As part of the A-League initiative, CIIE, in partnership with DAIICT and MICA Incubator, organised a first-of-its’-kind 48-hour long Hackathon for students across Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar’s region. The Hackathon was centred on the applications of the Internet-of-things technology used by Ecolibrium Energy, a CIIE portfolio company and one of the leading Energy Management Companies in the country. The event was held at DAIICT from the 4th to 6th of March. The event witnessed a participation of 38 students coming from different colleges like DAIICT, IITGn, GTU, MICA, IIM-A, NID, PDPU and NIT Surat.
The objective of the event as articulated by Aditya Bhandari (Co-ordinator from Ecolibrium Energy Intelligence team)
“In our endeavor to create an energy efficient world. our aim is to use ofmillions of data points generated from Electrical systems daily, and deliver useful insights from it. The primary objective of this event is to absorb talented students in our team by evaluating their skills in the fields of Analytics and IoT.”
The problem statement comprised of two components: a data science component and a marketing component. Teams were provided with data coming from more than 4000 sensors spread across 500 customers. The main hack of the event was to analyse and gain insights of an already laid-out network of electrical units and electrical appliances and to create a backend dashboard to visualise trends and diagnose problems. The marketing component was more open-ended, where teams needed to create a marketing/branding strategy to reach 50,000 customers in the next 3 years. Each team comprised of students from different disciplines and they worked together to solve both components of the problem statement. The participants experienced the ups and downs of the gruelling hackathon, working in bouts of intense activity interspersed with pizza, naps, and table tennis. The volunteer team from DAIICT were on their toes throughout the duration of the hackathon.
Inter-institute teams collaborate as they hack over 5000 data points provided by Ecolibrium Energy.
With a sceptical approach but a strong conviction to produce the desired result, the five final teams worked through the long hours of the hackathon. It proved to be well worth the effort in the final hours as the teams presented their product and insights to a distinguished jury comprising of Prof. Anil Roy of DAIICT, Priyanka Chopra from CIIE, Harit Soni, Founder-director of Ecolibrium Energy, Prof. Amit Bhatt of DAIICT, and Prof. Anish Sugathan of IIM-A. The winning team developed an impressive dashboard with problems and recommendations comprising of analytical algorithms for real time simulation and mobile applications. Students from DAIICT, SVNIT as well as LDCE together developed the outlines of a cloud-based software for real-time monitoring of energy consumption. The data from smart meters could be stored in the cloud and could be visualized on the software they built. Interesting marketing strategies were presented. The winners were presented with IOT kits along with a visit at the Ecolibrium Energy’s Headquaters to interact with Ecolibrium Energy’s tech team. It was an intense experience for everyone involved especially the participants. However, it was a fruitful and enjoyable learning experience, and with this event we look forward to more opportunities to promote interdisciplinary problem solving and collaboration for Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar’s talented student community.
Harit Soni, Founder of energy management company, Ecolibrium Energy, makes a presentation on the analytics driving his company during the A-League IoT Hackathon 2016.
