/r/diyelectronics on Reddit currently has two electronics design contests going on:

An Unconventional Clock

Deadline is April 3rd for this beginner contest

The mission here is simple: give me a clock you won’t see in a store.

Perhaps a word clock. A lava lamp water clock. An alarm clock that slaps you in the face and eats your hair (warning: audio). I don’t care.

Buck Regulator Olympics

Deadline is April 30th for this advanced contetst

The goal is to build a switching buck DC-DC converter from discrete components that can step down a fairly common input voltage to another common output voltage–in this case, 3.3V.