Imagine Banana for scale

Imagine @ EPFL Hackathon took place last weekend at EPFL INN library. I tried to convince several people to join me on this one but failed. Either they had better things to do or the tickets were just too expensive so I had to go alone and form a team there. Going there without a team actually was a good thing. I met great people, worked on a project I had no clue before going there, used the technology I really wanted but never came around to use it and spent 24 hours doing the thing I really enjoy – coding.

Concept of Hackathon always interested me but I never found one with a theme I was so interested so I went to this one even though any theme is better than no theme. And no theme is really bad. First off, many teams came prepared with projects that were deep in the development so that was unfair from the start. That of course didn’t prevent me to come (more) prepared but that just isn’t what Hackathons are meant to be. Having a team would be good also but then again, working guys, I just met, for 24 hours was really fun and challenging on its own way.

I met Hugo just before the start of the registration and Gregory and Andre at the forming teams/pitching session. At the start there were two ways we could go. To do something we were familiar with, building a website or a web service that would do this or that, making a game of some sorts or something else more or less fun. Or to do something we had no idea about. Microsoft provided us with Raspberry Pi 2 devices and Azure vouchers that we could use, so after a short consultation, we decided to do something with those. None of us worked with IoT before so we figured it’s going to be fun to go along that path, we might even learn something in those 24 hours.

Spontaneously we came up with team name “Bananas for scale”, which should be familiar to all of you 9gagers out there. In the IoT kit, besides Raspberry Pi 2, we got LED lights, temperature, pressure and light sensors and bunch of cables. After a quick brainstorming session we agreed to build a “robot” that would search the coldest spot in the room. We had no motors no wheels so we simulated the movement with LED lights. We built a website which had the info about the data gathered and you could start or stop the robot via that website (at least that was the plan). We also designed an AI algorithm that would explore the world around it (cuz it doesn’t know the room in which it is let loose) and made a simulation that shows how it is supposed to work. Shout-out to Alexander who helped us and pushed us to define our idea in more details.

Like the whole event, we made the presentation fun as well. We joked around constantly and really enjoyed ourselves while competing at this Hackathon. It actually wasn’t a competition, at least for me, but a chillaxing weekend that included no sleeping, free food and drinks and bunch of coding and learning.

Shout-out to the MSP Swiss team for organizing this event. I plan to come again and take it for another run, maybe next time really competing and having less fun ☺

Cheers,
Đorđe