ISOC Serbia Chapter supported and participated in the Internet of Things and wearables hackathon, DesCon, that took place last weekend Aug 5-7 at the International Test Center, near Belgrade.
It featured hands-on workshops for hardware and software, Crypto Party, as well as talks on Digital Compression Loss, Ethereum mining, BlockChain and DJ-ing. Two successful IoT startups, Strawberry Tree, an Internet solar energy powered benches from Serbia and Doctor2Go from New Zealand presented their work and business strategies.
The main goal was to expose participants to electronics and hardware skills by learning to solder and put together an Arduino Nano computer/ an interactive badge – with Wifi, joystick and other components, as well as write the code.
Some participants combined the Arduino-Nano it with other sensors to create a product. Feedback from three teams of software programmers that worked on hardware solutions for the first time showed that they really enjoyed the challenge to create new software functions but also keeping in mind hardware limitations. Participants kept the interactive Arduino Nano badge they built, so they can continue to further improve the firmware after the hackathon. They will keep the Github code https://github.com/H-LK/
The jury awarded “It’s a Match” product prototype where any of wearable computer owners could identify, add and unfollow nearby twitter accounts.
We are grateful to all ISOC Chapter participants, Hacklab Belgrade community, DJ Balkan Beast Boy for his beats, Dragan Ilic for his robot performance, dotMe, Stretch Sense and ComCast for their support.
More Info: https://descon.me/2016/press/
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DesCon 2016 theme is fun alertness. It is about fashionable devices, wearables and garments we can build together and use in our daily life to alert us to some fun, be it some kind of warning or otherwise in our vicinity or online.
DesCon 2016 features talks from feature leading international speakers on subjects including Internet of Things, cryptography, security, block-chain and wearable technologies. DesCon hackathon, which creates huge social engagement, is focused around the theme ‘how can we begin to think more strategically about security in Internet of Things and adapting business models and operations to create new revenue opportunities”.
Groups will use various sensors, Arduino kits and their own hardware to build wearable fashion items and IoT devices capable of taking and measuring data both from the atmosphere and human bodies.
Last year’s DesCon 2015 was the first hackathon of that kind, and it was a resounding success with participants requesting this year dates early in 2016.
The event was featured in the European Linux Community magazine.
