(Newswire.net — December 4, 2014) — Wollongong University was host to this year’s Hackagong 2014, were over 135 fertile minds making up 45 teams who toiled for a brain numbing 30 hours giving life to creative concepts. From the outside it may look like a mosh pit of geeks coding and brainstorming, but in reality it is hive of creative energy, where knowledge and ideas were shared freely over the two days.
At stake was over $100,000 in prizes and giveaways that were divided up into 10 categories and a overall grand winner who took home over $42,000 in prizes. Here is a list of the winners this year.
Grand Winner: Infobarhn.
This team of 4 designed and built an egg incubator that is remotely controlled via an Internet connection. The ability to remotely monitor and manage eggs through the incubation process can increase yields considerably will reducing the time and labor behind the process.
The incubator was a cute egg shaped box that was 3D printed and fitted out with motors, sensors and other electronics to bring it to life. The unit held two chicken eggs, but could be adapted to hold a range of more exotic animal eggs like, domestic birds or even Crocodiles.
This technology is a prototype for integration into a range of agricultural applications to help increase productivity while reducing costs while changing the face of farming.
People’s Choice Award: RentLeft
RentLeft automates the hassle of renting applications, with a single unified digital document that once filled can be used for multiple rentals saving time , ink and paper.
Most Innovative 3D Print: Infobahn
This egg shaped hatcher was a great example of 3D printing in a prototyping application.
Most Creative 3D Print: Mecha Chapter
Mecha Chapter is a war game entirely developed using 3d printers from models created by a 3d artist team.
Best Data Visualisation: Scannner
Scanner is a smartphone app that collects inventory and sales data through reading the barcodes of products during the POS process. This affordable solution gives smaller business access to the same analytical data as the big players like Woolworths, Rebel Sport, and Kmart.
Best Braintree/PayPal Integration: Monash
Blink is a group of plucky young student from Monash with a dream of revolutionising e-commerce.
Best Use Of Scala/Play/Akka: Wtbh.ru
This team developed a cross platform location sharing for both mobile platforms and web.
Best Indie Game: CropSwapper
A tile-swapping medieval farming puzzle game.
Pioneering the Future with Meta: MetaChat
A virtual reality 3D video chat room, using the Meta 1 Developer kit. Communication through interaction in a vertical world.
Best IoT Device Hack: Qlock
A remote digital pad lock enabling you to replace all of your traditional pad locks or combination locks with a Qlock , that you can open from your iPhone.
Most Awesome Photo: Meta Physics
The image was an example of Augmented Reality taken from their project.
Credit must be noted to the founder of Hackagong Nathan Waters and he’s team of volunteer’s who make this event run and of course the Sponsors who provided the resources and Prizes. But most importantly to the 135 competitors who’s idea’s, efforts and drive was the magic witnessed at Hackagong 2014.