masherydev

[masherydev]

Maker Faire - The OG Maker Event Celebrates 10 Years in the Yay Area

This weekend, the DevO (Developer Outreach) team descended upon San Mateo from far and wide to volunteer at the be all and end all maker event, the 2015 Maker Faire. In 2014 there were 131 Maker Faires worldwide with the Bay Area Maker Faire being the original and the largest, so this was the flagship event to attend and engage with passionate makers.

This year’s event boasted over 130,000 attendees, and with Intel as Presenting sponsor,  the opportunity to share innovations on Edison and Galileo was huge!

5 members of Team DevO (as noted by our red DevO hats) as well as 15-20 other Intel staff from across the Bay Area came by to help out during our Saturday morning shift, from 9 AM to 1 PM.

We spent Saturday morning working with multiple Intel volunteers helping kick off Intel’s presence at Maker Faire 2015 by facilitating activities at the different stations in Intel’s space. Stations in the space featured Intel’s awesome dancing spider robots, a hands-on Robodub demo, digitally enhanced cornhole and other geeked-out carnival games by LA’s Two Bit Circus, interactive DJ and electronic music stations, and much more – all powered by Intel technology. These hands on stations provided awesome opportunities to engage with the crowd about tactical as well as fun ways Edison and Galileo can power creativity and innovation.

Some more pics from the event:

Team DevO hangs with the Hackster IO Team!

Amit at the RoboDub Station

BK paid the Intel Space a visit on Sunday, here he is with Rex!

Looking forward to the next MakerFaire!

[masherydev]

WearHacks kicks off in Toronto

WearHacks is an international non-profit organization headquartered in Montreal, focused on the promotion of innovation and entrepreneurship in Wearable Technology and Internet of Things all over the world. They kicked off this past weekend in Toronto, drawing hundreds of attendees and bringing together developers, designers, project managers, students, and engineers with an entrepreneurial and creative mind.

WearHacks was hosted at MaRS, one of world’s largest innovation hubs located in the heart of downtown Toronto, Canada.

Tables all set up, ready and waiting for the hackers to join!

...and here they are!

Pearl and I with the booth setup...

...immediately a crowd formed around the Intel booth, all wanting to learn more about the Intel Edison and the Xadow wearables kit!

Great keynote presentation by Tom Emrich, founder of WeAreWearables and Marco Della Torres, co-founder of Basis

University students from across the nation attended.

Here we see a Xadow wearable kit already in action, shortly after distributing them...

Here is a team hacking a Kinect.

Team Medicue here brainstorming user stories and prototypes.

It’s late into the night but students continue to work hard.

This team is working on an electric longboard that is controlled with a Pebble!

Here is a teaming hacking together a RC car that is mind controlled, using the Muse headband

This team built a wrist wearable, allowing two different users to communicate over Bluetooth LE once they are within proximity

Team BreathAliver showing off their wearable device built with the Xadow wearables kit. It’s a breathalyzer wearable that discourages drunk driving and calls Uber or a friend for you.

Preliminary judging starts as teams start pitching. Only top 10 teams are chosen to move onto the final round of judging.

A lot of teams chose the Intel Edison and Xadow wearables kit for their project, it was great to see all the amazing hacks they’ve put together.

Top 11 Finalists

There were a total of 38 project submissions and the judges had to choose 10. After scoring all of them, 2 teams tied for 10th place scoring so there was a total of 11 finalists. These teams are:

Team AnyWear (Honorable Mention)

Team Medicue (Most Innovative Use of Sensors)

Team Apes In Space

Team PillowCase

Team BreathAliver (Grand Prize Winner)

Team Science Bros

Team DriveSafe

Team The Team

Team KineticKinect

Team The Wake Up Call

Team Winkers

All the source code and project details will be released on Github https://github.com/wearhackstoronto 

Here is a video recap of the entire event: https://twitter.com/intelcanada/status/597846602372415488

It was a great event overall and I was great to see all the innovative uses of Intel technology in wearables applications. I wish for the global success of WearHacks as they start in other cities!

[masherydev]

Hackster.io - Boston edition

After the great experience we had at Hackster.io Phoenix last month, I had the opportunity to help developers build hardware hacks at Hackster.io's hardware weekend in Boston, earlier this week.

Some very good quality hacks were produced in less than 30 hours. What was really impressive was the energy and the enthusiasm of the developers. Lots of new faces as well, which is always a great sign. You get to help developers who have never been to a hackathon. Always exciting.

Also, kudos to the Hackster.io team for securing an amazing space - MassChallenge, a Startup accelerator based out of Boston. MassChallenge opened up their Hardware labs for the developers, which allowed hackers to do what they do best - write incredibe code, to power the hardware.

Quick Look

On 9-10 May 2015, Hackster.io hosted the Hardware weekend in Boston.

About 40 developers attended.

Hosted at MassChallenge , a Startup accelerator based out of London.

12 hacks were built in less than 30 hours.

6 hacks were built using Intel Edison development boards.

Intel Edison Hacks built

Swear Jar - listens in for blacklisted words through an Android app, and opens up to charge you money when it hears one. It uses shields from the Grove Seeed Starter kit and the Arduino Edison IDE to run a web server that listens for a command to open the jar via the servo, waits 15 seconds for $ to be deposited, and then closes.

Coffee Control - Using the Intel Edison and Ubidots cloud service, this hack allows you to trigger an action (like serving coffee) once a WiFi client is detected in a WiFi network.

Car seat confidence - Detects child and sends an alarm to your phone alerting you that the child is still in your vehicle. Also, streams video to your device.

Robots over Internet - A robotic arm that can be controlled over the Internet. Not sure why that would be useful, but it should be fun

Drone Swap - Allows you to increase Drone uptime by swapping batteries.

Remote FPGA.io - A proof of concept built to demonstrate the flexibility of Nysa, an FPGA development platform.

Complete list of Hacks built on Hackster.io

Huge shoutout to the Hackster.io team (am looking at you - Adam, Monica, Alex & rest of the Hackster.io Team) for putting up a fantastic show.

[masherydev]

AWS IoT Hack Day with Intel Edison

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to join AWS Solutions Architects and a group of 40 developers at the AWS Pop-up Loft in San Francisco. The goal? Show developers how AWS can be used to power the Internet of Things with Intel technologies (in this case, Intel Edison).

Using AWS features including DynamoDB, Kinesis, Lambda, S3 and Cloud Formation we set up a “connected Maraca” application which allowed developers to connect their devices to the cloud and demonstrate real-time functionality. Thanks so much to the smart people at AWS for making this event a reality!

Here are a few pictures of the AWS Loft in action:

[masherydev]

Fluent Conf 2015: HTML/CSS/JS and Robotics Too

Photo opp - me and the Javascript Rhino we all love!  :)

Last week I attended Fluent Conf for the second time. It’s great to see the continuing trend of the Web + IoT and other hardware + Javascript goodness.

Though the main focus of this conference is on HTML/CSS/JS, quite a few of the talks this year were also focused connecting web technologies with other real world experiences. Robotics, WebVR, Wearables, etc. were all topics of presentation and there were some great talks on these subjects.

A lot of companies have adopted ES6 already and using Transpilers for browser compatibility. Almost everyone is giving a talk on React; it’s amazing how many companies are using it since React was announced last year. Here is Brian Holt giving a talk on using both ES6 and React together.

Javascript robotics! A few hardware vendor/projects were at the exhibit hall at Fluent. It’s great to see worlds collide and amazing things come out of it. Tessel is also back this year with their Tessel 2 board!

I have been playing around with MQTT for a while and it’s great to see that now it has almost become the defacto protocol for IoT applications. I had the pleasure of attending a great talk about IoT and voice enabled applications using IBM’s BlueMix and Watson Text-To-Speech technology. The demo showed a Sphereo being controlled by voice!

I got to see the demo up close and had a quick chat with Stewart Nickolas, a distinguished engineer at IBM!

Writing apps for wearables using Javascript...what??!?! Actually, Pebble has already made that possible with their PebbleJS and PebbleKit, but it’s interesting to see that it’s actually possible on other platforms too. Dan Gallo gave a great talk on using JS on different wearable platforms.

I also attended a talk by Ron Evans and got this awesome Cylon.JS sticker after speaking to him in person. He put together a great talk on “Full Stack Robotics”!

I love my O’Reilly animal stickers :)

I had a great time at Fluent this year (I do every year) and it’s quite interesting to see the convergence of web technologies/developers and hardware. I can’t wait to see what they have in store for next year at Fluent!

[masherydev]

SpaceApps NYC 2015 : A truly stellar event!

We had the pleasure of participating in SpaceApps NYC this year, and wow, it was an experience that was out of this world! Hosted at the Microsoft office near Time Square, SpaceApps is a global hackathon with specific challenges in the categories of Outer Space, Earth, Humans, and Robotics; solving the challenges of living on earth and space.

All project teams open sources their work at the end of the hackathon so anybody can benefit from their hard work, which can be found here: https://github.com/spaceappsnyc

At each local event, the top teams are chosen and advance to the global mainstage, in which judging happens with a panel of NASA judges/scientist. Let’s take a look at this amazing event!

Opening Ceremony

A line started forming around 8AM! (Photo credit Amanda Ghanooni)

Badge Pick Up (Photo credit Amanda Ghanooni)

Participants started to flow in, over 1400 people signed up for the Hackathon + Festival!

Amit and I checking in SpaceApps NYC hosted at Microsoft

A booth is setup to showcase the Intel Edison and the prizes for the event! We got a lot of questions about the Intel Edison and the Star Wars Lego :)

Photobooth with a tiny astronaut and space shuttle...

Opening ceremony begins with Astronaut Cady Coleman with opening remarks for this weekend’s event!

Participants are inspired and start pondering their projects for SpaceApps...

Time for sponsor demos! Here I am giving a talk about how Intel Technology & the Intel Edison fits in with the SpaceApps Hackathon (Photo credit Amanda Ghanooni)

After the opening ceremony, I hosted a workshop to demonstrate the Intel Edison and its capabilities. Participants were extremely interested in the platform and couldn’t wait to get their hands on one!

A lot of questions but we were more than happy to answer them all!

(Photo credit Amanda Ghanooni)

Hacking Begins!

It all starts with team formation and some feedback from the Astronauts...

(Photo credit Amanda Ghanooni)

Here we see a team creating a sensor platform with the Intel Edison, collecting data...

Another team is animating a Nyan cat! You can’t have SpaceApps without space themed cats :)

Teams are working hard...still going strong late into the night

Some awesome swag given out during the event! Space ice cream, T-shirts, and a water bottle!

Pitches + Judging

Team SpaceBase:

Team SpaceBase created a sensor platform that detects heat, light, and sound to be used in a space station. It uploads the data wirelessly and warns you of any anomalies. It also maps your location without the need for GPS by encoding preset geo-data points. Built with the Intel Edison.

Team Alien Detector:

Team Alien Detector used the Intel Edison to create a platform for detecing aliens! It uses a a variety of sensors to trigger a connected webcam to take a snapshot of any detected aliens. It is portable and produces an audible warning when it finds an alien!

Team Kessel:

Team Kessel pitched and idea of mapping space debris using NASA’s open APIs to help better solve the problem of space junk. They propose using the Intel Edison to calculate debris trajectory and shooting them out of orbit by firing tungsten rods!

Team FirstHand (Best Use of Hardware - SpaceAppsNYC 2015):

Team First Hand created a wearable technology using the Intel Edison. It is a space glove with heating elements that controls the warmth of the glove and protecting the fingers from trauma. The Intel Edison controls the heating elements and hosts an application that enables voice control of the temperature. They won the “Best Use of Hardware” award for the event and will be advancing to the global stage where a panel of NASA scientists will judge their project!

Here they are again being interviewed by the press, as a lot of the audience were interested in this winning project.

Team DEMS (Best Mission Concept):

Team DEMS built a data collection drone using the Intel Edison for collecting temperature data on Mars. It streams the data in real-time wirelessly as it floats around the atmosphere collecting data. This team won the “Best Missions Concept” for the event!

Here they are again being interviewed by the press interested in the project.

Team P-Tech Sensor Bot (Up & Coming Award):

Team P-Tech Sensor Bot are a team of highschool students in their first ever hackathon. They built a sensor robot using the Intel Edison that collects sensor data as it roams around. It then streams the collected data wirelessly to be analyzed. This team won the “Up & Coming award” for the event in recognition of their early success!

Team Cmorebot:

Team Cmorebot created a sophisticated robot that aims to solve the issues of pollution and contamination in our environment. The robot is powered by the Intel Edison and is connected to a variety of peripherals including a GPS, display screen, and a bunch of environmental sensors.

Here they are again working on the robot.

Team Space Sloth (Best Use of Intel Technology):

Team Space Sloth built a helmet for space missions that is powered by the Intel Edison. It is connected with LIDAR sensors and Infrared sensors for obstacle detection, and it also runs OpenCV for image recognition using the connected webcam. They were awarded the “Best Use of Intel Technology” prize by us!

The helmet with the connected sensors

Here is the space sloth mascot. Also used as the object in the demonstration.

Team Wildfire Navigator (Galatic Impact Award):

Team Wildfire Navigator built a warning system that helps you avoid wildfires in your driving route by pulling in wildfire data from NASA open APIs. It also has an in-car warning system built with the Intel Edison that flashes colors and displays information on an LCD screen regarding the nearby fires. They won the “Galactic Impact” award for the event!

Awards

After much deliberation, the judges have chosen the top 5 teams for the event! It was a really tough decision for the judges as there were many great projects and ideas put together during the event. Below are some photos of the awards being awarded in no particular order.

Team Wildfire Navigator

Team Space Sloth

Team Wildfire Navigator, Team P-Tech Sensor Bot, Team DEMS, and Team First Hand

...and me, with Astronaut Cady Coleman!

I had a phenomenal time at the SpaceApps NYC event and it was amazing what the teams put together over just 24 hours. They solved real problems as a team and were able leverage each others skills. I would like to thank the other sponsors and the organizers for all their hard work and I look forward to attending SpaceApps NYC 2016! Good luck to those teams moving forward to the global mainstage of SpaceApps!

[masherydev]

HackUMASS 2015 Won’t Be The Last!

This weekend I got to attend a very special event at my Alma Mater: UMASS, Amherst’s own HackUMASS! In it’s second year, HackUMASS scaled up its efforts massively, growing from 100 students to 500 students including a heap of east coast sponsors.

Taking place in the brand new Berthiaume Center of Entrepreneurship located near the UMASS campus center, 500 students from area schools such as BU, MIT and RPI made the trip to attend a busy opening keynote providing by IBM.

I got on stage and pitched students on joining me for a comprehensive workshop with Intel Edison and our Sensor Kits with Johnny-Five. After that there was a little break as hackers formed teams and surveyed the venue.

At around 2pm (or so), we took over room S120 and got our workshop started.

I spent around an hour walking 50 students through the process of plugging in Intel Edison, setting up our Sensor Kits and triggering GPIO ports with the Johnny-Five Node.js library. After the hour was up, students proceeded to the mentor room (which I had wired up with open wi-fi networks) to continue their projects.

Many loud buzzer noises were made and LED’s blinked on the first day. A 24-hour hackathon, HackUMASS ran long into the night.

Going into the final stretch, developers put their final touches on their hacks. As the deadline for project submissions loomed, crowds gathered for the final science fair judging.

Dozens of creative projects were on display, here are a few of the highlights.

Team Focus! built a solution involving Intel Edison to prevent people from being distracted by their phones during dinner.

Team Water Heater TTC built a project using Intel Edison to ensure that you never run out of hot water again!

Zorg built a python library to allow developers to use Intel Edison LibMRAA with Python.

StrongArm used Intel Edison to build a robotic arm controlled by voice.

Clapper-Shuffle used Edison to build a clap-activated music playlist.

Cookie Monster used Intel Edison to build a crow-controlled voting system to decide who gets a cookie or not.

Wizer used Intel Edison’s Wi-Fi capabilities to detect wi-fi signals.

After so much hacking fun, the auditorium filled for final judging.

Of all the great projects built, Intel selected team “Zorg” for “Best use of Intel Edison.” Congratulations to Tyler Redzko, Owen Kasozi, Kevin Brown and Gunther Cox for their epic win! Looking forward to the next HackUMASS!

[masherydev]

1400 Devs Journeyed to UCLA for LA Hacks Collegiate Hackathon

LA Hacks returned to UCLA last weekend.  1400 developers from the UC and Cal Poly universities, nearby state and city colleges, and out of state schools made the journey to Pauly Pavilion and competed in this 36-hour collegiate hackathon.  Intel’s Steven Xing and I attended this event and provided Intel developer support.

LA Hacks’ organizer Varadh Jain kicked off opening ceremonies followed by an inspirational speech by singer Aloe Blacc.

I presented the Best Use of Intel Technology challenge using Intel Edison and or Intel XDK and or the Mashery API Network.  The prize for this challenge: up to (3) Beats Studio headphones.  

Participants visited our booth eager to learn about and build with our Intel technologies.

First time XDK users wasted no time in building their mobile applications in just minutes.

I visited a team that explored the Mashery API Network and used the FoodEssentials API to enhance their food management app.

It was great to see XDK users from previous hackathons now challenging themselves to learn and use Edison.

"Really Cool Ground Drone” remote controlled car app equipped with a camera won the Best Use of Intel Technology prize.  This Cal Poly Pomona/UCLA team used the Edison to enable bluetooth control with their mobile device.  In addition, users can activate this drone to gather video and data information.

“Sprinkle” used the Edison and won the Best Civic Hack prize for their app designed to save water. This smart sprinkler waters plants at the best suitable time as instructed by the Edison.

“Sketchless” used the Jambase API from the Mashery API Network and won the Best Use of the HeyWatch API. This music app allows users to select their favorite songs performed by a collaboration of artists.

I want to thank Varadh Jain for organizing another huge 1400 developer attended hackathon.

I also want to thank the LA Hacks mentors and volunteers for their support to attendees.

Lastly, thanks goes to the participating developers for making the journey to LA Hacks, displaying their app development talents, and challenging themselves to build awesome apps.

[masherydev]

Great (Lyndsey) Scott, It’s Hack Holyoke 2015!

Hack Holyoke is a unique hackathon held at Mt. Holyoke College (a small,  women’s private college located in Western MA) which aims to achieve an (unprecedented) 1:1 ratio of women:men hackers. The purpose? Fix the leaky pipeline for women entering STEM professions by providing an open, friendly environment for learning about technology.

Earlier in the year, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich announced a progressive program to equalize Intel’s gender balance by hiring more women...supporting hackathons which focus on the experience of “Women in STEM” is just one way to bridge the gap!

In it’s second year, Hack Holyoke featured some strong speakers including Lyndsey Scott (mobile software engineer, actress and model) and Alexis Ohanian (co-founder of Reddit)!

On day one, hackers showed up (often driving from local nearby schools such as Smith College, UMASS Amherst, Olin College and others) to register. Fortunately, Hack Holyoke managed to assemble an all-star cast of speakers including Lyndsey Scott (mobile software engineer, actress and model) and Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit.

Kamila Stępniowska, global COO of Geek Girls Carrots made the journey to provide mentorship on the topic of startups and careers. 

Alexis Ohanian gave a rousing keynote (with surprisingly few cat pictures) touching on his experience and perspective on the future of technology and careers.

Just me giving my usual keynote.

After the keynote and introductions of technical mentors, I invited hackers to attend my Intel Edison workshop.

100% full! I love to see so many students working with hardware and learning. There were definitely a lot of lessons in the use of Linux learned in a very short time period.

A 24 hour hackathon, developers spent Friday and Saturday building their projects on a variety of different hardware platforms. Time flew by...time for presentations!

Students gathered in the auditorium to see all the projects that were built...

Team WellShapedSlug built CubeTrix, a visual way to learn linea algerbra.

Team Pawz presented a web application for pet adoption.

Team Edison_Crack_The_Safe built a safe cracking game using Intel Edison.

Team EIR Guitar prototyped an air guitar using Intel Edison.

To wrap things up, Lyndsey Scott (CS graduate of Amherst College, Victoria’s Secret Model and actress) presented a talk discussing the hostility she faced as a women building software applications and participating in online developer communities.

Afterwards Lyndsey Scott spent a few minutes discussing her experience and perspective with Mt Holyoke students.

Congratulations to Team “Edison_Crack_The_Safe” and members Anitha kandiah and Gibryon Bhojraj for winning “Best use of Intel Edison” and taking home two Parrot drones! Looking forward to next year’s Hack Holyoke!

[masherydev]

Phoenix goes Hack to the Future with Hackster.IO!

Hackster’s “Hack to the Future” Hardware Weekend took place in Phoenix, Arizona last weekend at Local Motors. Participants gathered at this car factory for a two-day hardware hackathon.  Intel’s Steven Xing and I attended as Intel mentors and provided Edison support to participating developers. 

Hackster’s Adam Benzion kicked off opening ceremonies Saturday morning to a crowd comprised of local Phoenix residents and Arizona State University students.  The Intel prize for the Best Use of Intel Edison: up to three Jumping Sumo Parrot Drones.

A series of hardware workshops were presented to help participants better understand the available technologies.  Steven and I presented the Intel Edison, described it’s features and introduced Edison building tools and additional Intel technologies including XDK IoT Edition and the Intel Mashery API Network.

Participants joined us on stage and shared their experience with and showed their support for Edison.

Teams formed, collaborated, and worked on their projects through Sunday.  They used available hardware and sought help from participating mentors and sponsors to help strengthen their applications.

In between project building, participants explored Local Motors’ facilities and vehicles, and were invited to develop applications for Hackster’s DeLorean DMC-12 which was featured in past “Hack to the Future” events including Seattle and Portland.

On Sunday afternoon, teams presented their projects to judges and spectators.

The “Best Use of Intel Edison” prize was awarded to the three member team that created “Party Bot.”  This party enhancer project incorporated the Edison into a four legged robot designed to seek out quiet areas of a party, and then activates flashing lights, music, and bursts of confetti.  “Party Bot” also won the “Best Party Robot” prize.

Four additional Edison projects won prizes: “Smart Guidance for the Visually Impaired” won the “Humanities” prize, “MonYcar” won the “All the Sensors All the Time” prize with their car monitoring system, “3D Controller Bot” won the “Microchip” prize with their 3D printer application enhancer, and “RunDMC” won the “Most Likely Award”...to succeed as a product, with their DeLorean driver detector and touch sensor car starter.

Special thanks goes to Intel’s Jim St. Leger and Suresh Golwalkar for attending this event and showing their “Hack to the Future” support.

Thanks goes to Hackster’s Adam Benzion and his team for organizing this great event.   And lastly, thanks “Hack to the Future” Phoenix participants for demonstrating your development skills and challenging yourselves to build awesome apps.

[masherydev]

This Is Sparta! The Inaugural SpartaHack kicks off

We were very excited to be part of the inaugural SpartaHack! Over the weekend of March 28th - 29th, hundreds of hackers signed up for SpartaHack at the Michigan State University.

The opening ceremony kicked off with the event organizers welcoming all the sponsors and participants, with the schedule for the rest of the weekend

Once the booth was setup, a lot of people were interested in learning more about Mashery and the Intel Edison...

The crowd was excited and inspired by the APIs and hardware they could play with, coming up with awesome projects they would build over the next 36 hours

A workshop was held that evening to help them get up and running...

everybody was pretty happy to learn all the cool things they could do with Intel Mashery technologies!

Plenty of snacks were available to keep the mind fresh and recharged

Some of the snacks made their way into the projects, like this Intel Edison powered pillbox that used the candies as medicine...

A team trying to integrate their Intel Edison with a Pebble smartwatch

Dell and MLH cupcakes! They were pretty popular, this photo was taken shortly before they all disappeared

A tower of Redbull...

...or if you prefer Spartan Starbucks

The night was filled with games to keep the creativity flowing. Here you see the winning team for the Cup Stack challenge

Here is a VR project a team was working on with 3D Pokemons!

Project Demos

After 36 hours of hacking, there were quite a few impressive projects built and many of them chose Intel Mashery technologies for their project:

1) Team MyoLuminati (2nd Place & Best Use of Intel Technology Prize Winner)

Team MyoLuminati created an interactive wearable that lets you control a light show with a Myo armband connected to an Intel Edison. It was amazing to see the lights interact in real time based on gestures. Built by Can Gokcek, Michael Lukowski, and Sam Berndt.

2) Team Medinar (KPCB Challenge + Best Use of FireBase Winner)

Team Medinar built a healthcare platform that increases the efficiency and timeliness of healthcare service. It allows for automated pill dispensing using the Intel Edison, as well as a mobile application that lets you set reminders and requests. Built by Robin Onsay,Adarsh Rachmale, Vishnu Rengaraj, and Bryan Edward Ngadimin.

3) Team DriveThru Plus (Grand Prize + Best iOS App Winnter)

Team DriveThru Plus created the future of drive through ordering. DriveThru Plus is a system for drive through orders that allows multiple forms of payment (e.g. Paypal, Bitcoin, etc.), bill splitting, as well as interactive help when ordering through their app. Powered by an Intel Edison that displays order number, total cost, and other order details. Built by Arpan Rughani, Dominic Dabish, Jack Stouffer, and Gustavo Fernandes.

4) Team ControlYourHome

Team ControlYourHome is a minimalistic home control system that lets you monitor your house and check on your garage and door locks. Sensors and web server are powered by the Intel Edison. Built by Gabe Reiss and Elijah Carrel.

5) Team Sublease4.me

Team Sublease4.me aims to solve housing issues by curating housing listings through scraping Craigslist and allowing search capabilities. Software processing and server hosting powered by the Intel Edison. Built by Zach Jaghory, Lucas Reynolds, Yash Dixit, and Alonzo Claybrook.

6) Team UseYourWorld (Best Use of FireBase Winner)

Team UserYourWorld is another home automation project powered by the Intel Edison. It communicates directives for the home server through gestures using the Myo armband and the Intel Edison . Built by Nicholas Reuter, Anthony Capriglione, and Ayush Agrawal.

7) Team Black Box

Team Black Box created a dorm security system to ensure the safe storage of snacks in a secure box. It performs facial recognition using the Intel Edison to then open or lock the snack box based on the user facing the camera. Built by Andy Nguyen, Kenny Lam, and Patrick Tsai.

8) Team Getaway

Team Getaway built a travel recommendation engine using the HotWire API to find hotel listings and attraction information based on location. It offers a simple interface to navigate the many available travel options. Built by Ian Nguyen, Blake Nanakdewa, and Shameel Abdullah.

9) Team based_sms_ssh

Team based_sms_ssh is a project built with the Intel Edison to gain SSH access through a Twilio API, allowing control via telephony and a Python Flask server. Photo unavailable. Built by Charles Moshier.

Closing Ceremony

The event comes to end with a closing keynote by Jay Freeman (the original jailbreaker and creator of Cydia on iOS!). The judging began shortly after with the top 10 teams lined up to do their final pitch.

Teams doing their final pitch on stage...

Congratulations to team MyoLuminati once again on their impressive project with the Intel Edison. Enjoy the prizes and keep hacking!

It was a great event overall and I would like to thank the other sponsors and the event organizers for making this event happen. We are looking forward to the next SpartaHack event!

[masherydev]

Edmunds' 3rd Annual Hackomotive Featured Innovators and Entrepreneurs

Hackomotive took place last Tuesday at Edmunds’ headquarters in Santa Monica, CA.  This three day contest brought together 18 teams comprised of innovators and entrepreneurs with products designed to improve the car shopping experience. 

Teams worked with industry experts to strengthen their product and compete for cash prizes worth $35000.

Edmunds’ CEO Avi Steinlauf kicked off the event Tuesday morning and welcomed contestants, mentors, speakers, and judges.  

Edmunds’ Keri Wise assumed emcee duties and outlined the event details which included product pitching, fireside chats with industry experts, surprise challenges, and more.

Guest speaker Sam Lamagna, Intel’s Director of Advanced Driving Technologies, spoke about self-driven cars in the fireside chat session.

Innovation coach Matt May held his “Where to Play How to Win” workshop later in the day.  Contestants in this session learned about business strategy and solving complex problems.

On Wednesday, returning teams “I’ll Buy It” and “CarcodeSMS” participated in the Alumni panel.  They shared their experience from last year’s Hackomotive, their involvement with “Fastlane” (Edmunds’ accelerator for startups), and the launch of their business.

Later in the day, contestants were placed in a simulated showroom challenge marketing and selling their product to real consumers.   

On the final third day of competition, contestants pitched their business to students in a future shopper’s challenge won by team “CARmera” with their camera app for recognizing cars and car features.

Team “ZipFlip” won the Hackomotive first place prize.  This application helps users price and sell their car with a ZipFlip sticker and/or online.

The “Dash” team’s car diagnostic application won the 2nd Place Prize, and "Backlot Cars” won the 3rd Place Prize with an application for the wholesale marketplace driven by subscriptions.

An honorable Mashery mention goes to team “Leasify” and their app which creates a deal score for users negotiating a car lease.

Special thanks goes to Intel’s Sam Lamagna for his awesome fireside chat and for helping participating Hackomotive teams.

I want to thank Ismail Elshareef and the Hackomotive team for organizing this event and providing support to attendees throughout these three days.  Lastly, congratulations to all the qualifying Hackomotive teams.

[masherydev]

SXSW 2015: From Maker Tents to Robot Petting Zoos, Making Was Hot

After attending the Journalism Hackathon earlier in the week, Wai and myself (Rex) had the opportunity to experience our very first SXSW Interactive. Along the way, aside from eating many different kinds of barbecue and Tex-Mex (and attending one or two parties), we saw a lot of amazing emerging technology. 

Here are a few of the many amazing sites we witnessed at this year’s 2015 SXSW Interactive.

We stopped by the Intel gaming booth briefly for a brief yet fantastical green screen photo session.

SXSW Maker Tent

Makers, inventors and hackers congregated under a white tent across the river from the main body of the SXSW activities. Here we found a wide assortment of interesting gadgets and hobbyists eager to share their passion for hardware hacking with the wider world. 

This “multi-eyed” robot was part of the table display being shown off by the Austin-based Robot Group, consisting of a collection of tinkerers engaged in the art of robot construction. 

This hexapod variant spider robot walks forwards and backwards, also built by The Robot Group of Austin.

I am a sucker for T-Rex statues in general. This laser cut dino-head, created to demonstrate the potential of 3D engraving, would look wonderful mounted on someone’s wall. 

Silicon Labs is a large hardware company with a major office in Austin and had a large display dedicated to LittleBits, for whom they manufacture and design some components. If you are not familiar with LittleBits, you can buy sets of these compassable sensors and inputs and compose them into easy-to-build hardware hacks. 

Robotic hands and arms where a common theme at this year’s SXSW. These particular hands were built specifically to be very low cost prosthetics for children in developing worlds. The way they work is you slide them onto your arm and, whenever you bend your wrist, the fingers bend to grasp objects.

We also ran into this white and blue humanoid robot armed with motion sensors capable of tracking movement.

One of many 3D printers on display printing thing plastic heart decorations. 

SparkFun “Badger” Table

SparkFun Electronics, a Colorado-based “maker” company set up several tables and handed out tiny Arduino-based “badge” kits and invited conference attendees to sit and solder together their own blinking electronic badges. These badges came equipped with LED displays and could be used to play a collection game.

The Trade Show

The trade show hosted dozens of “Internet of Things” companies and a three story bus from FreeScale. Here are a few of the highlights. 

Exiii: 3D Printed Electronic Arms For $2,000

Exiii was one of my personal favorite products at this year’s SXSW. A Japan-based company, Exiii demonstrated their futuristic (and, by the looks of them, Anime-inspired) “bionic” arms. Each arm is meant to cost roughly $2,000 and consists of 3D printed components and is controlled through the use of motion-detecting wearable gadgets. 

Tiny 3D Printed Robots from PLEN

PLEN is a Japanese hobby robotics company and was demonstrating their open source robotics kits and taking sign ups for their Kickstarter for their upcoming PLEN 2 kits.

These little robots are capable of walking, dancing and kicking soccer balls and can also drive themselves around in tiny cars. 

Sabertron: Foam Swords With Electronic Scoring

Outside of the “maker tent,” we ran into a company called Sabertron and their foam rubber swords. Each sword comes with a touch screen interface as well as a few interesting capabilities. Coming off of a successful Kickstarter campaign where they raised over $230,000, Sabertron’s goal is the “modernize” the art and hobby of foam-rubber sword fighting by adding capabilities such as the ability for the swords to detect “blocks” and “body strikes” automatically and award scores to duelers as required. 

Wai and I may or may not have had a subsequent duel which I may or may not have definitely won. 

Robot Petting Zoo

On the third floor of the Marriott in downtown Austin, a large room was deemed a “Robot Petting Zoo” with many interesting drones and other moving contraptions on display. Here are a few of the interesting devices we saw there.

This drone, aside from an abundance of stabilizing propellers, is a concept demonstration for a “3D Printing Drone.” Thats right, this drone can fly into an area and spool-out a printing substrate like concrete. Some examples of where this might be useful might be in outdoor construction or flood disaster prevention.

This little robot is called Ozobot, another Kickstarter success. These little devices possess several scanners and can transverse colored lines drawn with markers. They are programmed through the use of a paired iPad application which can teach these robots how to behave as they drive over flashing dots.

Flying monkey drone... ‘nuff said. It is also mind controlled via a paired headset for detecting brain waves... srsly.

This hexapod has a camera mounted on the front and is “powered” by Raspberry Pi. The camera can recognize and is programmed to react to faces. 

Gaming Expo

SXSW involves multiple concurrent conferences and events including Music, Film, Interactive and Games. We visited the gaming expo briefly to see what the excitement was all about.

Chris Roberts was present to give a session on the topic of his upcoming space simulator game Star Citizen.

Time-traveling DeLorean car available to rent for your Austin parties. No word on whether the Flux Capacitor is included.

And that’s a wrap!

Whew! All told we probably walked 20 miles in the last 6 days. Hope you enjoyed seeing all the amazing pictures of SXSW 2015.

[masherydev]

Photo Recap: Journalism Hackathon 2015 at Austin - TomTom, JamBase

At this year’s Journalism Hackathon in Austin, Rex St John and I were glad to be able to attend and showcase Mashery APIs. Here are some highlights from the event:

Congratulations to our winner with their best use of Mashery APIs: An app that allows you to find out what music events to attend based on TomTom for mapping and locations, and JamBase for music events information.

We had a great time at the hackathon and would like to thank Jeff Linwood for organizing the event, as well as the Austin Statesman for providing the venue.

[masherydev]

Hack to the Future Part II: PDX Edition

I made the trip down to Portland this weekend with Hackster.io Hardware Weekend for the second stop of their worldwide hackathon tour. The first event held in Seattle was a raging, sold out success so expectations for part II were quite high. Thankfully, the Hackster.io team knocked it out of the park again with a totally sold out hackathon at the Portland Business Accelerator. Read on to see how it all transpired. 

Hackers arrived bright and early around 9:00 - 10:00 AM at the Portland Business Accelerator to hear kick off pitches from Adam Benzion from Hackster.io and Alex Donn from AT&T. After a few sponsorship announcements, team formation kicked into high gear.

After a quick Intel Edison workshop complete with Sensor Kits, hackers got to building projects. Our team walked developers through the basics of setting up an Intel Edison and plugging in sensors as well as activating those sensors with Intel XDK and Johnny-Five. 

Jeremy Foster from Microsoft was on site to provide Azure coaching to teams.

On day two, Scott Hanselman gave an engaging keynote about productivity and his blogging activity. Most of the hacking slowed down as developers convened to learn from Scott's experience as an evangelist and product manager for Microsoft working on open sourcing the .NET Core. 

After two days of hacking, it was time for a science fair. Judges convened to begin evaluating projects for several thousand dollars in various prizes provided by sponsors including Intel, AT&T, Microsoft and many others. Below are a few interesting projects on display along with teams.

Project Summaries and links:

Here is a list of all the Intel Edison projects built with links to their respective Hackster.io project pages. You can see all the pictures on our Flickr page.

StormSafe: stormsafe

Anti-Text: anti-text

Net-connected Larson Scanner: net-connected-larson-scanner

BuzzTrain: doggiphone-augmenting-communication-with-your-dog

Baby Monitor: baby-monitor

HeartSpace Circadian Muse: heartspace

GlanceBoard: glance-board

Low-Cost Workshop Robot (Team Silly Robot): low-cost-workshop-robot

Motion Control Rig: motion-control-rig

The Edison Coil:the-cloudy-keyboard

Snoopy the Drone Deployable: snoopy-the-drone-deployable-telepresence-robot

Augmented Marathon: augmented-marathon-running

Bike Navigator: bike-navigator

Chicken Coop Monitor: chicken-coop-monitor

Solar powered server: solar-powered-server

Winning Teams

Best use of Intel Edison was won by team "Silly Robot" for their quirky drawing robot. Congratulations to Wick Perry, Nicole Scherm, Ken Olsen and Darrell Teagarden for their hard work, they took home two Anki Drive starter kits and a Quad Rotor drone.

For "Best use of Weather Underground API," team "GlanceBoard" took home $500 in Amazon Gift cards. Congratulations to Jeremy Salmon, Paul Kanz, Mika Kanz and Sylwia M Bialcza for all their hard work!

There are many more Hackster.io roadshows coming up in the next few weeks, looking forward to seeing the great projects that emerge.

[masherydev]

Hacking with the Sharks at HackDFW

I traveled to Dallas, Texas to take part in the very first HackDFW this past weekend and, along the way, got to hang out with more than a few talented hackers, makers and billionaires. Billionaires? Well...more on that later. 

A 24 hour hackathon, nearly 400 developers from surrounding areas and universities were in attendance for the kick of ceremony taking place in the Dallas Women's Museum. 

Absolutely loved this venue. After the usual kicking off activities, developers formed teams and got to hacking. 

Here are a few highlights and team photos:

We had an all star judging panel including Mark Cuban and Michael Irvin.

Our winning teams were Morning Hacker and team RUFFPatch for their use of Intel Edison and the Weather Underground API.

[masherydev]

MAKE-ing it happen at MakeMIT 2015

MakeMIT 2015 just happened over the past weekend on Saturday, February 28th, 2015. It drew over 200+ students that were excited and passionate about designing and building. They were given 15+ hours to prototype their ideas, with the top 10 teams coming back the following weekend to refine their design.

Before the opening ceremony, we got a chance to engage with the students, they were enthusiastic and pitching their ideas to us

Hardware checkout was on the 2nd floor, a line began to form as soon they were operational. Everyone just can’t wait to get their hack on!

Teams immediately got into action. As soon as they got their hardware, they were back at their tables with their teams, testing out their designs and ideas. As you can see in the picture above, the Intel Edison was a popular choice for the students; how many can you see in the picture above?

There were a lot of creative projects going on, with this event being a hardware hackathon, we saw a lot of designs utilizing servos, motors, and various sensors. We’re always there to help if the teams ran into any software or hardware problems.

The students were well-versed in CAD and made liberal use of the provided 3D printers, as well as the laser cutters. We saw lots of interesting mechanics and structures integrated in their projects.

Project Demos

There were tons of great projects that got built in the span of just 15 hours! This was simply phenomenal and we would like to applaud all teams for their amazing work.

Overall, there were 50+ team projects, and below we have a recap of all the projects that were built using the Intel Edison:

Team 47 - Danger Zone

Team 47 built a real-time video monitoring system for law-enforcement using the Intel Edison. It also monitors their vitals, such as their heart rate. This data allows them to map out stress/danger zones based on stress levels of the wearer and also triggers video streaming once they reach a certain threshold. Built by Alexander Hadik, @jungomitis, and @joshiau

Team SLAM-ing 40s - The S.L.A.M. Bot

Team SLAM-ing 40s built the amazing S.L.A.M. bot. It is a robot on wheels that maps out its surroundings using a LIDAR. It roams freely and avoids obstacles, while sending this sensor data back to a web server. Built by @madscientist11, @Saarth2012, Michael Searing, Joseph Kochevar, and Doyung Lee.

Team Merpmerp - A car

This team built a robot car powered by the Intel Edison.In their spare time, the team constructed a laser-cut spire that spins. It is guaranteed to inspire and awe its audience. Built by Kevin Kwok and Ben Chan @Vervious

Team LED Zeppelin - LED Spin Staff

This team set out to create an LED staff that shows various light patterns as you spin it around. It has an Intel Edison and battery attached on one end, and a series of LEDs on the other. Built by Sasha Riekard, Ebeth Mittman, and Allie Stanton

Team Bons Hi - You can grow a bonsai and be friends with it too!

Team Bons Hi made an attractive little Bon Sai garden with a personality. It is an Intel Edison powered green house that allows you to grow and nurture your Bon Sai plant. At the same time it has a A.I. voice over that allows you to talk to your plant! Built by Norihito Naka and Sopuruchukun Ezenwa.

Team Crimson45 - Securidesk (Top 10 finalist)

Team Crimson45 was well aware of the troubles in using public spaces with your personal laptop: every time you need to leave or get up, you need to secure your belongings or have some stranger look after it for you. Their solution? A pressure sensitive desktop powered by the Intel Edison that alarms and alerts you through the phone if anything is removed from your desk! Built by John Holland, Jessica Lam, Joy Hui, and Fiorella Vargas

Team 25 - It’s Casual

Team 25 built the prototype of a robotic wheelchair with the Intel Edison that can be controlled with a MYO armband, allowing people with disabilities to control where they want to go with just a flick of their arm. They also created a phone app that lets you do the same without a MYO band. Built by @otrollseags, @wengoatzeng, @shramanrc, and Kimberly Leon.

Team 16 - The car that believed it could

Team 16 build an autonomous car using the Intel Edison. It uses 4 push buttons located on each side to detect collision and reroutes accordingly. Built by @mrdavidliang and Tony Lao.

Team 18 - Catbots

Team Catbots built a swarm of robot “cats” with the Intel Edison that roamed about and reacted to light sensors. Their vision is to have a swarm of robots that can be controlled by using gestures and laser pointers. Built by John Bowler, Alan Chiao, Amruth Venkatraman, Karen Hao, and @flnunez11

Team ROVR - Remote VR

Team ROVR built a robotic rover using the Intel Edison that can act as a telepresence device. It works with VR goggles (using Google Cardboard) that allow you to see what the rover sees; head movements are translated into camera movements, allowing the wearer to truly immerse themselves. Built by Ziggy Q Kotchetkov, Rhed Shi, Ryan Lee, Vincent Chow, Jeff Chen.

Team 2E Strikes Again - PentaTune

Pentatune is a music generation/collaboration device that allows you to create your own jam and share it with your friends. It comes with 5 buttons that activates a different sound clip when pressed, allowing you to to mix your own tunes. Built by @Manny4C, @jenniferjzhang, Lucia Liu, Samantha Bishamber, and Justin Xiao

Team 11 - A new IoT Architecture

Team 11 came up with a brilliant idea to connect IoT devices: give them a common protocol and domain specific language, allowing programmability and interoperation of different IoT devices. Built by @nalinimsingh and @anishathalyo

Team WeLock - YouLock (1st Place Winner)

YouLock is a bike locking system that allows remote securing of bikes, as well as commoditizing the process. Powered by the Intel Edison, YouLock is a great fit for campuses and public areas. Anyone can lock their bikes without the need to bring their own and fear having their bikes stolen or locks vandalized. Built by Fiona Paine, Atif Javed, Farhan Khan, Tristan Paine, and Jen Cardona.

Team 3D Rock - Contour Modeler (Best use of Intel Technology Winner and 3rd Place Winner)

Contour Modeler is a 3D modeling system that allows you to draw in open space using a tethered pen, which will then generate a 3D model based on your movements. The contraption consists of 3 Redbull cans and ultrasonic sensors to measure hand movement. Built by Jiao Hao Li, Mitchell Ga, and Hung Jui Huang.

Closing Ceremony

After 15+ hours of hacking and demos the event comes to an end. The top 10 projects were chosen by a panel of judges and they got to pitch their ideas on stage one last time before the top 3 teams were chosen. We’re super excited to see that 2 of the top 3 teams used Intel Edisons for their project.

Team WeLock - YouLock (1st Place)

Team 3D Rock - Contour Modeler (3rd Place + Intel Prize)

Team Crimson45 - SecuriDesk (Top 10 Contender)

The Boston Globe also has an article recapping the event which can be found here: MakeMIT Undergrads Hack High Tech Tools

Overall we had a great time at MakeMIT and it was exciting to work with all the students and their innovative projects. We would like to thank the hardworking organizers and other sponsors that made this event possible. We look forward to participate in this event again next year!