August 15, 2016
Samsung Inspired IoT Makers to Combat California’s Drought
by guest contributor Ryan Kuo, Technical Writer – Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center
When Samsung launched Makers Against Drought (M.A.D.) last year, we knew that the Internet of Things could effect real change. Our challenge to makers: find new ways to address the water crisis in California and other drought-stricken parts of the world using Samsung ARTIK, our end-to-end platform for IoT, and their ingenuity. We were overwhelmed by the response. Over 500 makers, inventors and entrepreneurs from 57 countries submitted their ideas to us. We chose the most interesting ideas, and sent out ARTIK developer kits. Then the work started.
M.A.D. contestants used ARTIK’s power and flexibility to design new ways to collect and act on water consumption data at a variety of scales.
The challenge ran in two stages:
In the first stage, we received 47 qualifying submissions from 18 countries, from which we selected ten finalists ($10,000 each), ten honorable mentions ($2,000 each), and one Popular Choice winner ($500). From the finalists, we then selected the winner of the $90,000 Grand Prize.
And the winner is…
Our Grand Prize winner is the Team EDDI! Their project, the Electrodialysis Desalinator for Irrigation (EDDI), impressed the judges to earn the top prize.
When we first met Team EDDI, we were impressed by the potential impact of EDDI, which provides farmers with a new way to remove salt from irrigation water—thus improving soil quality and increasing crop units.
The project was created by six friends from New York City with expertise ranging from web development to UX/UI design. After extensive research, the team discovered that agriculture accounts for approximately 75-80% of the state’s human water consumption, since farmers often over-water their fields to dilute the salt content in irrigation water. The team hypothesized that one alternative would be to use electrodialysis to fine-tune the water’s salinity.
The team used ARTIK’s GPIO capability to control the flow of water and electricity through EDDI, and employed wireless-based automation to send and receive data related to water salinity and flow. We chose EDDI as the winner because of its promised contribution to sustainable farming, integration of the ARTIK development kit, and potential commercial viability.
Here are some of the other outstanding finalists and Honorable Mention submissions:
NESS, a noteworthy finalist, created an on-demand hot water recirculation system that saves the water we waste while waiting for a hot shower.
Tadpole AMAS won one of the ten finalist spots for their sustainable, automated agricultural technology that lowers the entry barrier for adopting water-saving aquatic practices, reducing consumption by over 90%.
EVA, one of the honorable mention winners, built an autonomous floating hydrometeorology device that identifies, measures, and tracks areas that are most vulnerable to evaporation, such as aqueducts, riverbanks, and canals.
Dropwatch, another honorable mention winner, integrates with Amazon Alexa and challenges family members to take the shortest showers by monitoring usage time and awarding badges.
The Popular Choice award went to the ARTIK Smart Water Meter team, which designed an interactive dashboard water meter that connects homeowners and water authorities by providing real-time data about daily water allotments.
You can view all of the M.A.D. winners and submissions here.
The work to address water shortages and other important environmental issues is far from over. We continue to encourage all makers, entrepreneurs, technologists, and visionaries to think about how IoT can be used to solve this and other issues facing our planet.
For more information about Samsung ARTIK and how our end-to-end IoT platform can help you realize your planet-saving solutions, be sure to the ARTIK website, and check availability of ARTIK modules at Digi-Key.
July 14, 2016
I think this is the beginning of a beautiful taxi share
You just stepped out of your apartment into the warm Casablanca sun (go with me here). You’re late for your meeting with a potential VC investor at the Sofitel Tour Blanche. You hail one of the grand taxis coming down the Boulevard El Fida. You get in the back seat and tell the driver where you’re going.
But instead of taking you directly to your destination, your driver picks up five more passengers first (the taxi’s full capacity). Then, the driver makes three other stops before dropping you off at the Sofitel. By now, you’re almost an hour late to your meeting and kissing dreams of a Series B goodbye.
Unlikely scenario? Nope. It’s typical of Morocco’s taxi-sharing culture, and it’s just how things work … until now.
This week we launched the Code for Taxicabs Mobility Challenge, the latest stop on Ford’s global mobility innovation tour, to build new apps that make sharing taxis in Morocco safer, easier, and more time and cost efficient.
Ford is giving away $30,000 in cash prizes to apps that improve the shared taxi experience in Morocco by making it easier to do things like find co-passengers to share your ride, plan the stops on a shared route, get a taxi from a Tramway stop in Rabat or Casablanca, or ensure safe rides for female passengers.
The competition runs through October 4, and we’re backing you up with a ton of cultural articles, open data resources, suggested APIs, OpenXC drive traces, and more. You can also join the hackathon-only Slack channel to meet other hackers, ask questions, and get inspired.
Gear up your Moroccan mobility hack @ code4cabs.devpost.com.
June 29, 2016
Your app’s prognosis is looking good on OpenShift
What’s got a pulse, lets you deploy your app in the world’s first container cloud, and puts you in the running for over $150,000 in cash and services?
If you guessed “a health hackathon from OpenShift,” your diagnostic skills are pro status.
The procedure is simple. Scrub in, prescribe code that keeps people healthy, and deploy it on your free instance of OpenShift Online (Next Generation), Red Hat’s new container cloud platform. Our favorite feature is Source-to-Image — deploy your applications as a Kubernetes-orchestrated Docker container without having to touch a single Dockerfile. Just focus on your code and let the platform automatically build, deploy, and orchestrate your containers.
Your code cure could be an app that integrates with wearables or home automation platforms, a game that incentivizes good health practices, a general health app, or an existing app you migrate to OpenShift.
Our prize dosage is generous: the first 200 eligible submitters get $500 in OpenShift Online credits, and the top three category winners each win $10,000.
Keep your users, your app infrastructure, and your hacker trophy supply in perfect health. Register and submit by September 21: openshift.devpost.com
June 2, 2016
Spark is Eating the World
Well, maybe not quite yet, at least not in the way Marc Andreesson meant it in his famous remark about software eating the world. But Spark, the analytics operating system that’s steadily blowing away its big data brethren, is definitely eating the way businesses analyze their data and implement changes based on those insights.
To give you a chance to AMP up your Spark skills, we just launched IBM’s Apache Spark Makers Build, a global online hackathon to put Spark to work on real business problems. The winning apps will collect more than $100,000 in cash prizes, and the top three winners each receive a meeting with the judge or Spark community expert of their choice.
According to Datafloq’s blog, companies like Yahoo!, Conviva, and Huawei are using Spark to help them improve personalization, video streaming, real-time visualization tools, and telecom network speed. Datafloq predicts that increasingly, companies will use Spark to examine their IoT data and optimize their businesses.
If you’re relatively new to Spark, here are some key points:
- powerful open-source data analytics tool built for cluster-computing
- allows collections of objects to be stored in memory or disk across a cluster
- lets data scientists and developers work together in a unified platform
- enables developers to execute Python or Scala code across a cluster instead of to just one machine. Users can load data into a cluster’s memory and query it repeatedly.
- works well with Hadoop
If this is all sounding like Greek to you, we’ve got your back: IBM and Galvanize are hosting a community roundtable on June 6 in San Francisco, to coincide with the Spark Summit. If you don’t live in the Bay Area, you can catch the Apache Spark community event via livestream. We’ll also be hosting virtual mentoring sessions throughout the competition, so stay tuned.
Oh and did we mention we’ve got baller judges from Netflix, Tesla, and Silicon Valley Data Science?
Get signed up at apachespark.devpost.com.
- powerful open-source data analytics tool built for cluster-computing
May 17, 2016
Your new hackathon teammate: a streetlight
Of course you’ve heard of the Internet of Things. Wearables, home automation systems, connected cars — let’s face it: even your pet iguana probably knows what IoT is. (IguanaTracker: it could be a thing.)
But what about the IIoT?
It’s the acronym for the Industrial Internet of Things — an industry that’s expected to ramp up significantly over the next five years.
OK, so IoT for machines. Unless you’ve got your heart set on becoming a dev in manufacturing automation, why should you care?
Simple: because IIoT is set to disrupt not just how companies make things, but how all of us live and work. Case in point: Current, powered by GE, is building networks of smart LED streetlights to provide data insights that will transform the way cities run.
In the Intelligent World Hackathon, launching today, you can be one of the first developers to get access to this data and build urban innovation apps using Predix, GE’s new IIoT data platform. By using Predix to tap into data streamed from indoor and outdoor light sensors, you’ll be able to develop software solutions in areas including public safety, traffic and parking, pedestrian planning, and intelligent buildings.
You’ll get a free Predix developer account during the hackathon, along with a shot at $55,000 in cash prizes. The grand prize, second prize, and category winners also receive a year-long free Predix account, as well as a meeting with GE Ventures, GE’s startup incubator.
Urban planning meets IIoT: that’s some serious horsepower. The Intelligent World Hackathon is accepting submissions from now through August 2. Get more info and register @ intelligentworld.devpost.com.