Hackathon through the eyes of the participant and the winner

Recently, I had the pleasure to participate in the hackathon , which was conducted by EPAM Systems among the employees of its Ukrainian offices. About some observations and reflections inspired by this event, as well as what our team managed to do, and my story tells.

The organizational part was worked out perfectly: food for every taste, board games, Xbox, bean bags, in which with some skill you can sleep. Thirteen teams arrived at the Kiev office, sometimes it was cramped, but it was rather household trifles that few people noticed.

How it was

The theme of the hackathon - “Green Planet” - was announced almost a week before the event, there was enough time to think through the idea. I believe that an idea for a fast-flowing project should not be invented "from scratch", trying to suck something out of your finger or find a way to save the world. It is much better to offer / develop a solution to a problem that to a certain extent concerns you specifically or that you have had to deal with in other projects.
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Work is in full swing

As in any project, the team and the distribution of tasks in it play an important role. It's funny that in our division there were a lot of people who wanted to “poke”, even the option to put forward 2 teams was discussed. But in the end, limited to one with 6 pairs of workers. For the future, I decided that for such a business it is better to form a team of 4-5 people - it is easier to manage and ensure that there are tasks for everyone. To ensure team work, the previously deployed application server and database proved to be very useful.

The selection of tools was made very simple: each team member took only those tools with which he has the most experience. The entire project is given about 24 hours (including the night when it is still desirable to spend a couple of hours sleeping), google and write a lot on Stackoverflow.com. Obviously, assessing the risks and the ability to make a project work in such a short time is one of the main tasks of the team. Among hakatonovskih rake difficult to select something that would not attack the developer in real conditions. But the value of the project presentation increases dramatically - for each team 5 minutes, and these minutes became decisive.

About our project

The main trend at the event was the use and expansion of geographic information services, and our team could not resist such temptation.

The central technical solution of the project was the parsing of images of contrastingly distinguishable maps and their rendering on Google Maps using polygons. Developing the theme “Green Planet”, we proposed to overlay maps of environmental pollution layer by layer onto the map of the area.
With the help of our application, anyone who wanted to go for a walk could see the level of pollution in one or another part of the city, and measure the amount of harmful substances consumed on the route he had laid. I draw your attention that we have not implemented the algorithm for bypassing “dirty” zones, this is a separate task for the future, so far you can only create a route on your own. Such opportunities were provided by the web application, and the Android application version provided an opportunity to see the pollution map, the current position on it (using GPS), as well as record the route traveled and issue a warning when entering a zone where the pollution level exceeds the threshold value. The name of the project was given "GreenWay".

The technical solution, of course, begins with the GoogleMaps API, since almost all the functions we needed had one interface for web and Android.
The web application is written using the JSF framework. Information about each layer of pollution is stored in a text file of JSON format, which is loaded into memory at the start of the application. On maps, these layers are superimposed as Overlay objects on the server side. The user sets the starting and ending points of the route and specifies the waypoints (points that the route must go through), and the route itself is requested through the Google Directions API web service in JSON format. Drawing markers start, finish, waypoints and drawing routes implemented in JavaScript.


GreenWay web application

Mobile application was made for API version 8 (compatible with Android ≥ 2.2). Pollution polygons are built from the same data files as for the web application; these files have been stored locally for now. Positioning on the map was carried out with the help of GPS LocationProvider, from his own data information about the route and speed was recorded line by line in a text file.
On devices with a small screen diagonal, the application worked fairly quickly, but serious brakes were noticed for 4 or more inches. The natural reason for this was the lack of optimization of building landfills or their loading by sectors - there was no time to do this on the hackathon, but it is obvious that the problem is solved.


GreenWay Android app

Summing up

The result of the work was evaluated by a jury from the top management of the company. The formal evaluation criterion was a demonstration at the exit of something working, useful and with a beautiful UI. In addition to this, all participants voted, defining the audience award, in our case called the “Prize for the Best Startup”. This award, by the way, was received by our team, together with the third place in the overall standings.


our team

I do not have information about the future of other hackathon projects, but I am optimistic about the future of the brainchild of our team. The cartographic application, the idea of ​​which we presented on the hackathon, is planned to be launched in January as a service of a specialized data center. There are a couple of interesting ideas, in particular, in the segment of Android applications. In our case, the deterrent is access to cartographic data, which in most cases has a legal right holder, or a ministry, which is not always friendly.

Hackathon is a great tool for professional growth, the introduction of their ideas and another kind of weekend entertainment. Good luck and see you on the new hackathon!