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Arduino UNO Board provided by Major League Hacking.
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Example of occupancy count for location.
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Example of where to press button and occupancy count.
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Example of when program is finished.
Inspiration
While I did choose to work alone at this hackathon, I found that many of my fellow hackers were wanting support from a group environment. I wanted to create a tool that was simple and to the point in getting a group of people who all struggle to find teammates together.
What it does
The program simply allows a user to press a button to display a random location within the building and updates the locations occupancy as more people are given the location. After that location has reached maximum occupancy, it will no longer be suggested. As soon as all rooms are filled, the screen will display "All rooms filled."
How I built it
I built this using and Arduino UNO with the Adafruit library to display the graphics.
Challenges I ran into
The first challenge I ran into involved making sure a location did not appear on the screen after it had reached maximum occupancy. I had to create two whole new functions just to sort out which functions were eligible to be selected. While I could have chosen a simple approach for my sample case of locations, I wanted to make my code interchangeable for any Hackathon. This means I had to account for change in the number of locations and the maximum occupancy.
Finally, it was time to end the program. I was ready to make sure the program displayed that all the rooms were filled in order to complete my project and show it to the hackers around me. At least, I thought I was ready. After a long night of hacking and interacting with my peers, my mental capacity for work had been falling through and what would be considered the "easiest part of my code" became a nightmare. I ended up clocking in at 2 hours of just trying to simply display a final message at the end of my program as I was fighting the urge to sleep and making many mental errors that would break my program many times.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
Today was my first ever time even touching an Arduino. Everything that I put fourth in front of you today is a representation of what I can learn and implement in less than 24 hours. From turning on a light with a simple line of code to writing a complex program to organize a huge amount of people into groups. While I acknowledge the risk I took on hacking everything using only the Arduino's limitations, I am glad I made the decision and I will definitely be working to hone these skills into larger scale projects in the future.
What I learned
Ironically, as a solo developer in todays hackathon, I learned more about team work than you would think. Thanks to the great folks at Major League Hacking and the support of my peers, I was able to complete segments of code and work out hardware issues when I was in need of a second opinion. Now I will always keep in mind that even though it may be easy to want to do it all myself, using the resources given to me and interacting with other hackers is the best way to move forward and maximize what I learn in every experience.
I have also learned about my new found passion of Embedded Software Engineering. I am soon to work at a job that involves this very line of work, and I have more love for it after taking a chance to get started in the field at Revolution UC. I am thankful for Major League Hacking for providing the Arduino Uno to me and I will certainly make use of all the practice I can get in being the best embedded software engineer I can be.
What's next for Hackathon Team Creator
The next step would be making the use of the Hackathon Team Creator more user friendly. At the moment it is all run through a tiny OLED screen on the Arduino with the use of a button that doesn't feel official. If I were to move forward with this project and supplies hackathon's across the world with the service, I would encase the Arduino into a simple case with a larger screen that has a button to press. This will make the whole operation of the system more obvious and I could easily transfer the functionality with the use of wires provided in the Arduino kit.
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