#hacktx

We are looking forward to HackTX this weekend at The University of Texas! If attending, come visit our table to learn more about BlueChasm, attempt our 2 challenges listed below, and get a FREE t-shirt! 

The first challenge is on Weather and Community and you can win a Bloomsky Personal Weather Station!

The second challenge is Best Use of Blockchain and you can win a HyperX Cloud Stinger Gaming Headset!

Challenge #1: Weather and Community

Whether enjoying a sunny day at a water park, or being one of millions evacuating their hometowns during Hurricane Matthew, weather effects our lives on a very personal level.  With technology keeping us constantly connected with our family and friends or our favorite sports teams or retailers, develop an application which bridges the gap and connects us closer as a community. Projects will be evaluated and graded by our development team.

Application ideas could include (but should not be limited to): • Development of personal sentiment around weather & social • Built in alerts for family and friends • Tracking of events and activities affected by weather • Filtering of social media around local / national weather

Download Weather API Documentation HERE!

Hints: • https://console.ng.bluemix.net/catalog/services/weather-company-data/

Extra Credit: Extra credit will be rewarded for any submissions with connections to a creative use case that is in some way also integrates in data from government, healthcare, retail/consumer, and/or social media data  https://console.ng.bluemix.net/catalog/services/alchemyapi/

Prize: Bloomsky Personal Weather Station to showcase on Weather Underground

Help: Email [email protected]!

Challenge #2: Best Use of Blockchain

Blockchain is the open, digital framework that allows you to build trust and efficiency in the exchange of anything in virtually any application or use case.

The challenge will consist in creating a project that uses or is based around Blockchain technology.

Projects will be evaluated and graded by our development team.

Hints: • We recommend the use of the Hyperledger Project (open source) and/or IBM’s Blockchain service but it’s not required • https://www.hyperledger.org/ • https://www.ibm.com/blockchain/

Prize: HyperX Cloud Stinger Gaming Headsets

HackTX featured Texas’ top collegiate developers at the University of Texas at Austin last weekend.  This 24-hour hackathon attracted students from Texas A&M,  UT Dallas, and more. The event took place at the university’s Student Activity Center occupying three floors for hacking.

On Saturday morning, students gathered at the center’s auditorium for the opening ceremonies.  HackTX organizer Taylor Barnett kicked off the event and welcomed the over 500 participants.  

It was great to see many familiar mentor faces including SendGrid’s Scott Motte.

MLH’s and HackTX emcee Swift introduced the API sponsors.  

The Intel Mashery prize for the Best App Using the Mashery API Network: up to (3) Husan Quadcopters and up to (5) Basis health tracker watches.  

Intel’s Steven Xing joined me in helping developers onboard with Intel Mashery technologies including the Intel Edison.  Hacker League was used by HackTX to manage app submissions and judging setup (see all 105 projects here).

Participants made their way to the center’s ballroom which housed the sponsor tables and one of the many hacking spaces.  Steven and I were met by many developers eager to learn and build with Mashery API Network, Intel Edison and XDK.  

Late evening, MLH’s Jon Gottfried & Swift announced the cup stacking challenge.  Developers left their hacking spaces momentarily to form teams in building the tallest stack of cups in just minutes. 

The project expo started Sunday morning in the ballroom with 105 projects.

The Mashery prize was awarded to the four member team that created the alerting disease travelers’ app “Threat Wire.”  They used the USA TODAY API to search news for disease related articles and analyzed this information for a threat level score.  Users can then alert others of potential disease in a certain area through the apps messaging system managed by SendGrid and Context.IO

An Intel honorable mention went to the two member team that created “Binary Hero.”   In this video game which used the Intel Edsion, a series of symbols descend on the screen and users tap a button to eliminate the symbols at a certain point and time.

The 1st place HackTX prize went to “uDTV.” This winning four member team controlled DIRECTV through the Pebble Watch and a mobile app they built with Intel XDK.

I want to thank Taylor Barnett and all the HackTX volunteers for helping organize this awesome event.

1. First Hackathon! 

2. Earnestly working on a project with my team

3. Abandoning said team to bother friends throughout the night