For most of us, August is the month dedicated to summer holidays in exotic destinations or just some spare time from work and duties. Nonetheless, there were a few which celebrated the beginning of August not by enjoying their free time, but by enjoying even more work. ‘Why is that?’,  you may ask. The answer is The Banat Summer Hackathon.

Timisoara Startup Hub, Timisoara Mobile Development Group and HackaTimis have borne a hand to organize a hackathon in the weekend of 1st-3rd August based on quite some interesting devices to hack on and with.

Their names were familiar, but playing with them was not. There were a lot of mobile and wearable devices, AR drones, hardware, and robotic toys.

Among them, there were:

• 2 Google Tango devices

• Estimote Beacons

• Google Glasses

• SmartWatch 2 Sony

• Sphero

• Firefox Smartphones

• Parrot AR 2.0 Drone with SDK

• Raspberry Pi b & b+

• Intel NUC

• Beagleboard

• CubieBoard

• 3 Arduinos

• 3 NRFs

• 3 RFIDs

• Oculus Rift DK2

• Galaxy Tab S Tablet

• LG G3

• Huawei Ascend P7 

There were three days for the participants to plan, develop and implement their projects. Spending an entire weekend immersed in 2.0 tech must have been a challenge, as outside there were 30 degrees Celsius plus and a weekend concert in the town center. But that’s not all; spending half of the nights in the coworking space is usually something of little surprise when hacking feels like second nature. With Coke and coffee on the run, of course.

Undoubtedly, the mentors have added value to this event, as reputable tech experts have offered their support during the weekend. Dan Romescu, Calin Brandabur and Catalin Gheorghe were the mentors to share knowledge and the judges to find the tie-break between the competitors.

From participants to teams, they have succeeded in building small, but promising projects which have won both the appreciation of the attendants, the valuable experience and last, but not least, the prizes.

1st place was conquered by the team which had the idea of connecting an electro-stimulated case with the Sphero, and thus control it by thought power.

The ball would move straight ahead or rotate via stimuli command. When the tester touched the roof of the mouth with his tongue, Sphero would turn blue and move in line; when he moved his left hand, it change to green and rotate in circles. They had been rewarded with an Alcatel One Touch Smartphone.

The 2nd place winners had build a game developed in Unity, explored by using Oculus Rift DK2, making use of virtual reality. The control was on the accelerometer. The Raspberry Pi b & b+ was theirs.

The event has been an occasion to localize other hackers in town and also to launch two tech initiatives aimed to offer field of activity to the local hacking community. HackaTimis and the future-to-be Hackers of Timisoara [dot] com will surely bring together active professionals from the community.

Special thanks for those who have brought the devices in the house: Dan Romescu, Calin Brandabur, Catalin Ciobotea, Paul Muntean, Valentin Muresan, Paul Muntean, Cosmin Mirza, Florin Popovici.

To have a more detailed  impression on the event, you can find the event photo gallery here.