PennApps Spring 2014!

A thousand students from as far as Switzerland and Singapore made their way through sleet and snow to hack for 48 hours straight, with the occasional power nap.

Looks like a refugee camp in the basement

PennApps has been around for awhile now so the students that showed up seemed well-acquainted with the format (and the air mattresses). What felt new this year was an increased interest in hardware. While there have always been hardware hacks at PennApps, this year UPenn's bi-annual hardware hackathon (PennHacks) merged with PennApps -- which meant even more of a focus on encouraging people to try their hand at wiring/soldering/duct-taping.

Jai from team Heartless Ninja successfully soldered for the first time!

At least 30 of the 225 hacks that made the finish line were hardware hacks. We awarded the "Best Hardware Hack" prize to Chirp: a wireless and wearable EEG processing device that maps brain activity to detect the onset of seizures. The data can be monitored in realtime through a bluetooth connection to a mobile device, and alerts can be sent to the patient or a caretaker/emergency contact. The 48-hour prototype used multiple microcontrollers, which meant Aadithya sported an adorable fanny pack during demos, but the device could be shrunk down even further with PSoC4 devices.

Aadithya feels like Barney at Slapsgiving

The best part of this hack was trying to scare or smack Aadyithya to see the effects of "agitation" on the graphed data.

The winner of the whole shebang was the Homework Machine, a first-time hardware hack from Derek He and Chris Yan, which mimicked handwriting samples to complete arithmetic worksheets. (If you look closely you'll notice two plastic knives from the cafeteria and a flyer from one of the sponsors playing pivotal roles in the operation.)

Who says marketing flyers aren't useful?

PennApps was a terrific opportunity for us to meet students that already know and love Octopart, and introduce ourselves to new hardware hackers.

Octopart T-shirt sightings

We're grateful to all the organizers, especially the ones on the hardware committee who were fun to hang out with during the long hours camped out in Detkin lab.

Finding parts (IRL!) in Detkin Lab

Till the next one!

Vendmo: the smart vending machine powered by Venmo