Hackathons have become an incredibly popular way for college students to show off their technical skills and gain experience building solutions to real life problems. Students from schools all over the country come together for a weekend to build a product (usually without much sleep) and show it off.
Many projects that come out of hackathons are rough around the edges, and most aren’t even available for public use. Still, some ideas that have come out of hackathons built by SUNY students have amazing potential. Here are some of the best:
Vemote – University at Buffalo
Ever wish you could control your computer without clicking anything? Students from the University at Buffalo built a system that lets you perform basic functions on your computer, exclusively through your voice, by an app on your smartphone.
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Mooddio – Binghamton University
So you want to listen to music, but you’re not sure what to put on. You don’t want to just turn on the radio, because you don’t know if it will go with your mood. Enter Mooddio, a music player built by Binghamton University students that detects your mood from your Twitter account and plays the right music to go along.
It’s live on the internet for anyone to use!
Drone Control – SUNY New Paltz
The AR Drone is famous for being able to be controlled from a smartphone or tablet. However, according to the creators of Drone Control, it can be difficult to use because you can’t feel the controls on screen. Drone Control, designed by SUNY New Paltz students, lets you fly the AR Drone with nothing but your hands!
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Financial Trend – Stony Brook University
Financial Trend gives a visualization of a stock’s price over time. What makes the app coded by Stony Brook University students special is that it automatically finds news about the stock, correlates it with the price at corresponding time, and visualizes the tone of the news through changes the graph’s color, giving you a sense of the stock’s past.
Fresh Quest – SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
Fresh Quest was designed to help people navigate local farmer’s markets by making them more accessible and less intimidating to newcomers. It produces a map of the farmers market with slots for different vendors, showing visually where they are and how it’s laid out.
A student at SUNY ESF took on Fresh Quest in a graduate research project to both build a better website and to learn about the ways that digital technology can support the physical world.
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ARcampus– University at Buffalo
ARcampus was designed to make navigating the campus easier for new students at UB, in an amazing original way. The app detects where you are, and lets you put in where you want to go. Then, you can view an Augmented Reality (AR) to get to your destination, a huge leap over 2D, birds-eye-view maps.
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Seemeco.de – Binghamton University
Seemeco.de’s creators realized that for budding computer science students, it can be challenging to build up code you’ve written to show off to employers. Seemeco.de should make it easier. It hooks up to your GitHub account (a common place to put your code online).Then you can work on coding problems, and show your solutions off to the world.
KnowYourBuy – Stony Brook University
Ever wish finding the right product when you’re shopping online was a little less hectic? What if you could instantly find out about the public’s opinion for anything? KnowYourBuy scans tweets about products and analyzes what people think about them. No more worrying about whether or not to trust an online review.
Flashebble– Binghamton University
Everyone uses flashcards, but they’re clumsy and hard to walk around with. What if you could get your flashcards on your wrist? Students took advantage of the Pebble smartwatch to do just that. Your flashcards are managed through the web and can then be loaded onto the watch, or sent to friends. It even updates them as you make improvements.
PathMen – Stony Brook University
PathMen may not be designed for everyday people, but it could save lives. Stony Brook students developed this app to analyze traffic and figure out the best possible route for emergency vehicles like police and ambulances. It cuts down the time required to reach the site of an accident, and can even limit the amount of traffic congestion relating to the accident. The software is demoed on a computer performing the calculations below.
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Top photo via Biswarup Ganguly