#intelxdk

600+ collegiate developers from around the world participated in the TreeHacks hackathon at Stanford last weekend.  Students from Stanford, UC Berkeley, USC, Purdue, the University of Maryland, colleges as far as Taiwan and more participated in this 36-hour hackathon.

I was joined by an awesome Intel support team for TreeHacks developers comprised of Steven Xing, Matthew Plavcan, Sarah Gregory, Glenn Williamson, Kataka Juuva, Ransford Hyman, Angela McMindes, Jennifer Robson, Katy Humble and the Intel Women in Leadership group. 

Opening ceremonies took place Friday night at Stanford’s CEMEX Auditorium.  Developers packed this building eager to hear sponsors' challenges and prizes.  I met Intel's Vidhya Ravi, Vertical Response's Joe Takeuchi, and many developers at this opening. 

I took to the stage and announced the (3) Intel prize challenges: 1) Best Use of Intel Hardware using Intel Edison: up to four Beats Solo2 Headphones 2) Best Use of Intel Software using Intel XDK : up to four MIP Robots and 3) Best Use of the Mashery API Network: up to four Jumping Sumo Parrot Drones.

The "Getting Started with Intel Edison" workshop began late Friday night.  I called on a volunteers who never built with hardware to demonstrate building with Edison, and at the end of the session they used Intel XDK and activated sensors, wrote text on LCDs and made lights blink.

Developers took advantage of the many sponsor technologies as well as the outdoor barbecues and food trucks.

Expo judging for the over 100 submitted projects took place at the Arrillaga Alumni Center.

"Memories onDemand" won the Best Use of Intel Software using Intel XDK prize.  This app allows users to insert tags and captions to their photos for fast and easy searching.

“Cyan Translate” won the Best Use of the Intel Mashery API Network prize. This text translator search app used the Harper Collins API giving users access to a library of books.

"Internet of Door” won the Best Use of Intel Hardware using Edison prize.  This home doorbell made with Grove sensors and controlled by Edison notifies users with a text to their mobile device  Users can also activate door locking  and unlocking simply from their phone.

Intel Honorable Mentions went to two project that used Intel Edison: "Turing Machine Simulation" machine controller and "TwoSense" temperature monitor for beverages.

Final presentations for the top teams were held at CEMEX Sunday afternoon.  Amongst the finalists was the "DisTrac" app which provides to the user access to critical medical information and warning them of potential disease outbreaks.  This app used the HTH Worldwide API for accessing health information.

I want to thank Aditya Viswanathan, Rishi Bedi and the entire TreeHacks team and volunteers for organizing this great hackathon.