Researchers’ Night at the Bay Zoltán Research Center in 2024

The Night of Researchers is an insight event initiated by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions of the Commission of the European Union, which every year, on the last weekend of September, provides an opportunity for young and old all over Europe to get a glimpse into the secrets of various fields of science, learn about the results of science and the research career.

Bay Zoltán Nonprofit Ltd. for Applied Research is one of the largest research centers in Hungary, whose managers and employees are committed to creating and developing close cooperation between education and research, which is a necessary and essential condition for achieving outstanding scientific results.

For 30 years, the research center has been carrying out diversified and ever-expanding professional activities and has significant research experience in Hungarian and even international comparisons. The promotion of these experiences and research work for the next generation is one of the important missions of the Research Center. The Researchers’ Night is an excellent opportunity to present the center’s activities, in which the institute has been participating for 11 years.

The Energy Division of the research center is organizing the “Electronic Crafts Room” program for the third time, where, like last year, the children and some adults could make electronic circuits designed by one of the institute’s colleagues. One circuit was the “Simon-says” type memory game, 20 electronic parts should be soldered onto the 60×60 mm PCB manufactured by Eurocircuits, with the help and supervision of BAY colleagues. The participants received the circuit board with the pre-programmed and soldered microcontroller.

The operation of the Simon-says game is ensured by a programmable microcontroller. After pressing the START button, an LED flashes with an associated sound, to which the player responds by pressing the button of the same color as the LED. After a successful button press, the first flashing LED is randomly followed by a second LED flash and sound, and after a series of successful button presses, the number of flashing LEDs increases by one in each round, so the player must remember one more color combination in each round. The player has to complete a level of 16 flashes to get the victory music.

The other circuit, “Breakout”, is an electronic skill game where the goal is for the player to break through the wall at the top of the court with the help of a ball and a paddle. The game is activated by pressing one of the buttons. The name of the game will then appear on the display. The next step is to select the difficulty level, of which 3 are available for players. The left button can be used to change the level, and the right button can be used to accept it. After that, the game itself appears, but it only starts when the player presses the right button. The game ends when the player fails to bounce the ball and falls, or when he reaches his goal and removes all the bricks from the wall.

Some of the young people already participated in the program last year, they were not too bad with soldering-bit, but most of the young people (and moms and dads) tried soldering for the first time in their lives.

The program was organised for children over 14 years old, they also could participate from the age of 10 with parental consent, but even younger ones really wanted to take part. Unfortunately, they will have to wait a few more years for this program. It was nice to see how much the children enjoyed soldering the small parts, getting to know a little about how electronics work. Everyone has learned that while you can put a resistor in a circuit any way you want, the same is not true for LEDs, and sure enough, if you put it wrong, the game won’t work. But the team was also prepared for this, setting up a professional repair stand, and the colleagues quickly corrected these errors, so that young and old could take home the finished toy with sparkling eyes and happiness. This year, more than 100 circuits were completed and found owners.

When leaving, everyone said “See you next year!”

Bay Zoltán Nonprofit Ltd. for Applied Research would like to thank Eurocircuits for supporting the successful program with high-quality PCBs.