com/Dan_The_Goodman)
• Cellular Connected Autonomous AR Drone 2.0 (https://www.hackster.io/pi_in_the_sky/cellular-connected-autonomous-ar-drone-2-0-0feb3d) by Terry Rodriguez

The 2 Best Asset Tracking Projects

• Decentralized Fleet Tracking with Blockchain (https://www.hackster.io/maleficarum/decentralized-fleet-tracking-with-blockchain-f61d6c) by Maleus Maleficarum (https://twitter.com/maleficarum)
• PoochPak: Mobile Information Gathering and Security System (https://www.hackster.io/man-sbestfriend-sbesthack/poochpak-mobile-information-gathering-and-security-system-a79c58)by Salma Mayorquin

The 2 Best Remote Monitoring Projects

• CSAD IoT Crop Care Project (https://www.hackster.io/csad-iot-crop-care/csad-iot-crop-care-project-08983c) by Aidan Richard Taylor (https://twitter.com/CSADElectricLab), Tom Campbell, and Connor Jordan
• Trail Camera (https://www.hackster.io/cybermah/trail-camera-e1deff) by Dana Mah (https://twitter.com/cybermah)

Each winner above will receive an Apple Watch, Nova Advanced Kit and $100 in Hologram Data Credit.Make sure to visit each winners project and respect it 👍 to show your support. If you find it useful please let them know by leaving a project comment.If you have a project powered by Hologram I'd encourage you to share it with the community by adding it to our growing project library.projects.hologram.io (https://projects.hologram.io)