Students at our annual Hackathon at Notre Dame create innovative IoT apps that are fun and useful

On September 22nd, we returned to Indiana to host our annual hackathon at the University of Notre Dame. This year we held the event at the IDEA Center (formerly Innovation Park). The hackathon attracted over 125 attendees. In the end, 12 teams came together to create innovative Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. On September 22nd, we returned to Indiana to host our annual hackathon at the University of Notre Dame. This year we held the event at the IDEA Center (formerly Innovation Park). The hackathon attracted over 125 attendees. In the end, 12 teams came together to create innovative Internet of Things (IoT) solutions.

We kicked off the hackathon on Friday night with an introduction to the event from Jenifer Robertson, Senior Vice President for Technology at AT&T. She also happens to be a Notre Dame alum and her welcome speech really resonated with the students in attendance. In fact, many of the students referenced it when asking us questions about the task on Friday night.

Engineering students and coders really showed off their skills at this hackathon and ended up submitting high-quality apps and solutions. The app, Bless You, won the prize for Most Innovative or Marketable Idea and the judges felt that it could actually succeed in the marketplace. As the name suggest, the app simply says “Bless you,” whenever you sneeze. A fun app that has the potential to be a feature for Siri, Alexa, or Google Home.

IoT Hackathon Winners

While there were a ton of interesting and quality entries, we could only name a few winners.

• Best App From a Women Led Team – $1,000
• Best IOT Solution Overall – $500
• Most Innovative or Marketable Idea – $500
• Best Use of IBM Bluemix – Beats Solo Headphones for each team member

Winners

1st Place Best Overall (A trip to Dallas to visit AT&T headquarters and the AT&T Foundry) – TwitchToxBox: TwitchToxBox is an app that monitors a Twitch stream chat for user toxicity levels. The app uses neural networks on Watson tone and personality analyzers to learn and spot behaviors. Once the behavior is found, the app alerts the streamer and moderators of toxic chat members.

2nd Place Best Overall & Best Use of IBM Bluemix ($2,000 and each team member received a Beats Solo Headphone) – Fluffle: Three million Americans suffer from epilepsy with 17% dying from these seizures each year. With a vision to improve all aspects of the sleep experience, Fluffle mattress pad detects violent seizures and uses Watson API to contact 911 in life threatening situations to potentially help save lives.

3rd Place Best Overall ($1,000) – It’s Youme not Meme: This app is designed for entertain while inspiring an interest in machine learning. It’s Youme not Meme utilizes a comical social medium to demonstrate the power of Watson’s image detection to create customized memes out of a user’s photos.”

Team Listenin’ shows off their app

Best App from a Women Led Team ($1,000) – Listenin’: Listenin’ will listen to the tone of your voice for emotional keywords to find the perfect playlist for you when all you want to do is to change up the vibe. Through the Spotify SDK, you can play, pause, and skip through your favorite songs, and favorite them! It’s great for when you need to avoid getting distracted by your phone, and you want to just tell it to form a playlist for you instead of looking one up yourself.

Team Listenin’ shows off their appBest IOT Solution Overall ($500) – SeeCheck: In a matter of seconds, this app helps you identify where available seats are in the school library. So you can quickly decide if it’s worth making the trek over to the library or just stay in your room and study.

Most Innovative or Marketable Idea ($500) – Bless You: When you sneeze, an app or a computer will say “bless you.”

Special thanks to our sponsors IDEA Center, University of Notre Dame, and IBM.