sunhacks is a yearly Fall hackathon (ideathon, coding marathon, prototyping marathon, etc) designed to support students in their innovative journeys. sunhacks is for students of all skill levels, and our job as organizers is to support you by providing the resources you need to achieve your development dreams. We provide you with workshops, mentors, community connections, and peers who are motivated to help each other succeed and reach their goals.

Requirements

For participants to be eligible for judging the Devpost project, they must have the project write-up and evidence of work done (code and GitHub where applicable, zip). Some sponsor prizes may have explicit requirements as well so please check the prize category description.

In the instance there are team members, all team members must be registered for the hackathon individually and must be in the devpost submission before the submission deadline.

Videos

While we don't require a video, we are happy to encourage you to take a video of your functioning demo both as a backup during judging (things happen!) or if you happen to win a category and we'd like to show your demo at the end of closing ceremony! (Uploading to YouTube is preferable so we can make a playlist! If you don't wish to use your YouTube account and/or have privacy concerns, please see an organizer for a solution.)

If you are submitting a hardware hack, it is again, not required, but we highly recommend adding a video submission in case of delicate or hard to reset projects.

Video Requirements (submission optional)

  • Maximum two(2) minute video
  • Uploaded to YouTube
  • Privacy Permissions: Note in your Devpost write up whether you agree to having your video in an end of sunhacks playlist in the event of winning a category or placement.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$4,852 in prizes
First Place
1 winner

⭐ Electric Keystone Projector ⭐

Second Place
1 winner

⭐ Retro Pixel Art Game Bluetooth Speaker ⭐

Third Place
1 winner

⭐ Click & Grow Indoor Herb Garden Kit ⭐

Best Hardware Hack
1 winner

⭐ Stylophone S-1 ⭐ Microcontrollers, breadboard, and wires, oh my! Challenge the software quo and bring balance to the *ware world. Channel your inner (or outer) maker and leverage electronics, 3D printing (if you have time), and more to break the mold.

Best Accessibility Hack
1 winner

⭐ Smart Flowerpots ⭐ VTT and TTS are great, but there's more to accessibility than this! Check out the WCAG 2.2 for your website. Additional questions to consider: how can tech help the elderly and disabled? What if we made the world friendlier to them rather than making them adjust to an abled world? But better than making assumptions about what they need, do your research to see if the community ACTUALLY wants it.

Most Aesthetic
1 winner

⭐ Vitrola Record Player ⭐ Beautiful usable UI/UX, need we clarify more?

Best Team Mascot
1 winner

⭐ Buc-ee's Keychain ⭐ From our TX friends! Your team mascot must match your project, be aesthetically pleasing, bonus if they're integrated into your project (this gen's Clippy?) and more than just a photo!

Most Impractical
1 winner

⭐ Kool-aid Jenga ⭐ How convoluted is your stack? How impractical is your idea? The constraints are flipped and we're looking for you to do your... worst?

AI Society - AI Innovation Award
1 winner

⭐ Air Tags ⭐

./SoDA - Best Rookie Hack
1 winner

⭐Amazon Gift Cards⭐

MLH - Best Use of MongoDB Atlas
1 winner

⭐ M5GO IoT Starter Kit ⭐

MongoDB Atlas takes the leading modern database and makes it accessible in the cloud! Get started with a $50 credit for students or sign up for the Atlas free forever tier (no credit card required). Along with a suite of services and functionalities, you'll have everything you need to manage all of your data, and you can get a headstart with free resources from MongoDB University! Build a hack using MongoDB Atlas for a chance to win a M5GO IoT Starter Kit for you and each member of your team.

MLH - Best DEI Hack sponsored by Fidelity
1 winner

⭐ Fidelity Branded Wireless Charger ⭐

At Fidelity, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are viewed as major keys to the success of their business, which is why they are challenging you to come up with innovative ways to create forward-thinking financial tech that promotes equality for all people! We want you to use your hacking skills to find and build solutions that put financial opportunities and resources within reach for all communities, creating accessible, sustainable, and/or inclusive solutions. The team with the best hack will win a Fidelity branded wireless charger for each team member!

MLH - Most Creative Adobe Express Add-On
1 winner

⭐ Wacom Wireless Drawing Tablet & JBL Go3 Speaker ⭐

Adobe Express is an AI-first, all-in-one content creation app that makes it fast, easy and fun to design and share videos, images, PDFs, flyers, TikToks, logos and more. Best of all, it’s free to get started.

Add-ons in Adobe Express are simply extensions and integrations that are built upon very powerful APIs. These APIs provide access to the user’s document, connections to third-party tools, and so much more. You can extend the functionality of Adobe Express using add-ons to unlock new capabilities and workflows. Check out these add-ons to see what other cool ideas developers have implemented!

For this hackathon, we want you to build a creative add-on for Adobe Express. Users are looking for add-ons that involve assets like stickers or icons, work with presentations and data visualization, and work in roles like marketing and e-commerce. Build an Adobe Express add-on this weekend for a chance to win a Wacom Wireless Drawing Tablet and JBL Go3 Speaker for you and each member of your team!

*You can also submit to this prize category if you have a prototype idea for an add-on or have a partially completed add-on. As long as you’ve built with Adobe Express, we want to see your hack!

MLH - Best Use of Terraform
1 winner

⭐ Hashicorp Swag Bag ⭐

HashiCorp Terraform is a source available infrastructure as code (IaC) tool that makes building, deploying, and managing your projects even easier! Whether you’re working in the cloud or using local resources, Terraform can make managing and configuring your application simple and organized. From deploying Machine Learning models to spinning up virtual containers for your web applications, Terraform supports a wide array of cloud providers and services, taking the guesswork out of your next hackathon project. Dive into the documentation and discover all the ways Terraform can take the way you hack to the next level!

Terraform’s community edition is free to use with no credit card required! Utilize Terraform in your hackathon project this weekend for a chance to win some awesome Hashicorp swag for you and each of your teammates!

MLH - Best Use of Midnight
1 winner

⭐ JBL Tune 510BT Wireless Headphones ⭐

Midnight is a data protection blockchain that offers programmable data protection capabilities powered by zero-knowledge technology to address the delicate balance between data protection, ownership, and utilization. This ensures that developers can leverage blockchain technology without exposing confidential information or losing control over their data.

To build on Midnight, all you need is familiarity with TypeScript or a similar JavaScript based library. The service is free to use and their developer documentation has all the information you need to get started. Build a DApp using Midnight this weekend for a chance to win wireless headphones for you and each of your team mates!

MLH - Sauce Labs Hot Sauce Raffle
1 winner

⭐ Sauce Labs Swag Bag ⭐
Sauce Labs empowers you to develop, test, and deliver top-tier web and mobile apps quickly and efficiently. Their unified platform makes automated testing and error monitoring easy to do, enabling you to save time building your hackathon project! Let Sauce Labs help resolve any issues with your code so you can get back to building an award winning hack. Make sure your project is hackathon-tested by signing up for a Sauce Labs account!

To spice things up even more, we're running the Sauce Labs Hot Sauce naming raffle and selecting up to 4 individual winners at this event. To qualify come up with a cool hot sauce name and submit it to the Sauce Labs raffle form for a chance to win some awesome swag including a backpack, beanie, and a bottle of Sauce Labs hot sauce!

Amazon - Best Use of AWS
2 winners

Build a meaningful project that effectively uses AWS features
Choose your favorite shape for Alexa: Echo, Echo Pop, Echo Show 5, or Echo Dot + Fire TV Stick 4K

State Farm - Best Hack for Social Good
1 winner

⭐Raspberry Pis⭐
Create a technical solution hack. A hack that addresses local/ global social issues. The hack should help people improve social issues they may face today.

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Team

Team
sunhacks

Judging Criteria

  • Design
    Does it look good? Feel good?
  • Originality
    Avoid Uber for Y ideas. A "bad" idea can be very original (lol).
  • Functionality
    Completeness
  • Complexity
    How hard was this (for you)?

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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Hackathon sponsors

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Partners

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