Over The Air was my first Hackathon (despite being on the exec for HackSoc) and after going, I severely regret not going to any previously.
It was hosted in Bletchley Park, and we were actually hacking inside the manor (finally my life as a computer science student was complete).
The event had a huge roster of talks, loads of big name sponsors, meals for us (including a very much welcomed fry up on Saturday morning), and even porta-showers, alongside the 36 hours of hacking (from 10AM till 12PM the next day). Unfortunately I was too engrossed in our hacks to get out of my seat for the duration of the hackathon (even my “bed” for the “night”, 90 whole minutes, was made out of the chairs I was sitting on), but there were some great talks, and even a tour of the museum.
Oh, and when I say there was a lot of talks, there was a lot of talks. At at one time there was 5 different talks taking place in various locations around the manor house and Marquee, and I’m gutted that I didn’t get time to go to any (Seriously, check out all these talks, incredible!).
The venue was, obviously, fantastic, with a fridge in the main corridor next to the tea/coffee facilities, we had everything we needed to keep up going through the event (we were also tactically positioned near the toilets to increase our hack time!) We were able to set up in (I think) any of the rooms in the downstairs of the manor, or even in the huge Marquee outside that was filled with bean bags (that some lucky folk were able to take home after the event).
As for HackSoc, we were set up in the billiards room (see picture below), which meant all sorts of people would pass us, giving them the opportunity to ask us about our crazy app ideas. Just outside of the billiards were the guys from the O2 Labs, who were both playing with a 3D printer (which I’d never seen in person before), and even scanning people’s faces, so that they could print them in 3D at home (our very own George Hallam got himself scanned). They were even nice enough to let George and I get exclusive access to an application they had been working on, BlipDrop, which was was an app that allowed you to record short videos and pin them to your location. Only people that were in a certain radius of your pin could then view them, until they eventually expired (think of some sort of electronic geo-caching mixed with SnapChat, very cool!)
The HackSoc Notts Nest
We went to this event with a casual attitude – let’s try to make a lot of small, fun apps, of varying usefulness. This meant that we could enter ourselves into all sorts of different categories (of which there was a large number, of varying prize pool sizes). We thought we could probably get around 6 done with the 5 members of HackSoc that went – how wrong we were.
In the end, we worked on 3 individual apps, and by the end of the Hackathon, we had 1 completed (well, completed is a strong word) app. Something that I wasn’t prepared for was the presentations at the end of the event, to demonstrate our applications to the other participants of the event. We had 90 seconds to explain what our application could do, why it was useful, and why it was awesome!
With Paula, George and I all being Hackathon virgins, we almost backed out of giving a presentation because our apps “weren’t good enough”, however I’m really glad that I gave my presentation, and the crowd seemed to be really responsive to all of HackSoc’s ideas (which was nice, after pouring 36 hours of our lives into them).
App 1. AreUIn? – Ryan Shaw and Paula Besson
A lot of the student houses in Nottingham are rather large and it is sometimes difficult to know (at a moments notice), where or not your house mates are in the house or not. This can make it awkward when you are leaving and need to set the burglar alarm, and a host of other problems. AreUIn was a hack that used the NFC chips in the student cards at the University of Nottingham to allow house members to scan in as they entered the house, which would then light up lights in an LED strip located in the house that would then display your in-or-out status. The hack was going well until the morning of the second day when we managed to break both the Raspberry Pi we were using, and the LED light strip. Luckily the judges had been round prior to that and they were impressed enough with the concept and implementation that this hack went on to win Best Hardware Hack at the awards ceremony, winning us Two brand new Arduino Yúns.
App 2. WatchBog – Joe Nash
Why waste precious money on burglar alarms or securing your house when you have a perfectly good toilet to protect you! Wait.. what? WatchBog was an ingenious hack idea that use an Arduino, Accelerometer and Servo to measure the ripples in the water of your toilet, to detect whether or not someone was walking around in your house (think that scene from Jurassic Park). You could then even trigger the toilet to flush using the Servo, to hopefully scare away the burglar, and keep all your possessions safe! The hack would have gone on to include extra features such as if you had multiple toilets in the house and both were rippling a similar amount, you could assume that there was an external force (for instance an earthquake or lorry driving by) and not set of the alarm. Unfortunately WatchBog was not a prize winner, but it was great fun to explain to people, and got a few laughs!
There might be burglar in your house! Or a T-Rex!
App 3. Eureka, Shower Epiphany Aide – Craig Knott and George Hallam
We all know that our best ideas come to us at the worst times. The most prominent being when you’re in the shower, you’re all wet and soapy, have had a brilliant idea, but can’t write it down and end up forgetting it. Eureka was an app designed specifically to counter this problem. You could bring your phone into the shower with you (obviously not the wet part!) and tell the app that begin listening to you. The app would then passively listen until it heard the keyword “Eureka!” (which we all know we shout when we’ve had a great idea), at which point it would prompt you for your idea, and then record your next few sentences of genius idea. After finishing your idea, you could shout “Eureka!” again to tell your device to stop recording, and read your idea back to you. Once you had finished in the shower you had the opportunity to “Hide My Shame” and delete your terrible idea forever, or send it to members of your contacts list (so that they could tell you to delete it instead!). Eureka went on to win the Audience Favourite award, bagging HackSoc two FireFox OS development phones, and 3 Makey-Makeys!
George demonstrating how to use the app!
All in all, the event was great fun, the food was good, and it was great to speak to real-world hackers and see all the other fantastic ideas and apps that people had come up with in the 36 hours. Oh, and the free t-shirts weren’t too shabby either!
Let’s hope that Over The Air can secure Bletchley Park again next year!
Written by Craig Knott, General Secretary of HackSoc, former Hackathon Virgin, and now aspiring FireFox OS Developer.