AT&T : Promotes Real-Time Hacking Across the Globe: Mexico Hackathon Recap

As a mass of developers and designers gathered at the AT&T Developer Summit at CES in Las Vegas, another group came together in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Teams banded to fast-build an app from scratch in 24 hours. Apps covered everything from retail to transportation to health. Cash prizes were the ultimate goal, but invaluable experience, knowledge and networking opportunities also came out of the competition. Participants used the latest AT&T technologies, products, tools and services. They developed several innovative prototypes using Internet of Things (IoT) hardware.

And the winner is…

Team Emergency Medical Assistance won first place by creating a potentially life-saving app. In the event of an emergency, their app automatically places a video call to the closest emergency center. Then, it sends a text to alert their emergency contact. A wearable device provides key vitals to a dashboard seen alongside a video call. They won top app in Mexico and honorable mention in Las Vegas. They also won a prize for Best use of AT&T ARO, or Application Resource Optimizer. AROs let a developer improve their app's battery usage, data usage and overall responsiveness.

Team ChromPay won second place with an app that extends barcode scanning to trigger a smart vending machine. It also includes person-to-person payments. The app uses AT&T M2X which addresses industrial IoT products and services. It provides developers with time-series data storage, device management, message brokering, event triggering and data visualization. Most of the teams at the hackathon used M2X in some fashion. In addition to second place for top app, this team won best use of M2X.

Team Cycle won third place for their app which provides a personal safety theme and algorithm to detect irregular movements. If a cyclist falls and injures himself, an M2X function triggers an alarm, creating a WebRTC call to inform contacts. The app goes a step further by sharing the cyclist's location.

Team Kaan won best use of AT&T WebRTC APIs with a remote education app. Virtual classrooms become a reality with an app where students register for a lesson and receive a tutor. The tutor delivers the lesson via WebRTC. WebRTC is the latest to hit our developer offerings. It allows developers to provide real-time phone calls between Internet browsers. And in the future, it'll support phone calls between a browser and a smartphone.

Ericsson Sponsorship

As sponsor of the Mexico Hackathon, Ericsson awarded 3 prizes to teams for the best use of their Transportation API and cloud platform.

Team Smart Commute: Say you're catching a train. How long will it take to get to the station? Is the train on time? How long will the journey take? The user can answer these questions with real-time statuses of each segment of their trip.

Team OMG Traffic: This team designed smart traffic lights to reduce congestion on the road by detecting traffic flow. The lights also prioritize emergency vehicles to increase the odds of successful rescue.

Team Hazme un Paro: This team's goal was to improve and simplify the public transportation experience. Their app has a dashboard for emergency, medical and public transportation information.