It’s amazing what you can make during 30 hours… and the teams at Hackagong 2015 boasted their ability to do just that. We awarded over $150,000 worth of prizes and giveaways at this year’s Hackagong held 19-20 September 2015 at the University of Wollongong. This year was our biggest yet, selling out at 160 tickets with competitors spanning out across 49 teams competing for 13 different prize categories. We also introduced Australia’s first hackathon crowdfunding experiment, with 9 teams creating crowdfunding campaigns. Thus far, over $4000 has been raised by teams. Our category prizes ranged from Most Innovative 3D Printed Object to Best Internet of Things Hack to the Community and Social Impact prize!

After 30 hours full of designing, coding, building, hacking and eating the teams produced truly awesome prototypes ready for judging by our team of category judges. Teams competing for the overall prize prepared crowdfunding campaigns to market their product to the world with the winner being determined at Demo Day – our Top 6 pitching event on 2nd October 2015. The Top 6 teams were determined by a combination of the amount of money raised and the amount of backers.

THE HACKAGONG OVERALL WINNER IS… THE LOCATIONISER!

The Locationiser (Alex Gray and Antonin Ganner) is a device designed to scan a room from a single point and gain precise measurements, to display in as 3D blueprints. A hugely useful tool for engineers and architects working in existing spaces and other applications as well. The team utilised a number of different technologies such as IoT, 3D Printing and LIDAR to bring together their idea.

Alex and Antonin have won an amazing prize package worth over $52,000 including $5000 cash (WiseTech Global) + Business Mentoring (Liquid Co) + Web Hosting (Rackspace) + Coworking Desks (iAccelerate) + ACS Memberships and Flights to Melbourne to meet the Liquid Co team. The prize package will enable the team to kickstart their prototype into a fully fledged product.

If you’re interested in checking out The Locationiser, you can checkout their DevPost submission here:http://devpost.com/software/the-locationiser – Otherwise, you can support The Locationiser by heading to their crowdfunding campaign website: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-locationiser#

Other Category Prize Winners

In no particular order, here are the winners of each of the prize competition categories. More details about teams and their submissions can be seen on the https://hackagong.com website.

Best Design Prize
Winners: The Beaconing
What: 3D Printed Mobile Augmented Reality for everyone, everywhere
Prize: Creative Cloud and Tuts+ Subscription from Adobe and Envato

Most Creative 3D Printed Object
Winners: Post-Modern Puzzle Box
What: A way to keep precious things safe from those you intended to give it to anyway and enjoy the suffering of expectance
Prize: Me2 3D Printer from Me3D

Most Innovative 3D Printed Object
Winners: LAMP Diagnostics
What: Rapid, reliable, at-home infection test kits – for when you need results
Prize: Me2 3D Printer from Me3D

Best Use of Braintree/PayPal
Winners: Gift Starter
What: A better way to buy gifts for friends. Friends-sourced gift buying. Kickstarter for gift buying.
Prize: $2,000 cash, Sphero BB-8’s and Developer Survival Kits

Best IoT Device Hack
Winners: LAMP Diagnostics
What: Rapid, reliable, at-home infection test kits – for when you need results
Prize: Raspberry Pi’s, Particle Photon’s and Arduino Experimenters Kits from Hackagong and Jaycar

Best Indie Game
Winners: BlueSkies
What: An indie multiplayer, arcade style aerial combat game.
Prize: Leap Motion and Gaming Keyboard/Mouse packs

Community & Social Impact Prize
Winners: EasyPol
What: Making Australian politics easy by presenting it in a visual and entertaining format.
Prize: $1,000 cash from Illawarra Forum and ASIT

The Most Elegant ALgorithm (MEAL)
Winners: TerraGen
What: Interactive chaotically generated terrain game
Prize: $2,000 cash, Raspberry Pi’s and Dinner with the IMC team from IMC Pacific

Most Immersive Idea
Winners: The Beaconing and VRShooter
What (The Beaconing): 3D Printed Mobile Augmented Reality for everyone, everywhere
What (VRShooter): A fully immervise world where you battle other players from around the world, stand man standing wins
Prize: Oculus Rift DK2

Peoples Choice
Winners: Profanity Pig
What: Profanity Pig is your sidekick in ending bad swearing habits.
Prize: $2,000 cash from Hackagong

A massive thanks to our Platinum sponsor, WiseTech Global, our Gold sponsors: Braintree, University of Wollongong, Rackspace, IMC and iAccelerate along with all our other sponsors. Without your generous contributions, Hackagong wouldn’t be where it is today.

Hackagong is the largest independent Hackathon in Australia. Hackagong is run entirely by students and volunteers as part of the Wollongong IT Society, a student club at the University of Wollongong.