4 ms·

This is exactly what a hackathon project should be. Delightful, innovative and scoped small enough that they produce results without too much bullshit. Not the

This is exactly what a hackathon project should be. Delightful, innovative and scoped small enough that they produce results without too much bullshit. Not the usual "world changing" hacks that end up abandoned the moment the event concludes. If only events encouraged more hacks like these.

fucking_tragedy 7y ago
Yep, this is truly awesome. These types of hacks are what got me into computing as a kid. Reminds me of early Hack-A-Day content before most of their posts became Arduino/Raspberry Pi centric.
fireattack 7y ago
>that end up abandoned the moment the event concludes What makes this one different in this regard? (I'm not trying to say it's a meaningless project.)
- jrh206 7y ago
  The difference is that when this is abandoned, it is complete
  - rafaelvasco 7y ago
    Bingo.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sli 7y ago
The last hackathon I attended, the winners just built something from an Instructable that existed well before the hackathon. My friends and I built a time machine radio (i.e. you tune it to a decade, with a knob and everything, and radio news from the decade was included if we could find it) and won best hardware hack, so it wasn't a total loss. Had a blast either way.
- ergothus 7y ago
  > The last hackathon I attended, the winners.... (Not a comment on you, but you poked the button) While my hackathon experience is limited, I think any attempt to crown a "winner" reduces the experience. Of course, I am too sensitive because everyone can just enjoy it...but as soon as there's a winner there starts to be rules that people try to game, the are added restrictions and limits that reduce what is being created, etc. And creating is the point.
  - setr 7y ago
    However, you do want to show off the more interesting/higher quality projects, to encourage further work, and get the whole thing jiving (people enjoy competition; it oils the machines) The problem I think is that judges themselves are incompetent/careless — when you promote a “bad” winner, you just discourage everyone from trying, because they realize there is no value to this kind of promotion; its bullshit. I had a similar experience in my university — some kind of business project idea competition; we submitted my lab’s current project, and there were other interesting projects involved who I would have been happy to lose to. Instead I lost to the girl with the contentless idea for edible spoons for developing countries... an idea I’d seen repeatedly in recent news cycles because some NGO in India was doing it for the last three years. Five minutes of googling would have discovered this, but instead we simply ignored the competition since. Attending itself was valuable, along with the half-attempt at winning — we clarified the project and ideas, and had an excuse to clean things up — so it would have been a good exercise to do yearly (and probably for the other projects involved), and the competition was healthy. But it just takes an incompetent judge to spoil the whole thing. There’s nothing wrong with people trying to game the competition, its a natural function of competing. But the judges are meant to operate as experts, and an expert should have (some) ability to discern bullshit from something real.
    - _hardwaregeek 7y ago
      Agreed. I wish hackathon judges actually understood how to question and analyze projects critically. I attended probably one of the most prestigious and well regarded college hackathons, where the grand prize was won by a project that did speech to text, then text to sign language. What nobody pointed out or acknowledged, was that deaf people can read. But since the project was done on a HoloLens the judges got swept away by the fancy AR and awarded them the prize. I've become extremely skeptical of the hackathon model in general. It doesn't really produce good projects or products, it encourages an unsustainable style of working and it's a terrible place to recruit good developers. It can encourage people to build stuff, but only monkey patched, bursting with buzzwords, overly flashy projects that are thrown away at a moment's notice.
GordonS 7y ago
I especially liked the way it was presented on the website, with short videos for each step - made it really easy to follow!

fucking_tragedy 7y ago

Yep, this is truly awesome. These types of hacks are what got me into computing as a kid. Reminds me of early Hack-A-Day content before most of their posts became Arduino/Raspberry Pi centric.

fireattack 7y ago

>that end up abandoned the moment the event concludes What makes this one different in this regard? (I'm not trying to say it's a meaningless project.)

jrh206 7y ago
The difference is that when this is abandoned, it is complete
- rafaelvasco 7y ago
  Bingo.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

sli 7y ago

The last hackathon I attended, the winners just built something from an Instructable that existed well before the hackathon. My friends and I built a time machine radio (i.e. you tune it to a decade, with a knob and everything, and radio news from the decade was included if we could find it) and won best hardware hack, so it wasn't a total loss. Had a blast either way.

ergothus 7y ago
> The last hackathon I attended, the winners.... (Not a comment on you, but you poked the button) While my hackathon experience is limited, I think any attempt to crown a "winner" reduces the experience. Of course, I am too sensitive because everyone can just enjoy it...but as soon as there's a winner there starts to be rules that people try to game, the are added restrictions and limits that reduce what is being created, etc. And creating is the point.
- setr 7y ago
  However, you do want to show off the more interesting/higher quality projects, to encourage further work, and get the whole thing jiving (people enjoy competition; it oils the machines) The problem I think is that judges themselves are incompetent/careless — when you promote a “bad” winner, you just discourage everyone from trying, because they realize there is no value to this kind of promotion; its bullshit. I had a similar experience in my university — some kind of business project idea competition; we submitted my lab’s current project, and there were other interesting projects involved who I would have been happy to lose to. Instead I lost to the girl with the contentless idea for edible spoons for developing countries... an idea I’d seen repeatedly in recent news cycles because some NGO in India was doing it for the last three years. Five minutes of googling would have discovered this, but instead we simply ignored the competition since. Attending itself was valuable, along with the half-attempt at winning — we clarified the project and ideas, and had an excuse to clean things up — so it would have been a good exercise to do yearly (and probably for the other projects involved), and the competition was healthy. But it just takes an incompetent judge to spoil the whole thing. There’s nothing wrong with people trying to game the competition, its a natural function of competing. But the judges are meant to operate as experts, and an expert should have (some) ability to discern bullshit from something real.
  - _hardwaregeek 7y ago
    Agreed. I wish hackathon judges actually understood how to question and analyze projects critically. I attended probably one of the most prestigious and well regarded college hackathons, where the grand prize was won by a project that did speech to text, then text to sign language. What nobody pointed out or acknowledged, was that deaf people can read. But since the project was done on a HoloLens the judges got swept away by the fancy AR and awarded them the prize. I've become extremely skeptical of the hackathon model in general. It doesn't really produce good projects or products, it encourages an unsustainable style of working and it's a terrible place to recruit good developers. It can encourage people to build stuff, but only monkey patched, bursting with buzzwords, overly flashy projects that are thrown away at a moment's notice.

GordonS 7y ago

I especially liked the way it was presented on the website, with short videos for each step - made it really easy to follow!