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Nordic sponsoring hackathons

Eirik Midttun

Right before Web Summit - the "Davos for Geeks" - Nordic Semiconductor sponsored its second Hackathon in Dublin: the Hardware Hackathon. As a sponsor Nordic provides hardware and mentors for the participants at the event. Earlier this year we had our first participation at such an event in Las Vegas at the AT&T Code for car and home hackathon, where we also sponsored a cash prize. The experiences have been good so far, and the plan is to sponsor more events.

Prototype of traffic safety concept

Image: Prototype of a traffic safety concept from the AT&T HAckathon in Las Vegas

For both hackathons there were a fair amount of hardware hacking, although the Hardware Hackathon in Dublin had a particular focus on hardware. Sponsors are typically software and electronics company, but in Dublin there was also providers of 3D-printers, CNC machines, and also an industrial design company. So if you wanted to create an innovative and appealing product - and present a fully working prototype - there was basically only one restriction: Time!

Now, if you peeked at one of the hackathon links above you will find that these websites are used and maintained before the events. Getting an impression about what goes on is a bit harder. The AT&T’s Code for Car and Home Hackathon is summarized on this page were you can find the winning project and a short video from the event. In Dublin a company called Inspired Startups recorded the event, but the videos are not published at the moment of writing. In the meantime you can watch and read about the previous Hardware Hackathon by following the above link.

Currently we are planning to sponsor more hackathons, and these will be duly announced at www.nordicsemi.com. We have some in mind, but we would much appreciate tips from the community. Are you aware of a hackathon with hardware focus that risk escaping our radar? Please let us know! Also, any comment on hackathons and Nordic's paritcipation is invited.

  • @Tiit: This is the kind of event we would like to hear about, thanks for sharing! It definitely seems relevant for Nordic, so I'll have a look :)

  • Very cool idea.

    I'm not sure if this event is big enough for you but there is an upcoming hardware hackathon in Estonia in February (Garage48). This is the second time they are doing this (I'm not affiliated with that event - just participated last time and will again this time). The reason I'm bringing this up here is that the last time there were around 15 teams of about 5 peaople and I would say more than half of them used Bluetooth in their prototypes. As this Garage48 is actually mostly a software event and they only do a few of these hardware events there was a focus on app connected gadgets and wearables so BLE was the obvious choice.

    Last time we built a cat toy prototype - a ball you can drive around and control from your phone and the idea that won the event was a pressure sensitive insole for high heels. Both were BLE connected at least at the event. The winning team went on to form a startup as did quite a few of the ideas from the event. Most went on to a hardware incubator either here or in other European incubators.

    The event organizers provided some tools but I'm not sure if they had any Nordic stuff. Would be nice to have something to work with. We brought some dev kits we already had for our prototype, others did something similar but some had to use things like the TI Chronos kit because the organizers just didn't have any proper wireless kits to give out.

    Oh and the event lasts just 48 hours :) Incredible what can be done in such a short time.

  • Nice initiatives!

    I wouldn't mind so much the prizes, but to be able to come in contact with "people doing the work" in other companies - especially also the larger ones which are harder to reach! - would be great.

    This could be AT&T, or it can be Philips, Tomtom, ARM (besides Nordic of course!).