Building Signs That Think: The AI Signage Workshop at MACE

Halfway through the second day of the AI Signage Workshop, the power went out.

In most workshops, that is where the learning stops. Not here. Laptops dropped to battery, phone flashlights came out, and fifty-eight students simply leaned closer to their screens and kept building. Nobody packed up. That one moment said everything about the energy inside Seminar Hall 4 at Mar Athanasius College of Engineering (MACE), Kothamangalam, on July 17 and 18, 2026, during a two-day hands-on AI Signage Workshop hosted by the MACE IoT Club with support from Seeed Studio.

The AI Signage Workshop as a pre-event with a purpose

The workshop was a pre-event of EVOKE 2026, the flagship technical project expo of the MACE IoT Club, where students build real hardware, demonstrate it live, and defend it in front of industry judges. But this session had a second, very specific mission. It was there to launch students into Seeed Studio’s Make a Sign Interactive Signage Contest 2026.

Instead of leaving participants to figure out the contest on their own, the idea was to give them a real head start. That meant a clear picture of what to build, the hardware to build it with, and enough confidence to actually enter. Registration was free, certificates were included, and by the end the room was full of students who wanted to compete.

Day 1: Decoding the contest, and a first taste of TinyML

The first day opened with the contest itself. What exactly is an interactive signage, and why does it matter? We went through it from start to finish. What makes a signage genuinely interactive, the things to watch out for, the common mistakes that cost people, and how to put together a strong entry from the ground up.

From there we got practical. We broke down the scoring criteria so students knew exactly what the judges reward, talked about why good documentation and a clear demo video can decide a submission, and looked at areas worth exploring for original ideas. By the time we wrapped up, the contest had gone from an abstract poster to something concrete and winnable, and you could see ideas already forming.

The afternoon moved into a hands-on introduction to TinyML and the Seeed Studio ecosystem. Students picked up the XIAO boards, the Grove Vision AI module, a range of Grove sensors, and the SenseCraft AI platform. For many of them it was the first time seeing how machine learning can run on tiny, low-power devices and react to the world in real time.

Day 2: ePaper, prototypes, and pitching real ideas

Day two was when the signs started to think. The focus shifted to Seeed’s ePaper displays and SenseCraft HMI, the visual heart of any good interactive signage, along with more hardware, more sensors, and full hands-on building.

Students moved from following along to creating. They pitched their own signage concepts, worked through how to approach them, and put together working prototypes. Ideas bounced around the room, doubts got argued out, and prototypes slowly came together. Then the power cut out mid-session, and the momentum simply carried on. Students kept experimenting under flashlights because they did not want to lose the thread of what they were building. It turned out to be one of the most memorable moments of the two days.

The clear crowd favorites were the Seeed ePaper displays and SenseCraft HMI. Seeing crisp, low-power visuals driven by your own logic makes the whole idea of interactive signage suddenly feel within reach.

The spark that stayed

By the end of the AI Signage Workshop, the change in the room was hard to miss. Students who had walked in curious walked out competent and genuinely set on winning. Question after question got answered, every lingering doubt got cleared, and what stayed behind was a real eagerness to build something good and enter it.

That was always the goal. Teach the hardware, yes, but more than that, light a spark. Fifty-eight students now have that spark, a solid grasp of the Seeed ecosystem, and a clear path from idea to entry.

Your turn: enter Make a Sign 2026

If this sounds like your kind of challenge, the door is open to you too. Seeed Studio’s Make a Sign Interactive Signage Contest 2026 is live, with exciting prizes for the most creative interactive signage builds, and the submission deadline is August 15, 2026.

So do not just read about it. Pick up a XIAO, an ePaper display, and SenseCraft, and build a sign that thinks.

Enter here: Make a Sign Interactive Signage Contest 2026

Organized by the MACE IoT Club as a pre-event of EVOKE 2026, with support from Seeed Studio.

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