Emergency alerts and traffic predictions at the inaugural Google Developer Student Club Hackathon
by Meredith Hutcheson
On an uncharacteristically rainy day this Saturday in California, students from the Northeastern University Google Developer Student Club were up early. The end of the term is just a few weeks away, but for the next 24 hours everyone’s attention was going to be on the group’s first hackathon. Teams assembled at the Silicon Valley campus and the San Francisco campus, and a few logged in from home. All together, 25 students from the Khoury College of Computer Sciences and the College of Engineering were in attendance.
Aparna Krishnan, MS in Computer Science ‘23, was the lead organizer for the event. She said she hoped this would be the first of many hackathons for the group. “They are great for your portfolio, because it shows you can do something fast from idea to completion. Hackathons are usually hotbeds of innovation because of the short time frame.”
And she thought this smaller, friendlier version would be good practice for larger events. Corporations will run similar events to give out funding to startup projects, or to make hiring offers. Building experience jumping into a team and being part of every decision can help students get the most out of future events.
“And they’re always really fun,” she said with a laugh. “It’s a good bonding experience, and there’s always free food.”
For the event on Saturday, the students grouped themselves into teams. They were given the choice of three topics to address: virtual learning, emergency reporting, or traffic monitoring. After a few remarks from Aparna, the groups split off and started working.
By the next morning, the students had little sleep logged but lots of work to show. Everyone reassembled over Zoom to share their final presentations.
The first team presented their project, QR Code Lifesaver, which makes contact between strangers in an emergency situation while protecting each user’s privacy. Their system allows a user to create a QR code that can be used as an emergency contact link, for example on a pet’s collar or on a relative’s medical alert bracelet. The system connects two end users with one another over text and email while keeping the contact information blind until they choose to share it.
The next group tackled the traffic problem with their project, Bottlenecks: A Transit Network Diagnostic Program. Their goal was to provide a tool that developers and urban planners could reference when looking at city roadways. The program builds a model of the road system by looking at the interaction of nodes—for example, points of interest, hospitals, highway exits—and edges, or roads, which are given attributes such as number of lanes and top speed. Using this system, they can give a projection of places where traffic jams are likely.
The third project was the School Visual Lab. To help students who are learning remotely, this app renders 2D illustrations as augmented reality 3D models for better comprehension. For example, a student learning engineering might be able to see a machine that they were studying as an interactive object that they could virtually examine from multiple angles. The program also allows teachers who have assigned the work to see their students’ individual progress through the assignment.
The next group’s project was the Flashlight Morse Code Transmitter: Communicate with Cell Phone Flashlight. They envisioned this project as a tool for people who have been stranded without internet or cell service following a natural disaster. The app allows a user to enter English text into their phone, which then translates it into Morse code and flashes the message through the flashlight. It also works in reverse, allowing the user to enter in the dots and dashes of a message they are receiving to have the text translated back into English. In future versions, they would like to incorporate a feature that would directly translate Morse code received through the camera by video.
The final group focused on preventing missing children with their project TrackTrail. This system allows a parent to set a defined safe zone for their child—for example, a half-mile radius from the parent’s device. The child’s device then sends continuous location updates to the database, and if they leave the safe zone, the parent is instantly notified.
Aparna, the organizer, was joined for the judging by Arjith Natarajan, a product developer, and Varun Raghunathan, a marketing and design manager. After deliberation, first prize went to the project Bottlenecks for their transit system model. TrackTrail won second place with their child safety tracker. And Flashlight Morse Code Transmitter won third with their emergency communication system.
Participants in this year’s Google DSC Hackathon were: Umang Barot, Mattia Contestabile, Xinyi Feng, Sonal Gurav, Hui Hu, Ming Hsiu Lee, Guarang Jotwani, Varun Kabra, Kewal Kishan Gokuldas, Priya Mathanagopal, Anshul Mathew, Mihir Milind Kapile, Raj Sudharshan Vidyalatha Natarajan, Triet Ngo, Amit Pai, Jishva Shah, Mozhi Shen, Nithish Kanna Sivakumar, Ferran Sulaiman, Senay Tilahun, Hua Wang, Xinwan Wang, Jing Ye, and Yao Zhong.
Interested in joining the Google Developers Student Club? Contact Aparna Krishnan at [email protected].