Little Box Challenge - Finalists list

Hi Stefan - do you know if all finalists have been informed? I can only 
see yourself (Fraunhofer?) and CE+T so-far...

Hi

my 2-man team (Tommasi-Bailly) has been notified that we are in the 
finals.

Mike Tommasi
France

Thx yes we are a private in itiative. Call it "garage" ;-)

255cm3 is not bad.

Fraunhofer announces 240cm3, but their pix show something that looks 
around 180...

Hi All,

I'm a bit confused by the pictures of the Fraunhofer IZM entry. I don't 
see any orange control wires, and the ac wires don't seem to have the 
required "adequate strain relief" and do not appear to be the required 
awg at the point they enter the box (they appear to have spliced on 
smaller wires before entry into the box, which in my interpretation does 
not adhere to the rules, but as they've been selected as a finalist, 
what do I know?). Does anyone have any comments about these 
observations?

@Mike, congratulations on reaching the final! I wonder if you'd mind 
letting us know how much time did you and your partner put in to this 
challenge? Did you both work on it full time? Or, did this project 
simply align closely with work you were already doing? I'm impressed 
that a two-man team makes it to the final!

Congratulations to all the finalists! (as well as the others)
I took part to the challenge as a freelancer with friends during their 
free-time but we did not achieve such power densities (around 400cm3). 
More experience and time would have been welcome ;-)
I am looking forward to reading the different technical approaches. 
Since we all struggled to death, it might be a fruitful database.
Good luck.

LEFEVRE. G (FraCa team/France)

Thx, we worked on it part time for a year.

PS.. Anon, wish you would sign your name... ;-)

FH IZM proto looks a lot smaller than the claimed 240 cm3.

cheers

Mike

ETH Zürich also in finals. These guys are really good.

https://www.ee.ethz.ch/news-and-events/d-itet-news-channel/2015/09/power-electronic-systems-laboratory-in-the-finals-of-google-little-box-challenge.html

Mike Tommasi

ETH worked together with Fraunhofer IZM, it's one entry. Not surpring 
that they came up with such an insanely small solution. I thought all 
along that they're the ones to beat; I can't wait to see if there's 
anything even smaller and to read all the technical approach documents. 
IZM clearly didn't appreciate my comments as they haven't responded and 
seem to have taken down their pictures!

Yes I noticed that the pix were gone.

They are for sure the team to beat.

Mike

Here's our little (box) announcement:

http://www.tommasi.org/googlelittleboxchallenge.html

Mike Tommasi

Found another finalist:

http://tntoday.utk.edu/2015/09/28/engineering-team-finalist-googles-box-challenge/

Complete list:

http://googlegreenblog.blogspot.fr/2015/10/finalists-announced-for-little-box.html

Hi Mike, thanks for the updates. I count four two-person teams and three 
one-person (!) teams. Not many of the universities that received funding 
made it to the finals (I think only one out of ten - ETH Zurich); I'm 
surprised the University of Colorado Boulder didn't make it. I also 
don't see the indecisemi entry, and their webpage is gone - were they 
fibbing?

Correction - 2 out of ten universities. The UIUC team also had some 
Google funding.

Indicesemi does indeed have a device switching at up to 1MHz, and under 
15.8 cubic inches. Unfortunately there are either 18 devices smaller, or 
Google didn't believe it.
If anybody is in the Portland area, we are offering demonstrations to 
select people.

James wrote:
> Indicesemi does indeed have a device switching at up to 1MHz, and
> under 15.8 cubic inches. Unfortunately there are either 18 devices
> smaller, or Google didn't believe it.
> If anybody is in the Portland area, we are offering demonstrations to
> select people.

I'm sure your website claimed you were in the final. Why is the website 
gone? And why did the site only have renderings, not actual photos? 
Anyway, what you did is quite an achievement, even if it didn't make it 
to the final stage.

BTW, Future Energy Electronics Center is Virginia Tech, and Red 
Electrical Devils is company CE+T Power in Liège.

I assure you we never claimed to be accepted in the 18.
We are focusing on developing our ZVS technology as a commercial 
product, hence the website.
Best of luck to those in the top 18, particularly those smaller than 15 
cubic inches, an impressive feat.

Of the 10 universities that got the Little Box Challenge Aacademic 
Awards grant of $30,000, only two are in the finals.

http://googleresearch.blogspot.fr/2014/12/little-box-challenge-academic-awards.html

James wrote:
> I assure you we never claimed to be accepted in the 18.
> We are focusing on developing our ZVS technology as a commercial
> product, hence the website.
> Best of luck to those in the top 18, particularly those smaller than 15
> cubic inches, an impressive feat.

My Apologies, clearly I'm misremembering. Surprised you didn't make it 
to the finals to be honest. Perhaps a terms & conditions thing or minor 
specifications thing that was overlooked?

So Mike, are you going to tell us the size of your converter, or do we 
have to wait until Google publish your technical approach document?

Anon wrote:
> James wrote:
>> I assure you we never claimed to be accepted in the 18.
>> We are focusing on developing our ZVS technology as a commercial
>> product, hence the website.
>> Best of luck to those in the top 18, particularly those smaller than 15
>> cubic inches, an impressive feat.
>
> My Apologies, clearly I'm misremembering. Surprised you didn't make it
> to the finals to be honest. Perhaps a terms & conditions thing or minor
> specifications thing that was overlooked?

Perhaps, though we were very thorough as I'm sure all were.  Naturally 
we weren't given any explanation, other than being told that there would 
be no explanation.

So long as the winner is smaller, $^!7 happens!

Hi Stefan,

Do you mind if you share the presentation with me.

Thanks!

George

my email  zyzlih@gmail.com

George wrote:
> Do you mind if you share the presentation with me.

Hi George,
i will discuss internally to release some more details or the 
presentation to public.

( Our PR did a (german) update: 
http://www.iisb.fraunhofer.de/en/press_events/press_releases/pressearchiv/archiv_2015/Google_Little_Box_Challenge_2015.html 
)

Thanks Stefan, very cool design. Don't forget let me know if you won 1M 
$.

George

By checking the finalist, it seems there are hidden Champions ;-)

OKE-Services seems to be a well known Micro-Converter professional, 
which was in the beginning of the micro-converter in the 1990 the 
standard solution of lot of installations ;-)

We will see who wins the pott, but i am very surpriced by the actual 
power density ranking.

from 1x 400w/inch³ down do 2x 300w/inch³ down to 2x 200w/inch³ and 5x 
140w/inch³ and 4 below 100w/inch³

But the power density seems just a first step. to survice the 100h and 
pass the emc test will be also very challenging ;-)

Already to the Deadline 3 of the 18 Finalist did not appear and should 
out of the race.

Hi J. K. Where did you get that power density ranking? Someone made a 
littlebox inverter only 5 in3???? How?

No one's reading this thread any more? Can anyone verify J.K.'s data?

I'm disappointed Google haven't published any technical approach 
documents yet.

can anyone letme know where can I get complete list of participants of 
Little Box Challenge