The Internet of Things is an uptrend, the technology is used everywhere and everywhere: in industry, business, everyday life (hello to smart light bulbs and refrigerators that order food themselves). But this is just the beginning - there are a lot of tasks that can be solved with the help of IoT.
In order to visually show the capabilities of the technology to developers, GeekBrains, together with Rostelecom, decided to hold an IoT hackathon. The task was the same for all participants - to come up with a solution in the field of the Internet of Things and implement a web and / or mobile application for a specific user of smart devices. Technically speaking, it was necessary to write front—end for the end user, plus back—endThe that manages the business logic for working with the data.
Who are they, the heroes of our hackathon romance?
434 people responded to the call to take part in the hackathon, where you need to come up with and implement an IoT solution for business — that’s how many applications the organizers received. 184 people took part in the hackathon - 35 teams. By the way, one of the conditions was to invite only novice developers who want to try their hand at a new field.
Almost everyone reached the finish line - 33 teams out of 35, that's 174 people.
All judged by the jury, consisting entirely of harsh professionals:
- Dmitry Slinkov - Industrial Internet Director, Rostelecom;
- Alexey Poluektov - Director of Platform Architecture Department, Rostelecom;
- Nikita Bratko - Chief Solutions Architect, Rostelecom;
- Oleg Gerasimov - Head of Wink and In-memory DB Reindexer platform development, Rostelecom Information Technologies;
- Nikolai Olkhovsky — director of the Competence Center for Video Surveillance Product Development, Rostelecom Information Technologies;
- Sergey Shirkin - Dean of the Faculty of Artificial Intelligence at GeekUniversity, Data Scientist at Dentsu Aegis Network Russia;
- Oleg Shikov - Dean of the Faculty of Web Development at GeekUniversity;
- Alexander Sinichkin is a GeekBrains teacher, Python Team Lead at Usetech.
First there was a word - the word of an expert
In order for the hackathon participants to better understand what to do, Rostelecom specialists held three thematic master classes at once. The first is "Internet of Things Platform", the second is "Introduction to React Native" and the third is "Mobile Application from Scratch".
Well, in order for each participant to be aware of the task and present an approximate solution path, plus he knew where to run for the award in case of victory, the participants were helped by mentors:
- Alexey Poluektov - Director of Platform Architecture Department, Rostelecom;
- Nikita Bratko - Chief Solutions Architect, Rostelecom;
- Sergey Bastionov - Head of Project Management Group, Rostelecom;
- Oleg Shikov - Dean of the Faculty of Web Development at GeekUniversity;
- Sergey Kruchinin - head of educational projects at GeekUniversity;
- Alexander Sinichkin - GeekBrains teacher, Python Team Lead at Usetech;
- Ivan Makeev is a teacher at GeekBrains, the founder of the Quick Reader project.
Mentors performed the role of a kind of "ambulance". They approached the teams, asked various questions, commented on emerging ideas and suggested potentially promising directions. If someone needed advice, the participant received it almost immediately after asking for help.
How did everything go?
On the first day, the hackathon participants passed two “checkpoints”:
- Before 14:00, team members had to decide and announce what idea they would work on at the hackathon. The organizers recorded the ideas;
- In the evening, the teams talked about what they did and what happened in the end.
The organizers advised the participants to receive feedback from two mentors every day - this is necessary in order to focus on expert opinions. Some of the fastest participants managed to talk to all the mentors.
In order to get the job done faster, 23 teams didn't go to bed, but stayed in the office overnight. Coffee helped, ideas and enthusiasm helped, plus a few snacks.
Then, on the second day of the hackathon, the teams demonstrated what happened in the end. After that, the judges consulted for some time and gave marks. Each project was evaluated according to the following criteria:
- Whether it solves a specific user problem and how relevant it is.
- The novelty of the idea.
- Technical complexity: scale of the solution, devices involved, amount of data collected.
- Backend implementation.
- Frontend implementation.
- The operation of the interface is a prototype in action.
- Commercial prospects of the project.
Each item was scored on a five-point scale. Then all the scores of each team were summed up. The top three teams were determined by the final sum. In addition to the main three winners, there were additional prizes in nine other nominations.
Sector "Prize" - final results
The first place was taken by the SunDali team (which, by the way, had a laptop burnt in the process). She received a prize of 100 thousand rubles for the development of a control system for unmanned harvesting equipment.
The second place with a prize of 70 rubles was given to the RHDV team, which implemented a project to control and remotely control the smart greenhouse system.
Well, the third place was taken by the GeekBrains course team, which presented an IoT insurance project for the agricultural complex.
As for the nominations, here are the winners of each of them:
☆ Prize for the commercial prospects of the project - ReAction
☆ Prize "Take it and do it!" - "2121"
☆ Innovative solution - WAAS!!!
☆ Prize of "Zelezyak" - "BNB"
☆ Best integration solution - Snakes
☆ Best mobile app - "Boats"
☆ Prize “Oh, we still have a demo!” - "Nursultan"
☆ Rostelecom Sympathy Award - "5642"
☆ Jury Choice Award – OCEAN
What do the participants say?
The experts were satisfied with how everything went. Here is what Nikolai Olkhovsky, director of the Competence Center for Video Surveillance Product Development, Rostelecom Information Technologies, said: “The solutions created at the hackathon command respect. There were teams that themselves found ready-made datasets instead of those proposed by us and screwed interfaces to them. As a result, their demos looked very realistic. Many have tried to implement large-scale things in just a day.
The dedication and creativity of the guys was amazing. Despite lack of sleep and tight deadlines, everyone did their best: 33 out of 35 teams reached the finish line. This is a very good result! All participants are great. And we, the jury and mentors, enjoyed it.”.
Alexander Sinichkin, GeekBrains teacher, Python Team Lead at Usetech: “It was my first time participating in a hackathon and I was in awe of how many guys can come up with something interesting and worthwhile. Every third, and even second project forced to exclaim: “Wow, could it be like that ?!”
I was very pleased with how persistently the participants tried to understand things they did not understand. How can you connect neural networks and a web project in two days and without experience? But they did it. Very cool".
It is worth noting that each of the hackathon participants received a job opportunity. HR from Rostelecom communicated with the participants, collecting useful contacts. The representative of the company Olga Romanova, the head of selection of IT specialists of Rostelecom Information Technologies commented on the results as follows: “Rostelecom is ready to work with novice specialists and, of course, we actively communicated with the guys at the hackathon in order to attract the best to our team. Depending on the level of the person, we can offer a professional position or an internship. We have many interesting and promising projects: interactive television, video surveillance platform, smart home platform. After the hackathon, we have already conducted several interviews.”
Well, the impressions of the winners - we took a short interview with the team leaders.
Alexandra Vasilega, team leader of the SunDali team (1st place)
Why did you decide to take part in the hackathon?
For many in the team, this was the first hackathon, and the decision to take part came spontaneously.
How did you come up with the idea that allowed you to take the prize?
There was a long discussion with a lot of ideas, but the final thing was that one of the team members looked at the robot vacuum cleaner, he had the idea to use such a device to work on a project. This is how our version came about.
What will you spend (or have already spent) the prize pool on?
Everyone decided personally - for me it's a technique.
Arkady Dymkov, team leader of the RHDV team (2nd place)
Why did you decide to take part in the hackathon?
Our team has been participating in hackathons on various topics for a long time, so we perfectly understood what a hackathon is and what needs to be done there. We signed up for participation, one might say, by accident: one of the members of our team stumbled upon the announcement of a joint hackathon from Rostelecom and Geekbrains. We looked at the cases and immediately realized that this was ours.
How did you come up with the idea that allowed you to take the prize?
Recently, we took part in an agrohackathon, in which we won with a greenhouse project. We already had the code for the controllers and we understood the principle of the entire system, so the idea was born not to dig far, but to do something on the same topic, and it almost perfectly fit into the theme of the new hackathon. We have made software for remote control and monitoring of smart greenhouse systems. As it seemed to us, this idea is at least practical and will be able to "shoot". And so it happened.
What will you spend (or have already spent) the prize pool on?
We divided the money equally and each remained with his part).
Maxim Lukyanov, team leader of the Random Forest team (3rd place)
Why did you decide to take part in the hackathon?
I learned about the hackathon because I study at Geekbrains in the AI department. At the time of the hackathon, I had just mastered the python libraries for machine learning, and since the hackathon itself was positioned as an event for beginner developers in the field of machine learning, I decided that it would be great to try my hand at practice. In addition, I had never participated in such competitions before and it was interesting to try.
How did you come up with the idea that allowed you to take the prize?
All team members sketched several ideas, formed a list, it included 7 options. At the hackathon itself, we started by discussing all the ideas, discarding those that are difficult to implement within the given time, and choosing the most thoughtful and, in our opinion, interesting project to introduce IoT sensors in the fields to monitor their condition and inform about emerging risks (insured events). The idea was originally thought up, in my opinion, by Oleg Kharatov.
What will you spend (or have already spent) the prize pool on?
We took third place, our prize is free GekBrains courses.
In general, the hackathon can be considered successful, everyone enjoyed it - the participants, the jury, the audience and, of course, the organizers. Follow the agenda, this hackathon is not the last one.
Source: habr.com