My Hackathon Project

A couple of times a year we get to participate in hackathon projects at work. This allows people to work on things that interest them above and beyond their daily work. Our latest hackathon finished a week ago and I had a really great time.

Most hackathon projects are related to the PlayStation but I decided to do something a bit different. Several years ago I came up with the idea of attaching a speaker to my skis so that I would be able to find them if I lost them on a powdery day. For those that don't ski, bindings are meant to release your skis in the event of a fall so that they don't cause damage to your body. Ski brakes then extend into the snow and keep the skis from running away down the hill. The system works great most of the time with fresh powder being the exception. When you lose your skis on a powdery day, it is anyone's guess as to where they are.

My idea is to being able to have the speaker start making noise when you activate it with your smartphone. I bought a $30 microcontroller board with Bluetooth capabilities, a small buzzer, and a Lithium-ion battery. It didn't take long to put everything together and modify a few sample programs to get the board talking with my mobile phone. I could turn the buzzer on and off from my phone before going to bed on the first night of the event.

I woke up the next morning and took the device to Snowbird ski resort to do some testing. The first thing I wanted to check is how loud the buzzer was. Unfortunately, it wasn't that loud. Not wanting to waste the day, I next checked how far the Bluetooth worked. At around 150 feet or 50 meters, I could still communicate with the microcontroller from my smartphone which is more than enough distance. I found that to be encouraging and came home to work on the low-sound issue.

I replaced the buzzer with a speaker but that didn't help at all. The microcontroller just didn't have enough power to drive the speaker very loudly. As I felt stuck with the buzzer, I actually soldered the buzzer to the microcontroller board. That increased the sound output by 3 times. I could now hear the device from 60 feet away instead of just 20.

The next day I headed up to Alta ski resort and waited for the lifts to start carrying skiers to the top of the mountain. We had several inches of new snow and that made for great test conditions. While waiting in line, I ran over to an area of fresh snow and buried the microcontroller about 6 inches deep. I activated the buzzer and didn't hear a blasted thing. It turns out snow is a great sound insulator. While I felt disappointed, I still had one more test to perform: battery life in the cold conditions. That means I spent 2 hours powder skiing with the device turned on and communicating with my smartphone. I had my daughter with me who is an excellent powder skier and we had a lot of fun.

Now someone reviewing my hackathon project  might think I wasted the company's time by working on a device that has no relevance to video games. The reality is that I have never worked with a microcontroller before and this served as an entrance for me to other hardware projects. I actually have a very good idea for my next hackathon. I will use the same microcontroller board with a few of its analog-to-digital inputs to help create a new type of controller. I won't say more than that but it will definitely be related to video games and how to make them better.