Internet of Things Poland 2015 conference and hackathon was a great event last week in Poznan, Poland. Snowdog proudly participated as hackathon partner, and with Kuba Zwolinski speech about connected products in eCommerce. We had also a chance to show our youngest child – Magebutton. Oh, we almost forgot about IoT conference application we provided!

Hackathon

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Bartek Kwiatkowski, our Android developer, started first day with an introduction to the Beacons technology details. If you skipped it but still want to explore, you can see his presentation slides (Polish version only). The Beacons are not just indoor location devices, but also sensors of move, light and temperature. Sensoro Beacons are great example of how simple sensor can develop in complex, but very useful device. Beacons are great tools to prototype innovative dedicated solutions for IoT. And that was the very purpose of hackathon. But hackathon needs ground-breaking ideas to implement.

Snowdog led the Brainstorm session for all attendees. Seven randomly created teams were working on their ideas to make life easier, and use the Beacon features. All groups raised creativity and caused a lot of discussions. Chris Kwacz, Robert Mastalarek and Karol Karczewski as mentors supported participants with their knowledge and experience. Finally all teams presented their ideas to the audience and received feedback.

Three teams started in Hackathon battle around these ideas:

  • I’m cooling off. Smart mug notifying user about coffee temperature (sounds really useful for developers).
  • Childwatcher. Application to control groups of children on tours and alerting about lost children.
  • Bob the Beacon. City games wizard to create and play games based on Beacon locations.

They were working to the midnight and next day presented their work in front of the bigger audience.

Results

The second day of conference brought the results. Five judges watched the presentations and decided, that the winner is… “I’m cooling off” team. Their used temperature sensor to examine coffee readiness to drink. Great idea. We hope to actually use it one day. Congratulations!

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I’m cooling off

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Childwatcher

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Bob the Beacon

IoT and eCommerce

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Kuba on stage talking about Internet of Things and how it might be use in eCommerce

Kuba Zwolinski was a speaker during IoT Poland about eCommerce and how it’s changing over the years. The goal is to build smarter commerce present online, in social media, mobile devices and finally in IoT. eCommerce may speed up development of IoT solutions because of market competition and access to funds for research and development. Magento as the biggest open-source eCommerce solution can be good place to start connecting products. Snowdog made first step while working with Beacons, and second creating Magebutton. Button to make an order in Magento store, which is the easiest way to buy.

Magebutton

We were also very happy about how Magebutton idea was received by conference guests. We had many opportunities to present how the idea works, when and where it can be used and what new solutions it may bring. Most interesting was the idea of making on-line shopping more available for people with disabilities. Buying most relevant products with only one button would bring new quality to the market. This is what we call “making changes that really matter”.