There's a serious gap between conservation landscapes and technological applications. Up until now, open source technologists, glocal maker communities, and field experts (scientists, environmentalists, conservationists) have been working in silos most of the time. In consequence, the world is seriously lacking applicable, scalable, plug-and-play, and easy-to-deploy AIoT solutions that might be helpful for solving challenges in the wild.

That's why, this year, Seeed Studio successfully organized a global, online, open innovation contest - "IoT Into the Wild Contest for Sustainable Planet 2022" - so as to facilitate, create, and congregate AIoT projects that can help accelerate solving the 5 pressing challenges in the world:
🔴 Challenge 1: Climate Crisis Prevention/Mitigation
🔴 Challenge 2: Wildlife/Biodiversity Conservation (Unlimited to various types of flora and fauna)
🔴 Challenge 3: Marine Conservation
🔴 Challenge 4: Open Science Tools
🔴 Challenge 5: Sustainable Agriculture

As a result of this Contest, we received 122 Project Submissions, awarded 104 free hardware kits, and inspired 561 Participants from 78 Countries in 6 continents. Last but not least, 31 winners have been selected as final winners for 6 types of Awards. Since all the winners' projects are open source, they can be easily replicated and scaled up. Take a look at the overview of the winners' projects: https://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2022/10/19/what-are-the-27-winning-projects-at-iot2wild-contest-2022/

For all A-Z info about the Contest, please refer to the Contest's website, and make sure to scroll down until the end: https://www.hackster.io/contests/iotinthewild

For reference, this Contest has been avidly supported by Project 15 from Microsoft, Semtech, Helium, The Paradise Foundation, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, Zambezi Partners, Edge Impulse, Fab City, Chaihuo x.factory, Hackster.io, HAX, Nova Labs, SOSV, and Himax.

https://www.hackster.io/contests/iotinthewild

• Algeria
• Argentina
• Armenia
• Australia
• Burundi
• Belgium
• Bangladesh
• Bolivia
• Brazil
• Bulgaria
• Canada
• Czech Republic
• Chile
• Cameroon
• Colombia
• China
• Croatia
• Cyprus
• Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Ecuador
• Ethiopia
• Finland
• France
• Georgia
• Germany
• Ghana
• Greece
• Guatemala
• Guyana
• Hungary
• India
• Indonesia
• Iran (Islamic Republic of)
• Ireland
• Israel
• Italy
• Japan
• Kazakhstan
• Kenya
• Latvia
• Lebanon
• Malaysia
• Mexico
• Republic of Moldova
• Morocco
• Nepal (Republic of)
• Niger
• Netherlands
• Nigeria
• New Zealand
• Pakistan
• Peru
• Philippines
• Poland
• Portugal
• Korea (Rep. of)
• Romania
• South Africa
• Singapore
• Slovakia
• Spain
• Sri Lanka
• Slovenia
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Thailand
• Tunisia
• Türkiye (Republic of)
• United Arab Emirates
• United Kingdom
• Ukraine
• Russian Federation
• United Republic of Tanzania
• United States of America
• Viet Nam
• Zimbabwe

• Youth
• Older persons
• Women
• The poor
• Migrants
• Remote and rural communities
• Open tech community at global level (different ages and backgrounds)

All the Contest winners' FULL project documentations (aka AIoT solution recipes) are available online for replicable purposes by others - for free: https://www.hackster.io/contests/iotinthewild

Yes, this Contest is sustainable in a way that Seeed Studio is working tirelessly with the Contest winners on scaling up some of their well-developed, most-needed, and valuable AIoT solution prototypes into industrial-grade, professional AIoT products. Moreover, Seeed Studio is organizing hands-on workshops, sponsoring IoT hardware products, and participating in various #Tech4Sustainability events as guest speakers to share the possibilities and potential of global open tech community for wildlife and environmental conservation, and disaster relief purposes. Such events include, but not limited to:

1. Gathering for Open Science Hardware 2022 (Panama): https://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2022/11/17/gosh-2022-in-panama-seeed-organized-aiot2wild-and-custom-electronic-design-workshops-using-sensecap-k1100-kit/

2. The Digital Naturalism Conference 2022 (Sri Lanka): https://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2022/06/15/july-2022-seeeds-field-application-engineer-will-be-at-dinacon-3-in-sri-lanka-for-wild-hacking-for-a-holistic-iotintothewild-project-implementation%ef%bf%bc/

3. AmazoniaHack 2022 (Brazil): https://amazoniahack.co/

4. Bali Fab Fest 2022 (Indonesia): https://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2022/10/28/bali-fab-fest-2022-hendra-kusumah-one-of-the-iot2wild-contest-winners-organized-hands-on-workshops-in-bali-using-sensecap-k1100-kit/

All in all, the Contest has raised a lot of awareness on how AIoT and open tech innovations can be an alternative solutions to accelerating the WSIS values (E-Environment, E-Science, etc.) for multi-stakeholders with real-life prototype solutions, including the technological companies, academia, NGOs, and UN agencies. This contest was the epitome of grassroots, bottom-up innovations, #AIoT4SDGs, and low-cost, emerging tech solutions.