#makesoftware

This weekend I got to attend a very special event at my Alma Mater: UMASS, Amherst’s own HackUMASS! In it’s second year, HackUMASS scaled up its efforts massively, growing from 100 students to 500 students including a heap of east coast sponsors.

Taking place in the brand new Berthiaume Center of Entrepreneurship located near the UMASS campus center, 500 students from area schools such as BU, MIT and RPI made the trip to attend a busy opening keynote providing by IBM.

I got on stage and pitched students on joining me for a comprehensive workshop with Intel Edison and our Sensor Kits with Johnny-Five. After that there was a little break as hackers formed teams and surveyed the venue.

At around 2pm (or so), we took over room S120 and got our workshop started.

I spent around an hour walking 50 students through the process of plugging in Intel Edison, setting up our Sensor Kits and triggering GPIO ports with the Johnny-Five Node.js library. After the hour was up, students proceeded to the mentor room (which I had wired up with open wi-fi networks) to continue their projects.

Many loud buzzer noises were made and LED’s blinked on the first day. A 24-hour hackathon, HackUMASS ran long into the night.

Going into the final stretch, developers put their final touches on their hacks. As the deadline for project submissions loomed, crowds gathered for the final science fair judging.

Dozens of creative projects were on display, here are a few of the highlights.

Team Focus! built a solution involving Intel Edison to prevent people from being distracted by their phones during dinner.

Team Water Heater TTC built a project using Intel Edison to ensure that you never run out of hot water again!

Zorg built a python library to allow developers to use Intel Edison LibMRAA with Python.

StrongArm used Intel Edison to build a robotic arm controlled by voice.

Clapper-Shuffle used Edison to build a clap-activated music playlist.

Cookie Monster used Intel Edison to build a crow-controlled voting system to decide who gets a cookie or not.

Wizer used Intel Edison’s Wi-Fi capabilities to detect wi-fi signals.

After so much hacking fun, the auditorium filled for final judging.

LA Hacks returned to UCLA last weekend.  1400 developers from the UC and Cal Poly universities, nearby state and city colleges, and out of state schools made the journey to Pauly Pavilion and competed in this 36-hour collegiate hackathon.  Intel’s Steven Xing and I attended this event and provided Intel developer support.

LA Hacks’ organizer Varadh Jain kicked off opening ceremonies followed by an inspirational speech by singer Aloe Blacc.

I presented the Best Use of Intel Technology challenge using Intel Edison and or Intel XDK and or the Mashery API Network.  The prize for this challenge: up to (3) Beats Studio headphones.  

Participants visited our booth eager to learn about and build with our Intel technologies.

First time XDK users wasted no time in building their mobile applications in just minutes.

I visited a team that explored the Mashery API Network and used the FoodEssentials API to enhance their food management app.

It was great to see XDK users from previous hackathons now challenging themselves to learn and use Edison.

"Really Cool Ground Drone” remote controlled car app equipped with a camera won the Best Use of Intel Technology prize.  This Cal Poly Pomona/UCLA team used the Edison to enable bluetooth control with their mobile device.  In addition, users can activate this drone to gather video and data information.

“Sprinkle” used the Edison and won the Best Civic Hack prize for their app designed to save water. This smart sprinkler waters plants at the best suitable time as instructed by the Edison.

“Sketchless” used the Jambase API from the Mashery API Network and won the Best Use of the HeyWatch API. This music app allows users to select their favorite songs performed by a collaboration of artists.

I want to thank Varadh Jain for organizing another huge 1400 developer attended hackathon.

I also want to thank the LA Hacks mentors and volunteers for their support to attendees.

Lastly, thanks goes to the participating developers for making the journey to LA Hacks, displaying their app development talents, and challenging themselves to build awesome apps.

Hack Holyoke is a unique hackathon held at Mt. Holyoke College (a small,  women’s private college located in Western MA) which aims to achieve an (unprecedented) 1:1 ratio of women:men hackers. The purpose? Fix the leaky pipeline for women entering STEM professions by providing an open, friendly environment for learning about technology.

Earlier in the year, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich announced a progressive program to equalize Intel’s gender balance by hiring more women...supporting hackathons which focus on the experience of “Women in STEM” is just one way to bridge the gap!

In it’s second year, Hack Holyoke featured some strong speakers including Lyndsey Scott (mobile software engineer, actress and model) and Alexis Ohanian (co-founder of Reddit)!

On day one, hackers showed up (often driving from local nearby schools such as Smith College, UMASS Amherst, Olin College and others) to register. Fortunately, Hack Holyoke managed to assemble an all-star cast of speakers including Lyndsey Scott (mobile software engineer, actress and model) and Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit.

Kamila Stępniowska, global COO of Geek Girls Carrots made the journey to provide mentorship on the topic of startups and careers. 

Alexis Ohanian gave a rousing keynote (with surprisingly few cat pictures) touching on his experience and perspective on the future of technology and careers.

Just me giving my usual keynote.

After the keynote and introductions of technical mentors, I invited hackers to attend my Intel Edison workshop.

100% full! I love to see so many students working with hardware and learning. There were definitely a lot of lessons in the use of Linux learned in a very short time period.

A 24 hour hackathon, developers spent Friday and Saturday building their projects on a variety of different hardware platforms. Time flew by...time for presentations!

Students gathered in the auditorium to see all the projects that were built...

Team WellShapedSlug built CubeTrix, a visual way to learn linea algerbra.

Team Pawz presented a web application for pet adoption.

Team Edison_Crack_The_Safe built a safe cracking game using Intel Edison.

Team EIR Guitar prototyped an air guitar using Intel Edison.

To wrap things up, Lyndsey Scott (CS graduate of Amherst College, Victoria’s Secret Model and actress) presented a talk discussing the hostility she faced as a women building software applications and participating in online developer communities.

Afterwards Lyndsey Scott spent a few minutes discussing her experience and perspective with Mt Holyoke students.

Hackster’s “Hack to the Future” Hardware Weekend took place in Phoenix, Arizona last weekend at Local Motors. Participants gathered at this car factory for a two-day hardware hackathon.  Intel’s Steven Xing and I attended as Intel mentors and provided Edison support to participating developers. 

Hackster’s Adam Benzion kicked off opening ceremonies Saturday morning to a crowd comprised of local Phoenix residents and Arizona State University students.  The Intel prize for the Best Use of Intel Edison: up to three Jumping Sumo Parrot Drones.

A series of hardware workshops were presented to help participants better understand the available technologies.  Steven and I presented the Intel Edison, described it’s features and introduced Edison building tools and additional Intel technologies including XDK IoT Edition and the Intel Mashery API Network.

Participants joined us on stage and shared their experience with and showed their support for Edison.

Teams formed, collaborated, and worked on their projects through Sunday.  They used available hardware and sought help from participating mentors and sponsors to help strengthen their applications.

In between project building, participants explored Local Motors’ facilities and vehicles, and were invited to develop applications for Hackster’s DeLorean DMC-12 which was featured in past “Hack to the Future” events including Seattle and Portland.

On Sunday afternoon, teams presented their projects to judges and spectators.

The “Best Use of Intel Edison” prize was awarded to the three member team that created “Party Bot.”  This party enhancer project incorporated the Edison into a four legged robot designed to seek out quiet areas of a party, and then activates flashing lights, music, and bursts of confetti.  “Party Bot” also won the “Best Party Robot” prize.

Four additional Edison projects won prizes: “Smart Guidance for the Visually Impaired” won the “Humanities” prize, “MonYcar” won the “All the Sensors All the Time” prize with their car monitoring system, “3D Controller Bot” won the “Microchip” prize with their 3D printer application enhancer, and “RunDMC” won the “Most Likely Award”...to succeed as a product, with their DeLorean driver detector and touch sensor car starter.

Special thanks goes to Intel’s Jim St. Leger and Suresh Golwalkar for attending this event and showing their “Hack to the Future” support.

Thanks goes to Hackster’s Adam Benzion and his team for organizing this great event.   And lastly, thanks “Hack to the Future” Phoenix participants for demonstrating your development skills and challenging yourselves to build awesome apps.

We were very excited to be part of the inaugural SpartaHack! Over the weekend of March 28th - 29th, hundreds of hackers signed up for SpartaHack at the Michigan State University.

The opening ceremony kicked off with the event organizers welcoming all the sponsors and participants, with the schedule for the rest of the weekend

Once the booth was setup, a lot of people were interested in learning more about Mashery and the Intel Edison...

The crowd was excited and inspired by the APIs and hardware they could play with, coming up with awesome projects they would build over the next 36 hours

A workshop was held that evening to help them get up and running...

everybody was pretty happy to learn all the cool things they could do with Intel Mashery technologies!

Plenty of snacks were available to keep the mind fresh and recharged

Some of the snacks made their way into the projects, like this Intel Edison powered pillbox that used the candies as medicine...

A team trying to integrate their Intel Edison with a Pebble smartwatch

Dell and MLH cupcakes! They were pretty popular, this photo was taken shortly before they all disappeared

A tower of Redbull...

...or if you prefer Spartan Starbucks

The night was filled with games to keep the creativity flowing. Here you see the winning team for the Cup Stack challenge

Here is a VR project a team was working on with 3D Pokemons!

Project Demos

After 36 hours of hacking, there were quite a few impressive projects built and many of them chose Intel Mashery technologies for their project:

1) Team MyoLuminati (2nd Place & Best Use of Intel Technology Prize Winner)

Team MyoLuminati created an interactive wearable that lets you control a light show with a Myo armband connected to an Intel Edison. It was amazing to see the lights interact in real time based on gestures. Built by Can Gokcek, Michael Lukowski, and Sam Berndt.

2) Team Medinar (KPCB Challenge + Best Use of FireBase Winner)

Team Medinar built a healthcare platform that increases the efficiency and timeliness of healthcare service. It allows for automated pill dispensing using the Intel Edison, as well as a mobile application that lets you set reminders and requests. Built by Robin Onsay,Adarsh Rachmale, Vishnu Rengaraj, and Bryan Edward Ngadimin.

3) Team DriveThru Plus (Grand Prize + Best iOS App Winnter)

Team DriveThru Plus created the future of drive through ordering. DriveThru Plus is a system for drive through orders that allows multiple forms of payment (e.g. Paypal, Bitcoin, etc.), bill splitting, as well as interactive help when ordering through their app. Powered by an Intel Edison that displays order number, total cost, and other order details. Built by Arpan Rughani, Dominic Dabish, Jack Stouffer, and Gustavo Fernandes.

4) Team ControlYourHome

Team ControlYourHome is a minimalistic home control system that lets you monitor your house and check on your garage and door locks. Sensors and web server are powered by the Intel Edison. Built by Gabe Reiss and Elijah Carrel.

5) Team Sublease4.me

Team Sublease4.me aims to solve housing issues by curating housing listings through scraping Craigslist and allowing search capabilities. Software processing and server hosting powered by the Intel Edison. Built by Zach Jaghory, Lucas Reynolds, Yash Dixit, and Alonzo Claybrook.

6) Team UseYourWorld (Best Use of FireBase Winner)

Team UserYourWorld is another home automation project powered by the Intel Edison. It communicates directives for the home server through gestures using the Myo armband and the Intel Edison . Built by Nicholas Reuter, Anthony Capriglione, and Ayush Agrawal.

7) Team Black Box

Team Black Box created a dorm security system to ensure the safe storage of snacks in a secure box. It performs facial recognition using the Intel Edison to then open or lock the snack box based on the user facing the camera. Built by Andy Nguyen, Kenny Lam, and Patrick Tsai.

8) Team Getaway

Team Getaway built a travel recommendation engine using the HotWire API to find hotel listings and attraction information based on location. It offers a simple interface to navigate the many available travel options. Built by Ian Nguyen, Blake Nanakdewa, and Shameel Abdullah.

9) Team based_sms_ssh

Team based_sms_ssh is a project built with the Intel Edison to gain SSH access through a Twilio API, allowing control via telephony and a Python Flask server. Photo unavailable. Built by Charles Moshier.

Closing Ceremony

The event comes to end with a closing keynote by Jay Freeman (the original jailbreaker and creator of Cydia on iOS!). The judging began shortly after with the top 10 teams lined up to do their final pitch.

Teams doing their final pitch on stage...

Congratulations to team MyoLuminati once again on their impressive project with the Intel Edison. Enjoy the prizes and keep hacking!

Hackomotive took place last Tuesday at Edmunds’ headquarters in Santa Monica, CA.  This three day contest brought together 18 teams comprised of innovators and entrepreneurs with products designed to improve the car shopping experience. 

Teams worked with industry experts to strengthen their product and compete for cash prizes worth $35000.

Edmunds’ CEO Avi Steinlauf kicked off the event Tuesday morning and welcomed contestants, mentors, speakers, and judges.  

Edmunds’ Keri Wise assumed emcee duties and outlined the event details which included product pitching, fireside chats with industry experts, surprise challenges, and more.

Guest speaker Sam Lamagna, Intel’s Director of Advanced Driving Technologies, spoke about self-driven cars in the fireside chat session.

Innovation coach Matt May held his “Where to Play How to Win” workshop later in the day.  Contestants in this session learned about business strategy and solving complex problems.

On Wednesday, returning teams “I’ll Buy It” and “CarcodeSMS” participated in the Alumni panel.  They shared their experience from last year’s Hackomotive, their involvement with “Fastlane” (Edmunds’ accelerator for startups), and the launch of their business.

Later in the day, contestants were placed in a simulated showroom challenge marketing and selling their product to real consumers.   

On the final third day of competition, contestants pitched their business to students in a future shopper’s challenge won by team “CARmera” with their camera app for recognizing cars and car features.

Team “ZipFlip” won the Hackomotive first place prize.  This application helps users price and sell their car with a ZipFlip sticker and/or online.

The “Dash” team’s car diagnostic application won the 2nd Place Prize, and "Backlot Cars” won the 3rd Place Prize with an application for the wholesale marketplace driven by subscriptions.

An honorable Mashery mention goes to team “Leasify” and their app which creates a deal score for users negotiating a car lease.

Special thanks goes to Intel’s Sam Lamagna for his awesome fireside chat and for helping participating Hackomotive teams.

I want to thank Ismail Elshareef and the Hackomotive team for organizing this event and providing support to attendees throughout these three days.  Lastly, congratulations to all the qualifying Hackomotive teams.