The theme of the event was Your Body as an Input and the goal of the hackathon was therefore to hack on body signals, from EEG, EMG, ECG to motion and gesture tracking. More than 120 ‘hackers’ attended the event and worked from Saturday morning 9 am to Sunday 2 pm before submitting their hard work on Hackathon.io for the first round of judging. Only 8 teams were selected to pitch their project on stage and had the chance to win the first prize !Over 200 people were with us Saturday morning, choosing innovation and hacking over sun and the F1 Grand Prix !
This event was an AngelHack hackathon organized by BCI Montréal and WearHacks.
“It was an amazing gathering of talented and inspired brainiacs! I can’t wait for the next one. BCI Montréal is a truly impressive community making a huge impact on the space of neurotechnology.”
-Conor Russomanno, CEO of OpenBCI
Projects and Teams
We had amazing projects exploiting cutting edge technology like the Muse headband, the Oculus Rift, the Myo Armband, and many more. People were very excited to hack on these devices and share a weekend with talented, creative and awesome people. Many of them stayed up all night to work on their project, boosted by coffee and Redbull so they could debug that Python machine learning algorithm or that Unity integration…
Here is the Top 8 (in no specific order):
- Office Light – A Visual Stress management tool to improve productivity
- Myomemory – App-based memory training for ADD
- Poke-a-mind – Active auditory feedback for productivity enhancement
- Safe.ly – Safe Driving, No Sleepy Driving
- Cinco de Myo – A Myo-powered relaxation tool
- You Travel – Your perfect escape
- Run Your Music
- BCI Synapse – Universal Virtual Mind Collaboration (UVMC)
* Some of the names on the picture are misspelled. We apologize for this Chinese whispers / telephone game effect.
The big big big winner is… Office Light!
This awesome team won their ticket for a 12-week mentoring program and being part of the HACKcelerator program. Watch out as they will go pitch their idea in the Silicon Valley in front of investors. Good job guys !
Technologies used: Python, CSS, javascirpt, HTML5, Machine Learning, Muse, chartjs, csv
Office Light is a visual stress management tool to improve productivity
This tool leverages the EEG signals received from a BCI device to enable for example managers in an office environment track stress levels of employees during the production cycle and manage stress appropriately to boost productivity of employees. Another application is to enable educators/facilitators manage stress levels of students with special needs without them having to indicate how they are doing, leading to a more accessible learning experience for the students.
Members: ABHISHEK GUPTA, ZAFARALI AHMED, MEGAN BENETEAU
Tech
“Angelhack provided great insight into a rather nebulous subject area. With excellent demonstrations and guidance from industry professionals, I was able to successfully contribute to projects and significantly grow my knowledge of the subject matter in the course of one weekend.”
– Debarun Gupta, B. Eng from McGill
“I liked the perfect atmosphere of the hackathon; under these circumstances, it was possible to catalyze any project with coffee and non-stop work. […] In one weekend, some projects that otherwise would be impossible to find time for are suddenly feasible.”
– Raymundo Cassani, PhD student at INRS
Other Sponsors
Judges
TransAtlantic BioData Communication
Conor Russumanno from OpenBCI and Yannick, Melanie and Ferdinand from BCI Montréal also hacked during the weekend. Leading by example !
With the collaboration of Hack the Brain NL, they realized a TransAtlantic BioData Communication, allowing someone from Montreal to control someone’s arm in Amsterdam and vice-versa. Using muscle stimulation, EMG & EEG they could control someone else’s arm. The first live demo Montreal – Amsterdam happened ~ 15h30 (Montreal time) on Saturday. The video transmission was done using Skype so people in Montreal could see people in Amsterdam and vice-versa. Another demo live in Amsterdam, but not on stage in Montreal occurred on Sunday as well. A last demo between Yannick & Conor occurred on Sunday to launch the Top 8 pitches !
Simply put, when Conor flex his arm in Montreal, an electrical stimulation is sent in Pieter’s arm in Amsterdam forcing his muscle to flex, the chicken get squeezed and everybody laugh. Multiple variations was demoed.
For more information, read this post !
Thank You !
A massive to our sponsors, judges, mentors & hackers for this amazing event !
PS: We apologize for writing our posts only in English. We would love to have all our material in French & English, but due to limited resources we can’t support both languages for now.
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