This past weekend, around 362 participants were given the task to code and create software, hardware or both.
They had 24 hours.
The 15th annual UB Hackathon took its participants into its outer space-themed 24-hour hackathon “Deep Space” this past weekend, Nov. 7 to 8, in Davis Hall. Hosted by student-run organization UB Hacking, this 32-hour event was also filled with workshops, sponsored events and even a mock “Hot Ones” competition of computer science professors.
Hackers can work individually or in teams.
Each group is judged by two separate pairs of judges. When the judges get to their table, they have two minutes to present and two minutes for questions. Groups are judged on their pitch, usefulness, effort, functionality and more.
The three top cash prizes are focused on the best three hacks but those are only three out of 15 total prizes.
One of the other prizes includes the “Best Freshman Hack” — the best project created by solely freshmen.
Blaze Nie, the logistics lead for this year’s Hackathon, said this event was a great way to encourage freshmen to get involved and to be able to build something. When they were a freshman, they participated “on a whim,” loved it and came back to volunteer.
“That really helps catapult their journey as computer scientists,” Nie, a senior computer science major, said.
Nie is a former Spectrum staff photographer.
And freshmen certainly got involved. Freshman computer science majors Hoang Phong Nguyen and Viet Le built a dual-camera device with face and object detection that sits in their shared dorm fridge, designed to prevent roommates from stealing each other's food.
“We will match off those two data together and create a whole new data,” Nguyen said. “Like who took this food, who took that food and send it to our live dashboard.”
Some participants like MD Islam bring a message in addition to showcasing their skills.
Islam, a sophomore computer engineering major, coded his own mobile game that shed light on college students’ struggles with depression. The game follows a college student navigating academic, financial and personal pressures, whose worsening mental health causes them to experience disturbing events that are represented by a flashing light in the game.
“I feel very good because at least I created this,” Islam said. “I'm confident. If I win or not… it's not a problem for me because at least I created this thing and I'll work on it.”
Alyssa Gannon, a repeat participant, hoped to avoid a certain prize she won last year: the “failure to launch” prize awarded to the hack that fails or crashes during presentation.
Gannon created a LeetCode advent calendar, “LeetClaus:” a software where computer science majors can click on a virtual gift and practice one LeetCode problem a day as practice for job interviews.
Gannon prefers to work independently, viewing each Hackathon as a challenge.
“I know it's like fun to team up with other people, but it's kind of like a personal tradition of like how far can I get?” Gannon, a senior computer science major, said.
Friends Sumangowda Rajanna, a master's robotics student, Jill Guerrero, a senior Computer Science and Robotics major, Sujal Dharne, a sophomore Mechanical Engineering major minoring in Robotics and V. Narayan Kushwaha, a senior Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering major, decided to work together.
The team created a device that detects the ripeness of fruit and vegetables and sorts them through a robotic arm from their submission to last year’s Hackathon. Their device uses three different sensors and cameras to determine the produce’s ripeness.
Their product also features a recipe generator, where, depending on the ripeness of the produce, a recipe will appear on screen telling users exactly what they can make with the produce at that ripeness.
(Left to right) Sumangowda Rajanna, Jill Guerrero, Sujal Dharne and V. Narayan Kushwaha with their device that detects the ripeness of fruit and vegetables.
The inspiration behind their project came partly from Dharne’s grandparents, who grew mangos in India. Mangos can appear ripe on the outside but can be rotten on the inside, and with their product, this problem is solved.
Dharne said they learned a lot having a “multidisciplinary team” consisting of different majors.
“It’s a good bonding experience,” Kushwaha said. “It’s all about learning”.
Another team took a more playful approach. Senior computer science majors Legrand Davis, Gavin Griffin, Jeremy Budihardjo and Ian Ragoonanan created Starby: an online desktop pet.
Starby, the cute colorful desktop pet, sits on the desktop and acts like a companion: playing games, watching Youtube videos and more. Team Starby started with only a brainstorm session, then started coding at 1:30 Saturday, and didn’t stop until 5 am Sunday. They got about two hours of sleep each and tied up Starby’s loose ends from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Sunday, the day of judging.
“We wanted to inject a little bit of joy, a little bit of interactivity to what you do,” Griffin said.
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