Projects at the latest event include a baby monitor with real-time notifications for things like room temperature, a color sensor that can emit sounds for people with visual impairments and -- from the winning team -- a solar-powered battery charger.

Many of the ideas at this weekend's competition were health-related. One team of high-school kids came up with the unfortunately named ModCoholic, a breathalyzer mod, that will ask if you want to grab a taxi when over the legal limit. The team won Honorable Mention for its submission. Another developer created Simple Syrup, a mod that allows diabetics to check their blood sugar.

The San Francisco event was just the latest location in a series of hackathons held across the globe, including New York, India and Buenos Aires. The next one happens in Shenzhen, China mid-March. The winning teams from each event will head to Motorola's headquarters in Chicago to present their ideas to industry leaders like Lenovo Capital, who might invest and fund promising concepts. If the Moto Z takes off like Motorola hopes, it's possible we'll see some of these inventive ideas on store shelves in the near future.