Hardware4Hacks

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  Browse hardware

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  check out screen

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  inventory management

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  items checked out

Inspiration

One of the best things about hackathons is being able to tinker with new technologies, which is why one of the most sought after perks of a hackathon is to be able to provide a wide inventory of technologies, often referred to as "hardware", for its attendees. However, this comes at a cost. Managing hardware is one of the most time and resource consuming part of the hackathon kickoff. It is also a nightmare logistically since organizers need to keep track of all the items since they are often borrowed or cost quite a bit of money.

What it does

Hardware4Hacks is an inventory management and reservation management tool for hackathons. It is inspired by other inventory management tool but built specifically to take care of the need of hackathon organizers and attendees. Some features:

• Users can make an account via Github
• Check out items from a catalog of items
• Make reservations for limited items/perks
• Organizers can add, edit and delete items from their inventory
• Organizers can approve reservations

With more features on the way.

The idea is that hackathons should be able to file their inventory for attendees to be able to browse and reserve ahead of time. This can also help with ideation since attendees will know ahead of time what hardware they will have access to. In addition, we added the capability of reserving time slots for limited time perks (room reservations, high-demand hardware, 3d printing time, etc). This will further help organizers manage these types of perks at their events.

The goal would be to have this be integrated with a platform (like Devpost) or be commonplace enough that organizers create one as a part of their pre-event planning so that they will not be overwhelmed during the event itself.

Note: Currently all accounts are set to have both attendee and organizer privileges for easier testing and demo.

Challenges we ran into

I actually learned about this hackathon fairly late so I was limited in the time for building the site. This is why I mostly focused on the item check out flow, but hopefully we'll get to building out the rest of the features soon.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

It's working, kind of...

What's next for Hardware4Hacks

The first thing is to clean up most of the features, especially the reservations. I'd also like to build out a feature where organizers can set a time when an item can be displayed to not give away any surprises to attendees.

The second is build out the admin experience. Currently making new hackathons and adding organizers is done manually. This will need to be streamlined

Lastly, one of the features I'm looking forward to the most is importable hardware/perks. This is specifically made for sponsors who bring their own hardware inventory to several events. This way organizers can simply import that catalog and have those hardware available to attendees right away.

Built With

• nextjs
• react
• supabase
• vercel