Spring 2016 hackNY Student Hackathon Recap

Last weekend we celebrated the 13th hackNY Student Hackathon with a record number of student hackers from all over the East Coast. Over 260 students hacked on projects over 24 hours, building webapps, games, and hardware hacks. They represented 50 different universities, and many joined with students from several other schools to form their teams.  We were extremely impressed by the quality of the hacks built - nearly half our hackers were attending their first hackathon!Employees from NYC startups came to present their APIs to the students and mentor them throughout the weekend, including Buzzfeed, MongoDB, Foursquare, Clarifai and Giphy. Hacks included both useful and funny webapps, simulations and educational material using civic data, a hilarious but politically relevant game, and innovative hardware hacks using drones, Oculus Rifts and Arduinos. When they needed a break from hacking, hackers attended a workshop on APIs for new hackers, coding competitions with MLH, and our traditional Ladies Storm Hackathons meetup. At the LSH meetup, 30 women hackers enjoyed sharing their experiences and finding common interests while decorating cupcakes. We also introduced hackers to some of the best of New York's food, like Halal Guys chicken and rice, Otto's Tacos, Schnitz Sandwiches, Insomnia Cookies and Joe's Pizza. The Kings Kolache team spent breakfast with us, heating up their famous kolaches on the spot so everyone had something hot and delicious to fuel their last hours of hacking.We had over 50 teams demo their hacks to our team of judges, which included developers, entrepreneurs, and the CTO of the City of New York! You can learn more about our 5 inspiring judges in last week's blog post. Thank you to our judges, local Technical Ambassadors who mentored our hackers, and volunteers who truly made our event possible. Thank you also to our sponsors: Quotidian Ventures, MongoDB, eBay, Datto, Capital One, Andreessen Horowitz, and Twilio!In the media: NYC Tech Wizards Convene for hackNY's Spring 2016 EventView photos from the Spring 2016 hackNY Student Hackathon on Flickr.Here are the winners of our 9 prizes. Check out Devpost for all the submissions, video stream of the event, winners of sponsor prizes and more. Later this week, we'll update this post with photos from the hackathon.1st Place: InterfaceOptimizing the language learning experience through foreign language comprehension and accessible vocabulary. 2nd Place: Toast PrinterAn image of any size is scaled to fit on bread and is toasted onto it.3rd Place: Peer WifiThis application provide a platform for the users to sell mobile data, and allows other users to buy.Our top 3 hacks will go on to present at the New York Tech Meetup!  Best First Hack: BunnyBotA stuffed bunny that uses an Arduino Uno, two touch sensors, one buzzer, and one LCD backlight to sing, purr, and display messages.The 8-Breaker: Drone RegulatorFly your drone with a PS4 controller while never breaking drone laws.Most Technically Impressive Hack: Adaptive Wireless Mesh-NetworkingMesh-Networks allow for advanced adaptive reconfiguration. Possible uses include Smart Cities, Transportation and more.Best Hack Design: YUGE!Donald Trump is building a wall, and it's up to you to stop him! Win as many points as possible before it's built! Best Hardware Hack: Tin CamA minty, cheap, discreet, cloud-connceted camera that aims to end police brutality and the dangers of walking alone.Best Hack Using an NYC Startup's API: PictoriousLike a race through wikipedia pages in search of some "thing", but with gifs instead.Best NYC Inspiration: PillowBrawlBest use of MongoDB (Sponsored by MongoDB): HyperiosBest Use of Capital One's API (Sponsored by Capital One): Make or Break Best PHP Hack (Sponsored by Datto): CraveSpotBest use of Twilio (Sponsored by Twilio): RemindMe, DialVG, PrankerBest Use of Amazon Web Services (Sponsored by AWS): Urban H20Best Domain Name (Sponsored by Domain.com): Just BikeBest Developer Tool (Sponsored by Github): Station LocationView more photos from the Spring 2016 hackNY Student Hackathon on Flickr!