2016 Fargo Hackathon Wrap Up

The 2016 Fargo Civic Hackathon brought together a group of proudly, self-proclaimed “nerds.” This group of developers, designers and data scientists, spent a weekend digging into data sets and building tools to better learn from the data and translate the data into visual tools. The event was powered by AT&T with support from 702 Communications, Emerging Prairie and Blaine Booher of Clifton Labs.

Blaine explains the data and the goals of the Hackathon

Seven teams participated and six of them presented their projects to a set of judges on Sunday afternoon. Three data set were used by the teams and came from three different APIs: Great Rides Bike Share, a Placemeter positioned on Broadway (which counts cars, bikes and pedestrians), and Forum Communications.

Using the data and other tools – such as Google Maps – the teams were able to build unique projects that offer insight into the data that is easier to understand. Projects included:

Cowork Fargo

• A website connecting remote workers and students in the Fargo area
• Ability to checkin where you’re at, what you’re working on (e.g. studying for Bio 101 exam), and allow other people with accounts to join you.
• Potential uses include coworking, study groups, and books clubs

Bike Dash

• Quick-loading system to show where bike stations are and what availability they have of bikes in real time
• Users can also load a Google Map of where the stations are

GBFS Proxy

• What underlying technology is Bikeshare using?
• B-Cycle as the parent company uses the same tech across all their cities
• Created a way to index it each minute and make it available for comparison
• Can see if and when bikes are moving
  • Example: If a certain bike hasn’t moved in three days while all others at the station are moving, perhaps it needs maintenance
  • Notifications can be created based on different filters

Bike Mapping

• Built map with high usage indications for different stations and peak times, used Google Maps API and also Google charts to translate the data
• Other uses include the Bike Share team using predictive data to know routes people take on the bikes based on where a bike is checked out and checked back in

Bike Watch

• Gives bike users the ability to know where bikes are located, the weather, and how close you are to a station
• Users can set desktop notifications for how many bikes are at a station near them, which could be useful in case the station is low on bikes and someone wants to ride. Also could be helpful for Bike Share managers to know if a station is out of bikes
• If no bikes at a station, Bike Watch will let you know what station that has bikes in closest to you

Juxpose

• Built for use with augmented reality
• Use projector and plug ins to overlay a variety of technology on different surfaces; able to skew them on the computer so they appear correct on angled surfaces or around corners
• Potential uses include manufacturing where Juxpose could be used to project information onto equipment for placement of welds, stickers, etc.
• Gives you the ability to turn any surface into a place for engagement. Potential uses on buildings or construction areas

Johnny Mach for Mayor  (a just-for-fun project)

• Used an Amazon Internet of Things button
• Built a Script so people could use the button with 1 click to vote yes for John and 2 clicks to vote no.
• Real time data pulled into a website