Arduino has announced a new IoT device and a teamed up with Microsoft to give away 1,000 units to makers who submit ideas for how to use it. 

The latest member of the Arduino/Genuino family is the MKR1000, which combines the functionality of the Zero and the Wi-Fi Shield. 

The board, which be marketed as the Arduino MKR1000 in the United States and as the Genuino MKR1000 elsewhere, is based on the Atmel ATSAMW25 SoC (System on Chip), part of the SmartConnect family of Atmel Wireless devices.

It incorporates on-board Wi-Fi and a Cryptochip and it is specifically designed for IoT battery-powered projects and devices, allowing makers with minimal previous experience of networking to add WiFi connectivity to their projects.

The board will be available for purchase in February 2016 and to promote it Arduino has partnered with Microsoft in a contest hosted on Hackster.io in which 1000 of the devices will be distributed to finalists.

In the blog post announcing the MKR1000 Zeo Romano explained:

“We want to celebrate the Maker community so we thought there’s no better way to do that than encourage inventors, artists, Makers, hobbyists or professionals and developers to create on Arduino,” 

and in this video Bruno encourages you to enter the contest:

To participate in what is described as the World's Largest Arduino Maker Challenge you simply need to submit an idea for what you can create with Windows 10 and the new MRK1000 or the Arduino UNO. Your ideas could be for anything from environmental sensors to gaming, augmented reality, robotics or UAVs - but you get bonus points for incorporating Microsoft Azure services.

Submissions for the ideas phase close on January 15th. The 1000 pre-contest winners will be announced a week later and then have until March 14th to complete their projects. Three winners will then be awarded a fully-funded (up to $1,500) trip to Maker Faire Shenzhen, New York, Bay Area or Rome; a chance to present their creations at the Microsoft and the Arduino & Genuino booths and a professional video production about it plus a $500 gift certificate to Adafruit. 

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