MessageBird at Fusehack 2015
We’ve been excited about this event for a while, and this weekend it finally happened: Fusehack — a hackathon for students — in Amsterdam. Over 200 people gathered at B.Amsterdam to go from concept to creation in just a little more than 36 hours. It was a great event to meet new people and see what developers could build with the MessageBird API.
The hackathon resulted in many great hacks, with Trace — a game wherein you need to find the shortest route — taking the main prize for the event. There were a lot of teams that decided to use the MessageBird API in their hacks. Here are some of the highlights:
RollerRobert
Team RollerRobert took a Sphero and connected it to the MessageBird API. When you’d send an SMS to the VMN of the team, the Sphero would start rolling and spell out the text in the SMS on the floor.
We thought it was an ingenious and fun hack that showed the team members technical skills and the versatility of what can be achieved with our API.
Seen
Team Seen created a photo app for events that would show you photos in your area. What made it great was it did not only show you photos, but could scan your face and then detect any photos that people might have taken of you. You could share any photo in the app through SMS.
We loved the concept and the overall visual design of the application. The team did a great job making it look great and especially the use of facial detection features appealed to our inner nerd.
Refugee Communication
With the recent refugee situation in Europe, it was great to see a few teams trying to tackle issues that might occur for refugees. Team Refugee Communication created a solution for refugees to create tickets regarding their refugee camp in their own language. Once you had submitted your ticket you’d receive updates on your issue via SMS.
The team proposed a great solution for issues that refugees might be experiencing in a new country. Being able to submit tickets in your own language brings down the barrier for adoption, while using SMS to receive updates removes the necessity for having internet to keep track off issues. Well done!
And the winner of the MessageBird prize is…
Team X Marks the Spot! Team X Marks the Spot built an immersive real-life adventure game platform where players have to cooperate in order to win. As a participant you’d receive clues by SMS and voice call and players could win by successfully defusing a Raspberry Pi-powered bomb. What made the hack great was that it was both a virtual and a physical hack, that it was a great immersive experience and applied the MessageBird API in a fun and engaging way.
All the team members won an ARDX Arduino Starter Kit.
We really enjoyed Fusehack. Jorg and Joey mentored teams, David helped out teams with technical questions about the MessageBird API, Freek made sure people could relax in the chill room and I gave a presentation on our API and was a judge for the final presentations. We also brought along some limited edition MessageBird shirts which hackers could win after shooting a stack of cups with a Nerf Gun. As you can see from the image below, people loved them.
Fusehack was a great event, and we loved the energy of the hackers and the ingenious ideas they came up with. Special thanks to Rens, Araik and Stan for organising.
MessageBird is dedicated to investing in the developer community. If you’d like us to sponsor, speak at or support your next event, please get in touch by sending an email to hello@messagebird.com. We’d love to find out how we can help.
