150 Students Hack at the BU Hackathon
Boston University’s second annual hackathon, organized by MakeBU, took place on March 28-29, 2015 . (A hackathon is an event, typically lasting 24 hours, where programmers, designers and makers get together to create new projects or improve existing ones.) Projects ranged from 3d-printed piano keys to immersive virtual reality games.
The judges chose the following three projects from a very impressive field:
1st Place — Piano Lights
Wireless, portable set of lights that can easily be placed onto any standard piano or keyboard. Set of LED lights that light up over whichever keys or chords needs to be played. Reads user input from keyboards so the song will not progress until the correct note or notes are pressed. Learn more here: http://challengepost.com/software/piano-lights
Jake Messner, Max Connor, Zachary Marcus and Kurt Jaisle
2nd Place — Orator
Public speaking is the nation’s largest phobia. The best way to alleviate the angst of giving a speech, is practice. Orator is a web app that uses a computer’s microphone to capture audio then it turns that audio into text and analyzes the sentiment. This sentiment analysis helps one practice for public speaking. See a live demo here: http://danielgorelick.com/orator/#/1
Daniel Gorelick, Hung Vong, Naib Mobassir, Oliver Scott
3rd Place — Sound Off
Welcome to Sound Off, a desktop application that allows you to share short bits of data through a series of beeps. Share links, keys, or any short phrase in a few seconds. See a demo here: http://challengepost.com/software/sound-off
Ken Garber, Dave Tand