UNIHACK 2017 Sponsored Tools/APIs [Part 1]
Here at UNIHACK, we’re lucky to have supportive partners willing to provide you the tools you need to be successful. We have six tools/APIs up for grabs. Please note that some tools may not be available for both Melbourne and Sydney.
List of tools:
- Square Chip Readers and APIs (POS hardware and payment APIs)
- Bosch Cross-domain Development Kit (IoT/sensors)
- Bluecats AA Beacons (physical location beacons)
- BBC micro:bit development kit (maker kit)
- PinPayments API (payment APIs)
- Data61 WeFeel Twitter-based emotional sentiment API (twitter stream API)
Please register here to select and reserve tools/APIs for your team.
Square Chip Readers and APIs
Melbourne and Sydney
Square is a financial services, merchant services aggregator and mobile payments company based in San Francisco, California. In Australia, they provide online and in-store payment solutions for all kinds of businesses.
“Square lets developers build an ecosystem for businesses to seamlessly accept payments online, in store, or on the go. With Square payments APIs (e-commerce API and point-of-sale API), you can create customisable solutions that work for any size business.”
Square will provide contactless card readers and fee-free access to their APIs for up to $10,000 to teams who reserve them before the hackathon.
- Check out the Square contactless card reader here
- Check out the Square e-commerce API here
- Check out the Square point-of-sale API here
Please register here to reserve Square hardware and APIs.
Bosch Cross-domain Development Kit (XDK)
Melbourne only
Robert Bosch GmbH, or Bosch, is a German multinational engineering and electronics company. Bosch will be providing the Cross-domain Development Kit (XDK) that includes multiple types of sensors and wireless capabilities packed in one sensor.
Built for Bosch Connected Devices and Solutions to create IoT products, XDK has evolved continuously and is not only a prototyping platform but also a sensor node solution.
“Experience the XDK Node, the universal programmable sensor device packed with state of the art sensor technology and ready-to-use software packages, capable of fulfilling all your IoT application needs.”
Bosch will provide up to 6 XDK’s for Melbourne and Sydney teams who reserve them before the hackathon.
Please register here to reserve the Bosch XDK. Please note that this tool is Melbourne-only. First come first serve basis.
Bluecats Beacons
Melbourne and Sydney
In 2011, Bluecat founders have been working together for a number of years on cutting edge technology in retail, both in the USA and Australia. Determining precise indoor location in order to add context about how a person shopped was core to the solutions they were developing.
As it turned out, there were no technologies available which were reliable and could be easily scaled. They built physical beacons that could track local user location, wrote a boatload of mobile code (now the SDK) and a cloud based platform in order to build a scalable indoor beacon ecosystem.
Mobile and Web SDKs are available.
“ Beacons are devices that use the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol to repeatedly send short transmissions, called advertisements, to mobile devices or other Bluetooth scanning device. Advertisements can contain an identifier and/or sensor data and the brevity of these advertisements allows for battery operated use lasting several years.”
Bluecats will provide up to 20 beacons for Melbourne and Sydney teams who reserve them before the hackathon.
Please register here to reserve Bluecat Beacons. First come first serve basis.
BBC micro:bit Development Kit
Melbourne and Sydney
The micro:bit is an ARM-based embedded system designed by the BBC for use in computer education in the UK.
“The BBC micro:bit is a small computing device. One of the languages it understands is the popular Python programming language. The version of Python that runs on the BBC micro:bit is called MicroPython.”
micro:bit will provide up to 30 for Melbourne and Sydney teams who reserve them before the hackathon.
- Check out the micro:bit documentation here
- Check out some micro:bit project ideas here
- Check out the micro:bit hardware specifications here
Please register here to reserve micro:bit hardware. First come first serve basis.
Pin Payments API
Melbourne and Sydney
Pin Payments is Australia’s first all-in-one multi-currency online payment system, designed to bring the banks’ traditional merchant services up to date with today’s technology.
We’re building the systems that local businesses need to participate in the future of web and mobile commerce.
Whether you run an online store, invoice clients, or process card sales manually, Pin Payments provides your business with a platform for accepting payments online.
“Pin Payments allows you to charge credit cards with any programming language. Adaptors are available for various languages and e-commerce platforms which may help when you’re working with the Pin Payments API.”
Please register here to reserve PinPayments API access. First come first serve basis.
Data61 Wefeel API
Melbourne and Sydney
We Feel is a project that explores whether social media — specifically Twitter — can provide an accurate, real-time signal of the world’s emotional state.
We Feel was designed by and is being provided by the Language and Social Computing team in the Digital Economy Programme of CSIRO’s Digital Productivity Flagship.
“ This (WeFeel) REST-full API is intended to allow researchers to access the raw data behind We Feel. We hope you try it out, and find new exciting ways to explore and mash-up the data.”
Please register here to reserve Data61 WeFeel API access. First come first serve basis.
