Hackathons are events where students, hobbyists, and programmers of all levels get together for a short period of time and try to create something using software, hardware, and other materials.
This "Hackathon in a Box" will provide you with the steps and materials to host your own 4-6 hour hackathon in an 7 week timespan, though the length of the event and timeframe can be adjusted as needed.
These events can be hosted by anybody for anybody! Whether you're a professor, student group, or a professional, hackathons can be great ways to develop student and employee skills, or even to evaluate them for recruitment.
Start with the Hackathon in a Box Playbook, which will provide an overview of the materials provided and the steps you will need to take to host your own hackathon. Each step is a recommendation based on our experience, but you can modify any of the steps to best suit the needs of your event.
We have provided a collection of problem statements that hackathon participants can tackle during the event. These are described in detail in the Hackathon in a Box Playbook:
Fitness Tracker: Open-ended, beginner-friendly problem statement. Collect data from MATLAB® Mobile™ and use it to develop some kind of fitness tracker.
Microgrid on Mars: Beginner-friendly engineering problem, helpful for audiences interested in Simscape™ and/or grids and electrical systems. Broken down into 5 tasks.
Predicting Diabetes Mellitus: AI-focused problem statement, also interesting for computational health/science departments. Given a dataset, train an algorithm to predict if an ICU patient has diabetes. May be better with an audience that has experience with either MATLAB or machine learning, though hosting a workshop/onramps could bridge this gap.
Predicting Building Energy Consumption: AI-focused problem statement with a climate focus. Given a dataset, train an algorithm to predict how much energy a building will consume. May be better with an audience that has experience with either MATLAB or machine learning, though hosting a workshop/onramps could bridge this gap.
Drone Simulation: Engineering problem with an autonomous systems focus. Provided with a simulated drone and its camera data, develop a path-following algorithm for the drone. Difficulty level varies depending on the number and difficulty of the paths provided. Experience with Simulink or computer vision is helpful but can be taught through a workshop/onramp.
Signal Decryption Challenge: Signal processing challenge that tasks participants with analyzing audio signals. Background with MATLAB or signal processing is helpful but not required, as interactive apps and resources can be utilized by the participant. An onramp/workshop can help bridge a knowledge gap as well.
Send us an email at hackathon@mathworks.com to let us know that you're interested in hosting a hackathon, when and where you're thinking of hosting it, and if you have any questions about this repository! We can make sure you have the right resources and information to run a successful event.
If you are a MathWorks Student Ambassador, reach out to your MathWorks contact for support instead.
Users of this Hackathon in a Box are responsible for setting their own terms and conditions for their hackathons. Any third party content you access directly is subject to the relevant third party terms.
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