PennApps Recap: EyePhone, Inventory, and Making Your Coffee Maker Text You
Time to read: 2 minutes
February 07, 2013
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PennApps is the largest student hackathon in the world. Students from all over the country came to Philadelphia to forego sleep in order to build innovative apps and hardware hacks. Developer Evangelist, Jon Gottfried, was on scene live coding Twilio demos and helping out participants.
There were too many great hacks to name. Here are a few highlights including the PennApps winners, and the app the took him the Twilio Prize.
Twilio Winner: EyePhone
Twilio Prize winner, EyePhone, gives your camera Eye of Sauron-like powers, if those powers were used for good. The Android app lets you interact with real objects through a virtual medium. Aim your camera at a light switch, swipe your finger across the screen and turn the light on. Want to make a call? Aim the camera at a phone, tap the screen and make the phone ring.
1st Place: Inventory
You’re forgetful, and Inventory wants to help you out with that. Inventory gives your backpack some brains by using an RFID scanner and accompanying Android app to keep track of the things you use and need, and notify you if you forgot anything.
2nd Place: Virtual Perspective
Virtual Perspective lets you take a picture of an object on your tablet or phone and explore it in 3D. The app uses facial recognition software to graph and display the object’s dimensions.
3rd Place: Web Tube
Remember smacking the side of your old CRT TV to get what your dad called the “color tubes” to work? Now you can enjoy the throwback feel of a CRT TV while browsing the internet with Web Tube.
Additional Awesome Hacks
Mrs. Coffee: Mrs. Coffee (pictured right) not only makes coffee for you, it’ll text you when the coffee is ready. As an unashamed coffee addict, this is a big win and a great hack by some talented students.
Mosaic: Mosaic is a screen sharing app for photos. If you want to make that picture of the Grand Canyon look as giant as can be, you can use Mosaic to spread the photo across your friends’ different iOS devices.
Until Next Time
Great job to everyone who attended and coded the night away. We look forward to the next one! Now, I have to go respond to a few texts from my backpack and my coffee maker (respectively).
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