DevFest Nyeri 2016
Posted By: Unknown On Saturday, 3 December 2016
GDG DEVFEST NYERI was
another great success from GDG Kimathi University. It was a three-day event
held from 11th November 2016 to 13th November 2016 at Dedan Kimathi University
of Technology. The goal of the event was to push the limits of what we
previously achieved, by organizing a three days’ event that features a
technical Session where developers get hands on training, in depth tracks on
relevant technical information on the latest Google technologies and products,
a Hackathon where developers can build product on Google Cloud Platform and a
Buildathon where developers can utilize different Microcontrollers and sensors
including Arduino, Raspberry pi and Intel Edison. After the Buildathon &
hackathon, developers presented their IoT solutions to Judges. DevFest Nyeri
2016 boasted of entirely new Drones all built from scratch, competing to reveal
a never-seen-before performance at the Game of Drones.
Additional sessions involved talks on women
within the Technology space. There was also an introduction to the new Google
IoT Developer Prototyping kit, the new Seeed Studio BeagleBone Green Wireless
board which is tailored specifically for Google Cloud Platform and talks about
the Google beacon platform.
During the event, we had attendees from 5
different universities:
- Dedan Kimathi
University of Technology
- Meru University
of Science and Technology
- Laikipia
University
- Egerton
University
- Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology
Day I: DevFest Hackathon/Buildathon
SESSION I: Hackathon
The DevFest hackathon was a 48-hour
weekend-sprint development activity where the participants collaboratively
worked together to address specific African civic challenges. The event was
aimed at bringing together software developers, designers, data geeks, marketers
and citizens of all types to create fun, interesting and useful civic tools
that will go to solve some of Africa’s greatest challenges. Projects that were
being targeted include apps for encouraging farmers to trade online, provide an
efficient way of managing health records, tracking public infrastructure,
improve local security and county government utilities such as parking and
business licensing, encourage use of digital content for education, and
understanding county government budgets.
The participants engaged in 48 exhilarating
hours of non-stop coding, working on 11 innovative solutions around
agriculture, health, security and public utilities.
We had an idealization and team formation process.
After this, developers began to hack into actualizing the suggested solutions.
SESSION II: Buildathon
During the same period, the drone teams
finalized on their projects.
DAY II: Deep Dive (Demos, Tech Talks, Codelabs, Dev
Garages)
We had rock stars speakers and amazing women
leaders speakers. They brought the energy and life into our Developers
Festival.
SESSION I: Hackathon
Hacking continued for the whole day. Teams
improved on their products.
SESSION II: Android
We had a great session with Android insights
facilitated by Valentine Rutto with an overview on what’s new on Google Cloud
Platform.
SESSION III: Women In Tech
In a continued effort to
empower women participation in the Google Developer Community, the event
included a session on ‘women in tech’ facilitated by Margaret Ondeng’, the
Women Techmakers Lead for GDG Nairobi who strongly advocates for women
involvement in STEM. She reverberated how Google was inspiring the next
generation of tech women through their Women Techmakers program, and championed
for an increase in women attendance in such events.
SESSION IV: Moringa School
We then had a great talk by Moringa School on
how to become top class Software Developers. They train high-potential,
pro-active students to learn how to code from a world-class curriculum with top
quality instructors and mentors to support them in the process.
SESSION V: Live Hangout with Aniedi Udo-Obong
SESSION V: Firebase
We then had a firebase Codelabs session with
Denzel Wamburu. Developers learned how to use the Firebase platform to easily
create Web applications and how to implement and deploy a chat client using
Firebase.
SESSION VI: INTEL EDISON, GOOGLE BEACON PLATFORM
AND THE ZEPHYR PROJECT
Thereafter, we had a talk about how developers can use a
combination of Intel Edison, Firebase and Jonny five, (a Node Js framework for
robotics) for IoT prototyping. While meeting common needs can be challenging at
times, IoT development platforms such as Google Firebase provide services allow
developers to meet many of these requirements.
They were introduced to diverse different
microcontrollers including, Intel Edison, Arduino Uno, Arduino 101, Raspberry
pi and the new Google IoT Developer Prototyping kit, the new Seeed Studio
BeagleBone Green Wireless board which is tailored specifically for Google Cloud
Platform.
They were also shown how Google beacon platform
enables developers to manage their beacons remotely, integrate with
Google services and help users' devices to discover content and functionality
across Android, native apps and the web.
They were taken through the process of getting
started, where they can get the development kits and the kind of applications
they can develop with the beacons.
They were also introduced to the The Zephyr Project.
The Zephyr Project is an open source, real-time
operating system released earlier this year by the Linux Foundation. It
supports x86, ARM, and ARC processors on a growing number of boards, such as
the Arduino 101, Minnowboard Turbot, NXP FRDM-K64F, and Arduino Due.
Intel started working to combine these two technologies in
early 2016, with the idea of providing an alternative development environment for
the Arduino 101 and future IoT boards using the Zephyr OS. Currently, Zephyr
Project applications are written in C, and the programming model requires a
fair amount of expertise. A JavaScript interface hides a lot of this
complexity. We also wanted to explore the benefits of having JavaScript
available at every level, from small embedded devices to the largest servers,
and from prototyping to seamless end-to-end applications.
SESSION VII: NODE RED
This session training
involved presentations and hands-on demos. The platform was open to attendance
by any interested party. The audience was taken through how to install and
initialize the Node-RED server on the Intel Edison by Chris Barsolai. The main objective was to demonstrate to makers and
developers on how to leverage Node-RED and its simplistic interface and
workflow to go about realizing the Internet of Things, and how it can speed up
their idea-to-prototype transition.
Firstly, it was shown how one can install Node-RED on node.js
platform running on the Edison, and consequently running the Edison to as a
server to serve up Node-RED to the browser. In line with the ISP quarterly
theme ‘Smart Homes, Farms and Cities’, the audience was taken on how to
access the Grove Kit sensors and actuators via Node-RED. The Seeed Studio
Sensors npm package was installed onto the Edison, and the audience got to see
how the nodes were added onto the Node-RED dashboard. The MQTT protocol was
also dwelt on, with attendees being shown on how to use test.mosquitto.org as an mqtt
broker that lets one publish sensor updates that all delivered to client
subscribed to that sensor.
Given there was only one Intel Edison present during the session, a step-by-step demo was first done by the instructor, after which groups of students got to interact with the Node-RED on Edison in shifts.
DAY
III: Presentations, xFair
Game of Drones
SESSION I: Hackathon
The hackathon continued until Sunday 13th
November, 2016. After this, developers laid down their tools and began to
prepare for the final presentation and demos.
Below is an overview of the hackathon attendees
and a brief description of all the projects that were built during the
hackathon. A total of 11 projects were developed
SESSION II: Buildathon
The Buildathon continued until Sunday 13th
November, 2016.. After this, developers began to prepare for the final
presentation.
SESSION III: Presentations
Upon completion, each team
pitched their idea, and gave a demo on the functionality of the idea.
At exactly 2pm, hacking was officially over.
Eleven projects were then presented at the pitching session. At the end of it
only 3 teams went home with prizes. While the judges deliberated, attendees
kicked back, grabbed a brew and networked.
SESSION IV: The Ultimate Race for Glory
Drone Racing is the Next
Consumer Fad. This was the climax of our DevFest. After the Buildathon, we
brought the best pilots together to fly the two quadcopters head-to-head. Both
drones used a single frequency. Walking into a drone-racing arena is much like
walking into a 100m race. The audience looks on as pilots on either side make
last-minute preparations, swapping out propellers and tucking in loose cables
before the round begins. With a smooth flick of the joysticks, the drones
zoomed into the air. To avoid interference, they were flown one at a time with
the duration they take to complete 40m recorded. During the race, a moment’s
carelessness takes a warriors to the ground, its propellers torn and its motors
screeching in a futile attempt at liftoff. Judges then left the arena to
deliberate.
SESSION V: Awards
The hackathon was a success highlight of the
DevFest. After an exhilarating 40 hours of coding and hacking into solutions,
the hackathon teams presented their ideas. The judges’ panel comprised of:
·
Emmanuel Kinyanjui – Intel Student Partner Jomo Kenyatta
University of Agriculture and Technology
·
Esther Maina – Intel Student Partner Jomo Kenyatta University of
Agriculture and Technology
·
Mr. Augustus Kamau – Patron, Computer Society of Kimathi
A 10-minute pitching session was allocated to
each team. One after the other, teams showcased their ideas and gave knee-deep
presentations on their ideas and progress made throughout the hackathon. Judges
were treated to a difficult decision-making given majority of the teams had
made significant progress and whose ideas were equally as good.
JUDGING CRITERIA
- Originality of the Innovation & Demonstrated
creativeness
- Impact of the innovation
- Viability of its application/ Implementation
- Google & Intel Technology Used
- Market Opportunity
- Applicability
With each idea having a uniqueness to their
innovativeness, the judging process was not simplified and involved vigorous
troubleshooting and hard hitting questions from both the judges and the
audience. After an intensive prototyping session, the top three teams selected
as the overall winners were:
TEAM
|
POSITION
|
CASH
PRIZE (KSh)
|
SuperBOT
|
First
|
25,000
|
Learn
With the Rasp
|
Second
|
15,000
|
Steps
For Charity
|
Third
|
10,000
|
SUCCESS HIGHLIGHTS
At the end of the event, we were able to achieve
almost all our objectives. We ensured that participants were skilled with handy
information on the Google & Intel Architecture. We were able to bring out
the hidden ideas and talents from developers in our community and submit them
to the Dedan Kimathi University Incubation Centre for incubation. The hackathon
gives three things: opportunity, environment and experience. Opportunity: to
seek any kind of problems one ever thought of and tackle with all the resources
present under one roof – technical and mentors. Environment: to encourage and
get inspired by everyone around us. Experience: no need to say anything. The
experience of working on such projects and creating a network with great minds
is priceless.
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