Nasty ‘Nati: Hacked!
This past weekend, Mason Hack Club hosted Hack Cincinnati, a hackathon for kids grades 8 through 12, at the University of Cincinnati. A total of 101 students were in attendance! 30% of these students were female. Kids traveled from all over to be a part of the event. Many came from high schools in the Cincinnati area while some came from as far as San Francisco, California!
Throughout the weekend, we hosted a variety of introductory workshops to get the students started. A few included HTML/CSS, JavaScript, GitHub, React, Netlify, Capture the Flag, Linux computing, and Augmented Reality.
The winners of the event fell into three categories: Best Game, Best Startup, Greatest Social Impact, and Most Popular.
Pixel Escapade, an engaging co-op puzzle and adventure game, took the mantle of Best Game and Most Popular. The game was based on two keyboard-controlled characters that had to navigate maps and environments. It was created using Unity and the C# code was written in Visual Studio.
Soble, a program created to prevent driving under the influence, took home the award for Greatest Social Impact. The app analyzes the user’s face to determine whether or not they are fit to drive. Based on this analysis, the app may prohibit entrance to the user’s car by blocking the key’s radio frequency.
Cloud Keys, a live browser compatible with visualization of electronic keyboards, won Best Startup. While playing the piano, Cloud Keys allows you to see data, including a heat map of keys were pressed the most.
Thank you to everyone who came out to Hack Cincinnati. We couldn’t have done this with our amazing volunteers and sponsors! We hope that these students continue fostering their passion for programming and learning and that we get to be a part of their journey.
