Winning the Ford Hackathon

This was our first Hackathon for the Fall and in Silicon Valley. There was a big difference from the hackathons in Pittsburgh. Here they take it way more seriously than in Pittsburgh. Also the participants here were more from industry (we were the only students) whereas in Pittsburgh it was just students. Another big difference I felt was that people are more open and helpful during a hackathon here. A few hours into the hackathon and we knew what every team was doing and how. Did not see that in Pittsburgh.

The event began on Friday evening at 7pm and went on to about 9pm to give an intro to the API and time for brainstorming. We could not land up on an idea before like 8.55 when suddenly most of us got excited about the "if this then that" idea and started coming up with use cases. That is when we decided we will work on that. 

What we aimed to do for the Hackathon was to make programming your car as simple as browsing the internet. We used the "If This Then That" (ITTT) approach. We integrated Ford's OpenXC API into Zapier and developed a mobile app that handles all the data coming from the car. So you can now subscribe to various triggers such as "if my speed goes over X" or "if I enter within 2 miles of Y" and then you can assign an action from 100s of API available on Zapier, for e.g. "check me in at Z" or "Send a SMS to X saying Y" or "unlock my car/home door" or "turn on my computer and/or thermostat".

Overall it was a really fun and informative experience and we wont the Best Overall App prize! Looking forward to more hackathons (and more wins).

Story featured in CMU news: http://www.cmu.edu/silicon-valley/news-events/news/2013/driven-ford-hackathon.html