After a premiere season that saw Grush — an IoT-enabled gaming toothbrush aimed at getting kids to brush their teeth more effectively — take home the $1 million top prize, America’s Greatest Makers is coming back for another season of bringing IoT inventors together in a head-to-head battle for a sweet cash prize.
The primetime television show is produced by reality TV giant Mark Burnett, in partnership with Intel. Last season was especially exciting here at ReadWrite. Not only did we get to see emerging IoT technologies displayed on a national stage, but winning team was also an alumni of the IoT accelerator run by our parent company, Wearable IoT World.
This year, two IoT startup alumni are confirmed as auditioning – SoundSight and Metron Force.
SoundSight produces an integrated video recording smart headphone that connects to your smartphone. Metron Force is a smart wristband for device radio control that uses intelligent wrist gestures.
“America’s Greatest Makers would be a good opportunity to explain how our technology differentiates us from the competition,” said Alex Hai, founder of Metron Force. “If we can tell our story to a national audience, our product will speak for itself.”
Makers to use new IoT technologies
Television series have a habit of upping the stakes. So for season two, in addition to Intel’s Curie Module that was used last year, Intel is making new technologies available to be integrated into the product.
The next-generation Intel Atom processor-based platform can provide contestants with advanced display, graphics and high-speed I/O in a low-power, small form-factor configuration for product ideas. And Intel’s RealSense ZR300 camera offers makers a small form-factor solution for contestants who want to add visual depth sensing and tracking capabilities to their product ideas.
“We’ve already been getting excited about what we can do with the Intel Atom,” says Stephen Chase, founder of SoundSight Smart-Headphones, about the audition process. “One of the things we’re most excited about with this competition that we would get to work closely with the brilliant people of Intel.”
The shows producers hope that the new technologies will elevate the competition. From Grush founder Ethan Schur’s experience, the lack of ability to code should not scare a potential applicant away. “If you find a problem big enough (to solve), you can prototype quickly,” he said. “There’s help out there. The maker community is there.”
Interested? You have until August 19th to apply here.
