Making a debut, Penang saw its first entry into the JomHack series with the 24 hour Internet of Things (IoT) Hackathon known as JomHack: IoT for Smart Cities with LoRa that happened from November 18 to 20.
This Hackathon was the summit event for the MyIoTC Week 2016, a weeklong series full of workshops, talks and seminars to help empower local talents by giving them access to technology and knowledge of the IoT scene that’s expected to rise in the coming years.
Global giants in the tech industry organised multiple programmes throughout the week, including Microsoft, National Instruments, Autodesk Hilti, Pensonic and newly launched Asean Data Analytics eXchange (ADAX).
For the hackathon itself, 90 participants from all over the northern region made their way over to join in.
Forming a total of 30 teams, the participants themselves were a varied bunch, with 11 professional teams and 19 student teams.
Age was not a limiting factor either way; they had a participant who was 16 with the oldest being 42 years old.
A majority of the teams came from local tertiary education institutes such as Universiti Sains Malaysia, Quest International University Perak, Monash University Malaysia, INTI College Penang, UITM, Disted College Penang, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, University Malaysia Perlis, Penang Skills Development Centre and KDU Penang University College.
Universiti Malaysia Perlis in particular impressed with their pool of talent by sending over a total of 5 teams of their own.
As with their usual Hackathons, JomHack saw all the teams collaborating to develop usable IoT solutions which can be adopted, and implemented in Penang which continues their “Smart Cities” theme.
The LoRa (a signal modulation technique that provides long range communication link for low power wide area network) technology was provided by French company Kerlink with Cytron Technologies Sdn Bhd giving the participants technical mentoring and development kits for their prototypes.
All the participants found themselves cooped up at the Accelerator for Creative, Analytics & Technology (@CAT), Wisma Yeap Chor Ee in Georgetown for 24 hours.
They were also given free flow of snacks and drinks all day and night to give that extra boost they needed to make it through the event.
After a grueling 24 hours spent coming up with bright and innovative ideas, 3 winners were chosen out of the 30 teams. They were judged for their real world use solutions, innovation and individual capabilities of the members.
In the end, the first place prize was awarded to a team named Will Code for Food which consists of Poh Wencuan, Chong Jen Ping and Daniel Sim Yeat Han for their “Smart Waste Management System” idea. The team snagged RM5000 in cash and prizes.
Second place went to Kenny Teoh Jack Hin, Peh Kean Hock and Choo Yuet Hsia with their “Electric Vehicle Monitoring System” solution, while third place went to Percy Chen Haur Khet, Chew Weng Chuen and Teh Boon Cheat for their “Smart Drainage System”.
The teams received RM 3000 and RM 1000, respectively.
Event partners Microchip made sure to not exclude the other teams as they presented prizes for Best Presentation, Most Creative Prototype and Best Student Team as well.
Youth really proved their worth that day with the Best Student Team winners boasting of two of the younger participants.
After their successful event at Penang, JomHack Malaysia will now be diverting their focus onto their next event which is with TM Berhad.
The event is called RE:Hack—Smart Living 24 hour Hackathon happening this coming December 10 and 11 and it will continue their main goal of encouraging innovation.
TM will be launching their new API Developer Portal at RE:Hack and the participants will be given a chance to invent on this platform using various communication, geomatics, payment and authentication APIs.
For more information on RE:Hack, click here.
The JomHack event was organised by The Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) and Malaysia IoT Consortium (MyIoTC) , together with Invest-In-Penang Berhad, KDU University College and Pixaworks Creative Sdn. Bhd.
Feature Image Credit: JomHack