HackOHI/O 2021
Each year in the fall, Ohio State University puts on a hackathon called HackOHI/O at their Columbus campus. A hackathon is an event where computer scientists, computer engineers and electrical engineers come together to spend 24 consecutive hours building a system from scratch. Participants aren’t limited to exclusively computer scientists, computer engineers and electrical engineers, but those majors tend to have skills that are relevant to the hackathon. The system that groups build can be whatever the group wants, or it can follow a sponsor’s challenge. This year the event was primarily sponsored by Microsoft, Honda, American Electric Power (AEP), Root Insurance, Veeva and Engie. For example, Microsoft’s challenge was to create an app that will run on Windows to celebrate the release of Windows 11. Honda’s challenge was to design a system to enhance driver awareness and safety.
My group decided to tackle AEP’s challenge which was to design a system to link drone images and map data of electric poles. Initially, we were going to create an Android app to accomplish this, but ran into problems implementing our app. We decided to create a Progressive Web App using the lit framework but had trouble setting up the server. We burnt around eight hours on this task. Not all of this time was wasted, though. We were able to carry forward some interface design work that we had completed forward into our next approach. After our failure with lit, we tried Node.js, a different framework that can accomplish many of the same things as lit. We had greater success with Node.js, but it still wasn’t quite what we needed. Our last framework was Express. This framework was what we were looking for, but we ran out of time before we finished. We had completed a lot of the data analysis and the front end was complete, but we were unable to connect them into one cohesive product. It was still fun, though. We learned a lot about what not to do and figured out the foundation of future products.
My group decided to tackle AEP’s challenge which was to design a system to link drone images and map data of electric poles. Initially, we were going to create an Android app to accomplish this, but ran into problems implementing our app. We decided to create a Progressive Web App using the lit framework but had trouble setting up the server. We burnt around eight hours on this task. Not all of this time was wasted, though. We were able to carry forward some interface design work that we had completed forward into our next approach. After our failure with lit, we tried Node.js, a different framework that can accomplish many of the same things as lit. We had greater success with Node.js, but it still wasn’t quite what we needed. Our last framework was Express. This framework was what we were looking for, but we ran out of time before we finished. We had completed a lot of the data analysis and the front end was complete, but we were unable to connect them into one cohesive product. It was still fun, though. We learned a lot about what not to do and figured out the foundation of future products.
Danny, this was a super interesting post, I loved reading about your experience at the hackathon. It's really cool that you took part in the hackathon and tried your hand at AEP's challenge. I think your story is a great example of how perseverance can get you where you need to be. Even though your group ran out of time before finishing I'm sure it was still a great experience since you were able to do something you're passionate about and clearly skilled at. This was a great read and I wish you the best of luck at the next hackathon!
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