Call for Code
Eagle swoops in to win the A/NZ May Call for Code Hackathon
May 22, 2020
Categorized: Call for Code
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Author: DeveloperSteve Coochin, Developer Advocate, IBM Developer
Our second Call for Code in A/NZ is a wrap. It was a weekend that was a culmination of ideas, fun and tech.
For this event, we took a new virtual venue experience for a spin, with teams being able to sit around tables and virtually collaborate like never before. With multiple people being able to sit around virtual tables, each an independent session, it allowed for multiple collaborations in a single group.
The tables were equipped with whiteboards, screen shares, video and voice chat, to enable a more interactive environment via a single browser session.
The virtual venue really brought back some much-missed nuances to events. We even had the IBM Developer twitch livestream playing directly into the venue, which allowed for teams to tune into the opening and workshops while seated and chatting as a group.
Over the weekend we heard from some great speakers such as Daniel Krook (Global CTO of Call For Code and Code and Response) and Cr Jackie Watts (head of the knowledge city portfolio at the City of Melbourne). We were also joined by some partners that also spent time throughout the venue with teams. Special mention to City of Melbourne, bringing some really rich datasets and Here Technologies.
We were also joined by Michelle Howie, TelstraDev Developer Advocate, doing a really cool demo using Telstra’s CATM1 LPWan via the Arduino MKR NB1500. The demo also used Telstra SMS API, Watson IOT and a Node-Red instance, running on Openshift, to remotely turn a light on and off using an SMS word. To see the session and demo in action, check out the link here.
Hackathon teams brought some fantastic ideas to the table
We were looking for amazing solutions to help take on COVID-19, and Climate Change and teams really answered the call. We saw solutions that utilised several tech elements from the IBM Cloud catalogue, including leveraging the power of Watson Sentiment.
With a wealth of mentor knowledge and inspiration from the speakers over the weekend, we saw some great ideas emerge.
Leveraging a diverse skillset is always important in building out a solid hackathon team, and our judging panel is certainly no exception. With tough decisions all round we were joined by an all-star line-up:
- David Swan, Technology Editor at the Australian
- Ami Pasricha, Mobility & IOT solution owner at Telstra
- Ash Austin, Strategy, Design & Engineering at Bendigo and Adelaide Bank
- Steve Corrie – Digital Domain Lead at Bendigo and Adelaide Bank
In second place, a team from UNSW built out an app called Euphaura, which aims to reduce energy consumption by building awareness through users. Euphaura is a user-driven incentivised app that rewards users for minimising energy usage by rewarding the user points.
The team also won the TelstraDev MKR NB1500 board giveaway for most innovative design.
In first place, Nishi Nair, Arnav Garg, Arindam Ganguly and Harsha Hv (Team Eagle Eye) built out a smart monitoring solution leveraging Watson Machine Learning to identify COVID-19 groupings of people during times of social distancing.
The team called the app Eagle Eye because the app has powerful vision capabilities and is built on python/flask and nodejs all running via IBM Cloud, Cloudant and 24 hours of constant building.
The app alerts can be sent via SMS to registered users and/or be displayed on an admin dashboard map. The alerts give a heads up to users when there are too many people in one area, based on the social distancing rules currently in place for the location.
A big thank you and shout out to everyone that took part in the weekend, especially to all the mentors, partners and judges that gave up their time to help teams build out solutions.
Join the Fight. Form a Team. Impact the World.
If you couldn’t make the weekends virtual hack there is still time, submissions for the global Call for Code program are open, and we will be back with our final A/NZ Call for Code Hackathon in June.
To find out more and grab a ticket visit here.
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