Elements Hackathon 2016: IoT edition
With the complete Elements crew from both offices together in Almere (our Barcelona colleagues were all flown in on Monday) on Thursday December 15th we had the newest edition of the annual Elements Hackathon. This year’s installment was fully dedicated to IoT, the hot topic of the moment: Internet of Things.
Tuesday: Kickoff
A little bit before the actual hackathon, we held a little kickoff meeting to warm everybody up. Lennart gave a short introduction to IoT and LoRa and explained the intention, boundaries and approach of the hackathon. The assignment: work on a project, in a team of at most 6 people, that measures something using at least one hardware sensor. Subsequently, the detected data needs to be retrieved (using MQTT or Node-RED), processed (modified, combined or stored) and displayed (in a mobile app, in graphs or simply in a log file). A wide range of sensors and other hardware was made available on a first-come-first-served for the teams to use.
Two gentlemen from PyCom, Daniel Campora and Roberto Marques, were kind enough to come to our Almere office and tell us a little bit about their technology and even gave an awesome demonstration. Their technology combined with a little duct tape converted a regular Parrot WiFi drone to a LoRa-connected drone, dramatically increasing its flying range. That was a fantastic demo, guys!
Thursday: Hacking day
On Thursday morning at 8:30 sharp the one-day hackathon started. There were six mixed teams formed and started working on turning their great ideas into actual working prototypes:
- Team 1 (Max, Toni, Bastiaan, Jakub, Fabrizio)
- Team 2 (Jan-Eric, Gerard, Marc, Coen, Stoyan)
- Team 3 (Marcel, Reinier, Gert, David vB, Lennart Poot, Alex vH)
- Team 4 (Roberto, Oleksandr, Michiel, Danny Lamarti, Yahia, Chesco)
- Team 5 (Raquel, Maria, Panagiota, Mattias, Kaira, AlexW)
- Team 6 (Hendrik, Lukasz, LuisMi, LuisG, Remco, Aaron)
A couple of teams worked until late on Thursday. What is a hackathon without pizza anyway?
Friday: Presentations
On Friday afternoon each team showed their idea and demonstrated their prototype in 15 minute presentations.
Team 1: TechDaddy
The first team to present showed their TechDaddy project, a system to measure sound and air pollution from airplanes above the city. The province of Flevoland was used as an example: it lies close to airport Schiphol, which is growing each year, and it will have its own airport near Lelystad opening soon. A mobile app visualized the pollution data on a heatmap. Users would be able to compare locations and view historical data. The team created an app, backend and prototype. A gas sensor gathered the data and its working was live tested with a lighter.
Team 2: Farming Scout
Team 2 worked on a system to aid farmers in areas with a shortage of food and water, where crops grown by are easily wasted due to dryness or heavy rainfall. The team came up with the idea to build a system to monitor crop and soil status, considering the weather forecast and control a watering system. Farmers would be notified using push notifications. The team demoed their system with a cold beer and warm water.
Team 3: SWAT
In team 3’s presentation it was explained that foot pain, in itself already a problem, can also cause other pain in the body. Traditional insoles, tailor-made shoe inserts, are used to relieve pain, but take a long time to create and they are only snapshots. Team 3 came up with “Sophisticated Walking Analysis Tool”, or SWAT: a system to measure pressure points in the foot of the patient while walking, jumping and running using specially prepared insoles which includes sensors. After a week enough data would be collected to create a tailor-made insole using a 3d printer. The team created a backend, mobile app and a prototype of the insole using a touch sensor.
Team 4: Parcool
Team 4 tried to solve the problem of finding a car parking spot in a city such as Amsterdam where spots are hard to find. Their idea was to create a system to detect what parking spots are available and occupied using sensors and the LoRa network. With the data of all parking spots drivers can be directed to free spots, using a mobile app, or using matrix signs throughout the city. Their solution would be easy to set up: plugin the sensor on the spot and configure the spot using it’s GPS location and register it with the mobile app. Advantages are numerous: cost effective (no ground work for power or network would be necessary) and of course less traffic in the city searching for spots. Their demo showed how this all would work with toy cars and led lights.
Team 5: Track the mice!
Many cities, such as Amsterdam, have a big mouse problem. Getting rid of those rodents with mouse traps, poison is not only animal unfriendly, but usually also ineffective and dangerous for humans as well. That’s where team 5 comes in. As a solution they came up with a more humane, “smart” mouse trap. The team built a prototype using a bottle as a trap including a tilt sensor and a touch sensor. Using a LoRa connection and communicating the sensor data to a backend, users can easily track whether the trap is triggered, both indoors as outdoors.
Team 6: Sneezy Peezy
Team 6 came up with a real-time pollen monitor, to aid people with pollen allergies, about 10% of the population, in the hay fever season. Finding a solution to this problem would actually help a lot of people. Existing solutions, such as PollenRadar, rely on data provided by people which makes it unreliable. The team conceived a system that picks up the pollen in the air and sends the data of pollen concentration through LoRa to a backend. Sensors around the city would give a clear picture on the pollen concentration throughout the city. The team’s prototype would measure the size of particles in the air by sending/receiving light using a light sensor. A beautifully designed prototype mobile app showed the data visualized on a map to see where the pollen is in the air.
And the winner is…
All six teams came up with great concepts and great working prototypes, all built in a day!
The winner was chosen by the audience, based on the intensity of their applause (50%) and a jury consisting of Danny and Niels. The jurors looked at each of the projects’ creativity (10%), the technical challengingness (10%), uniqueness (10%), usefulness (10%) and commercial feasibility (10%).
After some deliberation it turned out to be a close call between two projects. The decisive factor was the intensity of the applause that was given for team 4, so Parcool won! A great prize was made available for each team member of the winning team. Well-deserved, guys!
We’re all looking forward to next year’s hackathon!
Originally published at www.elements.nl on December 18, 2016.
