Mouser Electronics announces Circuit Showdown Winner among engineering students

Mouser Electronics, a distributor specialising in New Product Introductions, has announced the winner of the Circuit Showdown Design Contest. 

Produced by eeDesignIt, the four-part competition series brought together three engineering students in a head-to-head design challenge, showcasing skills in electrical and mechanical engineering.

Competition overview

The Circuit Showdown featured three contestants: Charles Morales from Texas State University, Michael Vidales from Prairie View A&M University, and Renee Wrysinski from Rice University. 

The students developed themed design projects over two rounds, using components supplied by Mouser’s manufacturer partners, including Arduino, Keysight Technologies, Molex, Renesas Electronics, and Vishay. The competition awarded a Grand Prize of $10,000, with additional prizes for second and third place.

Hosted by Bryan DeLuca and Nicolette Emmino of eeDesignIt, the series included technical oversight from Raymond Yin, Mouser’s Director of Technical Content, who served as a mentor. Judges included Massimo Banzi, Co-founder of Arduino; Chris Moore, CEO of FIRST; and Kirk Ulery, Business Development Manager for Molex.

During the third episode, students faced an additional challenge designed to test adaptability. Midway through their builds, Yin introduced a requirement to incorporate an Internet of Things (IoT) dashboard using Arduino IoT Cloud, requiring contestants to display real-time data from their hardware.

“What we asked them to do was to add an Internet of Things dashboard using the Arduino IoT Cloud to their projects,” explained Yin. “They’d need to be able to display data from their hardware and make them visible to the judges upon demonstration. Adding this last-minute design change provided some additional pressure and forced them to make some quick decisions.”

Judge Kirk Ulery remarked on the industry relevance of the added challenge, saying, “I like the twist because it works the same way we do in business today. Everything has to be communicated. How do you get your information out in a format that people can understand and access?”

Prizes and outcome

The competition awarded a Grand Prize of $10,000, a $1,000 credit on mouser.com, and a Keysight lab bench valued at $6,000 to the first-place winner. The second-place contestant received $5,000, a $500 mouser.com credit, and a Keysight oscilloscope, while the third-place student received a $250 mouser.com credit and a Keysight digital multimeter.

For more details on the competition and to watch the final episode, visit Mouser’s dedicated page.