10 Hacks from Terrapins: MHacks (Refactor)
February 19–21st, 2016, Terrapin Hackers stormed MHacks, University of Michigan’s seventh semi-annual student run hackathon. There were a huge range of hacks, some of the best and most creative coming from fellow Terps. Here are a couple to show how we made our mark this semester!
1. The Red Robot— Gurpreet Singh, Sean Wang, Josh Sheldon, and Ishaan Parikh
At the University of Maryland, Terrapin Hackers has its own hackerspace: Collider. Often times, many hackers come into the space with an idea in mind, but are unsure of how to technically implement them. However, there are not always other, more experienced people in the space to lend a hand. We wanted to make a robot that could be a permanent member of the space to assist all hackers. The Red Robot incorporates whimsical movement along with facial expressions that can be changed via the internet. We started out by dumpster diving for parts. The robot is on a circular platform that has two motors (each with 4 planetary gears for torque) for stability. The frame of the robot is made of foam.
This is the very beginning. We are bringing it back to Maryland for all of Terrapin Hackers to use. Here are all possible applications for this robot:
- Placing an LCD screen on the torso to enable visual interaction
- Voice control for information regarding inventory
- Photoresistors to detect when someone enters Collider and turns on the light
- Distance sensors to allow the robot to move around freely with obstacle avoidance capabilities
Tools used: C, Arduino, Particle, Servo, motors, cardboard, foam, circuits
2. StickTogether — Yoonshik Hong and Joe Brosnihan
StickTogether is an Android app that helps you coordinate a large group of people who want to meet up at a specified location. You can import a group of people from your contacts list into the app. The locations of everyone in the group are displayed on a map. Any member of the group can set a destination marker, which is visible to everyone else. One can also send a group text to everyone in the group. StickTogether was inspired by the confusion and hassle of finding good hacking spots at MHacks and directing friends there on an unknown campus, but the app can apply in many situations.
Tools used: Java, Android Studio, Firebase, Google Maps API
3. Just Dance for Me — Sean Bae and Colin King
Playing a dancing game has always required buying another fancy game console with extraneous equipments. Just Dance for Me enables multiplayer dancing games by tracking the users’ movements with the accelerometers and the gyroscopes on their phones. Own no dancing game/console? No problem. We’ll pick publicly available videos of dancing games from YouTube and turn those videos into a dance game. The sensor data from your phone is processed and the result is sent and synchronized across all the players via Firebase. Your game controller (phone) provides a real-time audio feedback based on your performance.
What we want to implement next:
- Integration of WebRTC for real-time video feed sharing
- Allow play with arbitrary choice of songs
- Implement Hidden Markov Model for better gesture recognition
Tools used: Firebase, Node.js, Express.js, Jade, Sass
4. Tinder for Target — Geena Gao and Anthony Castrio
Tinder for Target is a fun, user-friendly web application for browsing and matching with products. The user is presented with one image at a time of each product, and he/she can swipe either left or right on a mobile device (and drag left or right on a laptop) to indicate whether or not they are interested in the item. A right swipe indicates positive interest, and a left swipe is a negative indication. After the user has accumulated a certain number of swipes, they will receive a discount from Target, encouraging an ultimate purchase.
Our team consisted of 3 members, two of whom had limited coding experience, but learned to try to have your idea down and start working on the first night.
Tools used: HTML, JavaScript, CSS, python, Target API, Flask
5. Nostalgify — Vincent Song and Allen Cheng
Songs attach themselves to our memories and experiences, and are as effective as journals in taking us back to our favorite moments. Digging up an old song can envelop us in emotions from a time in our lives long forgotten. Our application aims to help recollect experiences, and refresh vague memories. The user puts in a date and authenticates a Spotify account, and the application gathers the songs added within a few weeks of the given date, and generates them into a playlist. We used HTML, CSS, and JavaScript/JQuery to design the website. Behind that are JavaScript functions that interface with the Spotify API through a JavaScript Wrapper. We’re proud of being able to form our own solution to our problem, despite the lack of data Spotify provides for our purposes in its API. We plan on improving our algorithm for choosing which songs go in the generated playlist. Also, we plan on shortening the time it takes to get information by splitting data up into different queries instead of putting them all into one.
Try it out here: vwsong.github.io
Tools used: HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, JQuery, Spotify
6. You’ve Got to be Sh***ing Me — Izzy Coronado and Amber Mirza
Living with roommates who want to keep their new year’s resolution, but never having cash on them! Also the Spongebob Squarepants episode “Sailor Mouth” inspired the design of our site. Using the Capital One API if a roommate swears, a roommate can “charge” the swearer and money will be transferred from their account to the “swear jar”. This jar is shared by all the roommates and can be controlled by them. After charging the roommate, the swear jar graphic will increase in coin numbers and a dolphin noise will play (from the Spongebob episode). We are very proud that this is our first submitted hack at a hackathon. Even though there is room to improve, we are excited that we finished the project! We want to work on the other features we had planned to complete, but didn’t have enough time to do. For example, a settings tab where users can alter the amount of money each “swear” is worth (for our version we just transferred $0.00). Being able to adjust the number of roommates, and making the site more general (i.e. if roommates new year’s resolution was not to eat candy, it can be a candy jar). Validation for ensuring that someone actually swore (by checking with another roommate) and being able to contest the charge.
CodePen: http://codepen.io/ambermirza/pen/KVLLYe
Tools used: HTML5, JavaScript, CSS, Flask, Python, Capitol One API
7. Push-Up Ninja — Kara Isakson and Connor Lee
Push-Up Ninja is a website that challenges users to test themselves with push-up exercises and improve their score, all while it tracks their stats and provides motivational and practical feedback.The first half of our project involves the Myo armband: a wearable gadget that reads electrical impulses from the muscles of the forearm and transmits them via bluetooth to an external machine, where it can be used for a variety of control purposes. The second half is our website, pushupninja.com, which then receives these signals and incorporates them into a game-ified interface to display the pertinent information.
No API support was provided for Myo, which meant that we had to singlehandedly analyze the raw data from Myo and created specialized algorithms to craft a system that allowed us to track push-ups for nearly any user regardless of size or weight. We learned about the magic of friendship. And also how to code an awesome hardware-based website.
Tools used: Myo, JavaScript, HTML
8. unbias — Jimmy Schleicher, Anita Benitez, Henry Jimenez and Nadine Perez
We know that just because something is out there, doesn’t mean it’s factual, reliable, or unbiased. News channels are there to make money, all we hear are buzz words and common myths or rumors about politicians, scandals that spread like wildfire so that someone, somewhere can make a quick buck, and we were wondering how we could help remedy that. unbias is a moderated wiki where users can submit purely factual information about different topics with a easy to navigate, jargon-free database.
A key component of our idea is ease of use and simplicity, however at the same time we wanted to implement a interface that was pleasing to the user. Combining functionality and aesthetic was a problem throughout the building of the site, but one that we solved in different ways throughout the process. Bootstrap and Firebase were incredibly helpful tools in optimizing both the visual aspect and the actual hosting of the website and we took advantage.
unbias website: unbias.firebaseapp.com
Tools used: Firebase, Bootstrap, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Ajax, JQuery
9. Flow — Shariq Hashme and Noga Raviv
An abstract virtual reality experience using an Oculus Rift. We attempted to build an underwater coloring book in VR where you can color doodles/drawings on the screen by moving your head around, starting by building paper prototypes [pictured below]
Tools used: Unity
10. routru — Nisarga Patel
There often comes a time when I really have trouble finding good ways to plan nights when I am on the road. Sure I could use popular solutions such as Yelp, Fandango, and a ton of other sources but those usually require me browsing a lot on the internet. routru is a solution that allows one to do their travel even planning with the aid of locals combined with API solutions.
There are two type of users that can use routru:
- Local Travel Gurus: These users are the ones that are knowledgeable about a location and really know things such as the best places to eat, best points of interest, etc.
- Casual User: These users are the ones who want to do their travel night planning, and are looking for places to stay.
- Casual users can interact with travel gurus, and browse the website for travel information regarding food, movies, and hotels.
I leveraged multiple APIs such as the Yelp API, Google Places API, Twilio API and TMDB to gather my data and learned alot about different design patterns with JavaScript through the Angular.js framework.
Tools used: Angular.js, flask, Yelp, Google-Places, Twilio, Jinja
Hacks went far beyond the hacking. Some hackers hailed from New York, California, even India, and every single person was there to do something he or she was passionate about. Between the 10 hour bus ride with our fellow Terps, sleeping together, swag-gathering together, eating together, not showering together, and most importantly hacking together, we got to know each other and all our fellow hackers on a level we never would have otherwise.
