NEWS HIGHLIGHTS
- Last weekend, Intel together with the Digital Hub in Dublin, hosted the Dublin Smart City Hackathon as part of the Global Urban Data Fest.
- The Smart City Hackathon generated a number of diverse and creative demos with the first place prize being awarded to the ‘Bintel’ project which is an innovative urban waste management system that aims to improve the livability, attractiveness, efficiency, and environmental management of the city and its services.
- The top placed team picked up a prize of €2,500 with prizes also being awarded to second and third placed teams.
- The top 2 projects from each location now go forward to compete for global recognition as part of the Global Urban Datafest initiative and will have the chance to win cash prizes for the Best Software Project, Best Hardware Project and Best Data Project.
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Last weekend, Intel together with the Digital Hub in Dublin hosted the Dublin Smart City Hackathon, as part of the Global Urban Data Fest which is a multi-city hackathon, where people in cities round the world come together for a weekend of intense, collaborative coding.
 The Smart City Hackathon brought together makers, entrepreneurs, designers, engineers, urban experts, data scientists, and developers from across Ireland |
The Dublin Smart City Hackathon brought together makers, entrepreneurs, designers, engineers, urban experts, data scientists, and developers from across Ireland who gathered in the Digital Hub in Dublin 8 for a weekend dedicated to developing ideas and hacking hardware in conjunction with Dublin City Council, IBM, Dublin City University, and many others.
The event began on Friday March 6th with a number of keynote addresses from the likes of Dublin City Council, Intel and IBM which provided food for thought for the hackathon participants who then went on to pitch their creative ideas to the room with teams forming shortly after and beginning the making process on their new projects.
The making process continued on Saturday into the small hours with the culmination of the event on Sunday afternoon when teams participated in a prototype showcase where they shared for the first time their working demos with a panel of judges. At stake was prize money of €5,000 which was awarded to the top 3 projects at the event.
The prototype showcase was followed by final pitches by each of the team which was a formal opportunity to address the judges and assembled audience with a 3 minute summary of their idea and prototype.
The Smart City Hackathon generated a number of diverse and creative demos including the likes of the ‘Bedcount’ project which incorporated a small prototype device that can be affixed to hospital beds and linked to a cloud based system that enables real-time monitoring of bed availability and occupancy in a hospitals. Another of the projects, CityBuzz, was using a combination of hardware boxes and mobile apps to fill the communication gap between citizens and local organizations, such as City Councils, Schools and airports.
After much deliberation by the judging panel the Hackathon winners were announced as follows;
• First prize went to ‘Bintel’ which is an innovative urban waste management system that aims to improve the livability, attractiveness, efficiency, and environmental management of the city and its services. Developed in line with a re-imagination of urban areas’ pre-existing infrastructure, ‘Bintel’ provides potential administrations with an opportunity to increase their influence throughout the city more efficiently and cost-effectively through the use of low-cost sensors.
The team picked up the top prize of €2,500 to support the continuing development of the product.
• Second prize was awarded to ‘Get your bike back rack’ which incorporates hidden RFID tags on bikes, such as below the grip-tape, mud-guards, decals etc. that can be detected by connected bike racks or RFID readers overlooking existing bike racks. If a bike has been marked as stolen and is detected at a connected location, the owner and police will be notified. If a bike is removed from a rack without the companion keychain RFID tag present, the owner will be alerted and the theft hopefully prevented. Once the system is in widespread use, the market for stolen bikes will diminish and bike use will increase. The team received a prize of €1,500.
• Third prize was awarded to ‘Life-tracking’, an idea that combined a remote life monitor component together with proximity detection and team management functionality to create a technology that would help track on duty personnel in the city with data being collected via wearable components and held in a cloud based system for tracking. The team received a prize of €1000.
Each of the winning ideas had incorporated both Intel Galileo and IBM Bluemix technology into their designs. As part of the event Intel provided a number of Galileo microcontroller boards to participants to facilitate the various different ideas and concepts being explored.
Intel Galileo is the first in a line of Arduino-compatible development boards based on Intel architecture and is designed for the maker and education communities. The platform is easy to use for new designers and for those looking to take designs to the next level. The Galileo board and the Intel® Quark SoC X1000 by which it is powered were both designed in Ireland at the Intel campus in Leixlip, Co. Kildare.
A team of people representing Intel were on hand throughout the weekend to provide guidance and technical know-how on incorporating the Galileo board and Intel’s Pete Dice from the Internet of Things Group (IoT), spoke to participants at the outset of the event about ‘the rise of IoT and it’s significance in the Smart City space.
Speaking at the event Pete Dice remarked, “There is no better demonstration of the essence of the Internet of Things than a Hardware Hackathon. Watching these engineers, developers, designers and entrepreneurs starting with real-world-problems, adding two days of collaborative making, and producing real functioning prototypes is just fantastic. Of course, it’s all the more exciting for us when these smart city applications are based on our very own Quark driven Galileo’s”.
The top 2 projects from each location now go forward to compete for global recognition as part of the Global Urban Datafest initiative and will have the chance to win cash prizes for the Best Software Project, Best Hardware Project and Best Data Project. A full list of projects created as part of the Global Urban Datafest can be found here.
Next up Intel will be involved in Ireland’s first ever food hackathon – the Beefhack – which will be held on the DCU Innovation Campus and calls on entrepreneurs, designers, engineers, creators, food technologists, agricultural graduates and innovators to join in on a weekend dedicated to developing ideas on producing quality beef. The event will take place from March 20th – 22nd and registration is open at: http://beefhackathon.com/.
 First place award at the Smart City Hackathon went to the project ‘Bintel’ |
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 Pictured above are the ‘Life-tracker’ team who picked up the third place prize at the event |
Further images can be found here: Dublin Smart City Hackathon – Global Data Fest – an album on Flickr
Further Information
About Global Urban Datafest
The Global Urban Datafest is a multi-city hackathon, a weekend of intense collaborative coding. We bring together two diverse groups. One is developers, data scientists, open hardware enthusiasts. The other includes urban experts, journalists and specialists in all other fields. Diverse teams typically produce best results. This is why we invite people of all backgrounds to participate. http://www.global.datafest.net/
About the Digital Hub
The Digital Hub is a vibrant cluster of digital content and technology enterprises, located on a state-of-the-art campus in the heart of Dublin City. Set up by the Irish government in 2003, The Digital Hub fosters innovation, technological development and creativity in a supportive, entrepreneurial environment. Our resident digital media and technology businesses enjoy excellent infrastructure and support, as well as ample opportunities for collaboration, networking and knowledge-sharing. http://www.thedigitalhub.com/
About Intel
Intel is a world leader in computing innovation. The company designs and builds the essential technologies that serve as the foundation for the world’s computing devices.
Additional information about Intel is available at:
Web – intel.ie | Twitter – @Intel_IRL | Facebook – Intel Ireland
Further information about Intel’s Mini Scientist program is available at www.miniscientist.ie.
Media contact: Sarah Sexton | sarah.sexton@intel.com | + 353 1 606 8537
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