The Projects of UCL API Hackathon

Wilhelm Klopp
UCL API
Published in
4 min readNov 8, 2017

Just about 4 weeks ago, we held our first UCL API Hackathon, and it was awesome! We had a lot of fun building apps on top of the API — all while learning about all the latest tech and sharing ideas with each other 🎓

Learn, Build, Share

Towards the end of the hackathon, 9 teams presented what they built over the weekend. This is their story.

Roombot@UCL

Sherri Lee presenting Roombot@UCL

Roombot@UCL uses UCL API to get information about room bookings, module timetables, UCL student and staff in Slack itself.

Roombot@UCL on GitHub

UCL SocBot

The UCL Socbot team

A twitter bot that respond to user’s tweets regarding society events at UCL.

UCL SocBot in action on Twitter

UCL SocBot on GitHub

Can I attend?

The Can I attend? team

An app that can be used to find bookings/events that do not clash with your timetable.

Can I attend? on GitHub

UCL Sleep Calculator

“Don’t *you* want to sleep longer too?” — Leo presenting UCL Sleep Calculator

Answers the most pressing of questions: How late can I sleep?

Try it yourself

UCL Sleep Calculator on GitHub

EVENTually

The team behind EVENTually

An event management system for all UCL students that keeps records of Events, Workshops, Contests, etc under one roof. It also has the option to link the events with a calendar to warn you of timetable clashes.

Complex room search (NLP)

The team behind Complex room search

Use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to turn complex search input like “I need a room for 20 people near 188 Tottenham Court Road at 5pm tomorrow” into executable search parameters to be used with the room bookings API.

Complex room search on GitHub

Detailed slides with explanation

BenthamBot

The BenthamBot team

A twitter bot, simulating the ghost of Jeremy Bentham who chooses a society to haunt each day

BenthamBot in action on Twitter

BenthamBot on GitHub

WhereIsFree?

The FloppyDons team presenting WhereIsFree?

A tool for finding the 5 closest free rooms.

WhereIsFree? on GitHub

Timetable Clashes

Annie presenting Timetable Clashes

When picking electives it can be a lot of effort to check if any given elective clashes with a core module. This app makes it super easy to check if the modules you want to choose will clash at any point throughout the year.

Try it out on Glitch 🎏

More pictures from the hackathon: https://www.facebook.com/pg/uclapi/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1566069673462019

Congratulations again to all the teams and hackers who’ve created such awesome projects in a very short amount of time 👏 It was a delight seeing it all come together.

Big thanks again to our sponsors GitHub and UCL’s Information Services Division without whom this event could not have happened 🙇‍♂

Feel inspired by these projects and want to build your own? Check out our Getting Started guide below, build an app, send us a message, and get a UCL API t-shirt 👕

UCL API T-Shirt

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We’re here to help! If you’re stuck or encounter any problems, comment on here, email us, tweet at us, or send us a message on facebook.

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