Makeathon 2016 Recap

Over the 24 hours that made up March 5 to 6, student engineers across the Midwest tested the limits of their technical skills during the 2016 Makeathon at The Ohio State University.

Watch the video recap here.

Find pictures from the event here.

A new partnership with OHI/O this year helped Makeathon organizers, such as the Electronics Club, IEEE, the Amateur Radio Club and the Maker Club, pool their resources and attention toward expanding their efforts.

"We certainly had a great showing at the showcase," organizer and Electronics Club president Eric Bauer said.

Co-organizer Gus Fragasse said participation was around 70 people in 2015.

"This year we've been able to beef that up to 110 participants," he said.

As daylight fell into night Saturday, the sun rose on Sunday to reveal countless new technical inventions sitting on tables and floors of the Knowlton School of Architecture building.

One group constructed a Pong game that not only flips a ping pong ball with accuracy into cups, but is programmable down to the exact row. A mounted video camera lets you see your work. Another team converted a toaster and a vaccuum into a device that creates negative molds out of melted plastic plates. An audience favorite was an invention that boils pasta, dains it, then evenly spreads out the sauce for a fully-programmable feast.

The First Place winner of the Makeathon was Team M4C - consisting of students Anand Vignesh Venkataraman, Bhargavi Govindarajan, Bhansuri Sridharan, Priyanka Ganesh and Srinija Kambham - who turned their attention toward creating a project that could serve humanity.

As Bauer explains, their American Sign Language (ASL) Translator Glove was built on a "super cheap budget" because they crafted many of their own sensors, saving hundreds of dollars. The glove is capable of tracking user gestures and motion to translate ASL into text on a computer.

"All of us truly enjoyed the experience. It was rewarding and kind of an eye-opener as to what we could possible do in 24 hours," Ganesh said. "None of us thought we could even stay awake the whole night. With the mentors that we had, and all of the help, and all of the hardware supplies the team at OHI/O was giving us, it gave us the perfect platform to do what we set out to do."

"It is very well organized and it makes you work," Govindarajan said.

"It pushed you to go to any extent, and we did it," Venkataraman said.

Other winning teams included:

Best use of Lighting Project:

Team: DP Doughers

Members: Jeff Ivey, Dalton Flanagan, and Brandon Lundeen

Description: Geographic Data Driven World Map (can display temperature, day/night, news events as well as your internet traffic using tri-color LEDs)

Best Electromechanical Project:

Team: Planet X and the Gravity Waves

Members: Brody Ringler, Raymond Gaines, Polina Brodsky

Description: Lincoln Log House Builder Robot

Best Use of Analog:

Team: Eureka

Members: Abhisher Roy, Varun Karthikeyan, Vishal Chillara Srinivas, Harihara Varma Indukuri

Description: Integrated Circuit Test Rig w/ Voice Recognition for Automated Testing

Best Low-Energy Project:

Team: Watts Up

Members: Sean Tomecko, Rick Straka

Description: Solar Light Intensity tracker and controller to find the optimum angle for Solar Panels

Third Place Overall: 

Team: Gusteau Group

Members: Clayton Greenbaum, Grace Crumrine, Aaron Bonnell-Kangas, Larsen Marquardt

Description: Pasta cooking machine. Could boil water, cook noodles, dump noodles to a plate and add sauce and other stuff to automate the creation of a basic Italian meal

Second Place Overall:

Team: Robottermilk Puncakes

Members: Ryan Niemocienulsi, Sean Whitehurst, David Frank, Carter Hurd

Description: Large Scale Remote Control Vehicle. The team actually jacked up their car, put it in neutral and built an actuator system to press the gas and break and other car inputs. They also included a camera on the back of the car which could stream to Google Cardboard/Android phone to create a First Person Vision (FPV) driving perspective.