Pololu engineers win at AT&T Car and Home Hackathon

Last weekend, Pololu engineers Brian, Jeremy, Kevin, and Ryan participated in the AT&T Car and Home Hackathon. They competed against around 300 people who came to The Cosmopolitan hotel in Las Vegas to participate in the event. The sponsors provided hardware, development boards, supplies, and APIs for the teams to work with, and they had 26 hours from Saturday to Sunday to make a home automation or “connected car” project.

Team Car Bon, which also included local programmer Dylan Simpson of the Las Vegas Ruby Group, hacked together a carbon monoxide sensor that would be installed in a car or garage and connected to the internet. The idea was for their system to monitor carbon monoxide levels, and if the levels became dangerous, to shut off the car engine, open the garage door, and alert your phone.

Team Car Bon’s Home Module: a demonstration of an internet-connected garage door opener.

Team Car Bon’s Car Module: an internet-connected carbon monoxide sensor.

The project won the best use of mbed award and took 1st place in the Home Automation Challenge. Here is Nixie Pixel (Nicole Allen)’s coverage of the project:

You can find out more about the project on the team Car Bon GitHub page and find out more about the event on AT&T’s blog post of the event.

Our engineers also took first place (in one of many categories) at another AT&T hackathon earlier this year, which sets a high bar for future Pololu participants. Come out here to compete in the next AT&T hackathon and help put the pressure on our next team!

Related products

	Carbon Monoxide Gas Sensor MQ-7
	SparkFun Inventor's Kit - V3.1 (with Arduino-Compatible RedBoard)