We launched two main challenges, one focused on Streamr integrations and the other focused on the usage of the Ethereum blockchain, as our complimentary goal was to also grow Ethereum ecosystem. One disclaimer: this hackathon was primarily organized for university students, so we set our expectations accordingly. We were more interested in seeing novel use-cases of Streamr rather than advancing coding solutions. Also we held an additional workshop during the hackathon to spread more awareness about the Ethereum blockchain and its smart contracting capabilities. We also taught attendees how they could deploy their own tokens. Of course as part of this I created my own WeiTokens. (My ICO is on its way).

Outlined below are some of the interesting projects we had chance to mentor and follow during the event.

SeguridApp

Mass robberies of bus passengers are actually a very common event in Mexico. Armed robbers board a bus and go on to steal as many phones and items of jewellery as they can before escaping. The hacking team presented a theoretical solution that would combine public bus location data with each rider’s phone’s GPS as a cluster analysis in realtime. An algorithm would detect any anomaly like large subset of that cluster suddenly departing from the bus route and all heading in same direction at the same speed. This detected anomaly would then trigger a police alert with GPS coordinates of that subset sent in realtime. Streamr would be used as the underlying network to gather data from individual phones and buses.

CarnivoR

The team primarily comprised of automation engineering students, who planned to create a fully automated solution to grow and manage plants. As a statement to the uniqueness of people we met there, this team had brought along a living carnivorous plant with them to be used as demonstration, (sure, I carry one of those around with me all the time). It was a perfect scenario to utilise a Ruuvi Tag and the long published JavaScript library. With this integration, they could monitor in realtime both temperature and humidity of the desired plot of land targeted. Once data from the sensor was pushed to a stream, they leveraged the Streamr Visual Editor to create event triggers based on specified criteria. For example, they could send a command to activate the water pump if the temperature reached above a certain threshold. Hypothetically, they could use a similar setup to monitor and automate an entire indoor or vertical farm, which are getting very popular in large metropolitan cities where it is not always easy to find affordable organic food.

CarnivoR, using Ruuvi tags helping to feed flesh eating plants.

2Steps

This team had a nice setup with DragonBoard hardware connected to sensors to mimic shoe pressure sensors. Their solution was to record various parameters from the tennis shoes and transmit that data to a stream on the Marketplace, showcasing an IoT integration solution. Use cases could range from wellness insights to granular performance analysis for athletes. Imagine an app in future that would tailor training based on individual running style, pressure points and health related data?

2Steps, your own personal fitness trainer as a bot?

Uniken

This project deployed its own token on the Ethereum mainnet. Their main intention was to use the token to create an intra-university coin system to pay for anything like cafeteria food, books, tutoring lessons and more. Long gone are the days when you needed to top-up your university ID card for things like photocopying. Following the path of many ICO projects, they even created a neat website to promote it. It is hard not to give them credit for checking all the boxes.

And the winners Are…

There were a few other projects we didn’t mention here as there were around 40+ teams in total at the hackathon. But out of all the potential competitors, the two winning teams we selected for both the Streamr and Ethereum challenges were 2Steps and Uniken respectively.