Welcome to A Brighter Future! This year's hackathon is all about optimism and inventing for the future we want to see.

The main theme, "A Brighter Future," features three tracks:

1. Renovate the Future: Reduce waste by making something old new again, change the functionality of an existing invention or give it a new functionality.

2. Fashion the Future: The world is your canvas, create something that is visually appealing, or involves the creation of art. From wearables to music production to painting to drawing make something that improves your life and just maybe looks nice.

• + DigiKey Smart Fashion Using QWIIC

3. Educate the Future: Develop educational technology, learning platforms, and tools that transform how we teach and learn.

IDEAHacks is UCLA’s premier hardware hackathon, hosted annually by IEEE at UCLA. As the largest hardware hackathon on the West Coast, IDEAHacks brings together over 150 students from various schools for an amazing weekend of innovation and collaboration. Our goal is to empower and encourage students of all backgrounds and experiences by providing them with a space and opportunity to design something exciting and memorable!

Rules For DigiKey Smart Home Design

DigiKey Challenge:

Theme à Smart Home applications

Requirements à

1.         Projects must be built with the Microchip boards provided.

(i)                  Hardware may include Modulinos/QWIIC accessories.

(ii)                 Other sensors may be used.

(iii)               Vibe coding is required.

(iv)               Usage of Scheme-It to document project is required.

Vibe Coding à Teams are strongly encouraged to use LLM’s to vibe code in order to speed up design/implementation process. Document any problems or obstacles with AI generated code for extra credit. Good documentation of positive and negative vibe coding experience is highly desired.

Documentation à Project block diagram must be posted to DigiKey’s Scheme-It block diagram and wiring tool (https://www.digikey.com/en/schemeit/home). Use Scheme-It’s text boxes to clearly summarize project functionalities and features.

Project Photos à Projects must have pictures taken at the lit photo booth at the event. Teams are strongly encouraged to post pictures of their projects on your own LinkedIn or Facebook pages, tagging DigiKey with the “@DigiKey” (ampersand DigiKey) tag. Be fun and creative in your post.

Judging Criteria:

• Three teams will be selected among all participating teams going for the DigiKey Challenge
• Project requirements mentioned above will be used during the judging process
• Project must be functional at conclusion of hackathon
• Meeting each project requirement raises the hackathon team’s chance of placing among the top three
• Documentation using Scheme-It required. Extra consideration given to teams with neatly organized block diagrams, schematics, and descriptive text boxes
• Nice looking and well organized projects will be given extra consideration

• Judging Rubric
  https://tinyurl.com/ideahacks2026judgingrubric