Brother announces winners of nationwide hackathon
June 17, 2021
For the first time ever, the annual Brother Hackathon sponsored by Brother International Corporation and subsidiary Brother Mobile Solutions was open to contestants across the United States to crowdsource innovative software applications that stretched the boundaries of the Brother ecosystem of products and solutions for document management.
Held virtually over the course of 20 weeks, culminating in the main competition on 4-5 June, more than 50 participants vied for the grand prize of $5,000 (€4,186) for spurring innovation in software application development for Brother printing, scanning, and labeling solutions.
This year’s winner, Jim & Melinda Wyatt, won for their app, BoxItFindIt, which uses object recognition to easily identify what you are storing in the box. The custom app prints a label with QR code and item pictures to Brother label printers, supports scanning of documents on Brother scanners, and integrates with Alexa to recall which boxes your items are in.
Brother views its hackathons as valuable testing grounds for solutions to address today’s real-world challenges, and has incorporated winning ideas into its enterprise universe of software solutions. Last year’s winning app, DivvyScan, which crowdsources the digitisation of common domain books, is currently being onboarded to the Brother software development kit.
2021 Hackathon Main Event Winners
- The Platinum Award went to Jim & Melinda Wyatt for BoxItFindIt.
- The Gold Award app was Fresh Raffles by Joe Mestrovich allowing non-profits and charity organisations to set up their own event raffles with custom logo, dates, times and prizes printing tickets from a Brother RJ and QL label printers.
- Ed Arenberg won the Silver Award with Mine a digital asset ownership application leveraging non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to create asset QR codes for people to view and interact with including recipes, artwork, education and more.
- Sameer Khandekar won the Healthcare Vertical Award for Verifiable Certificate, an application that can connect name and date of birth of an individual’s proof of vaccine without the need of an ID.
- Gina Choi won the Education Vertical Award for Translate Sticker, an application that translates words into the language of your choice to print on a Brother label and labeling items to visualize and learn a new language.
- Rene Alfonso won the Retail Vertical Award for the application, Easy Menu providing an easy way for mom-and-pop restaurants to manage takeout orders from an app with tickets printing direct to the kitchen for preparation
Mini-hackathon Winners
- #1 Spark Joy – Jim & Melinda Wyatt for VoiceReceipts
- #2 Call Mom – Ed Arenberg for Orderly
- #3 Lift-Off – Daniel Blackburn for Hello Gentlemen
- #4 Revive Zombie – Ed Arenberg for RoutePrint
- #5 Ask Professor – Frank Hernandez for Knowledge Pets
- #6 Catch Villain – Ed Arenberg for Badged
- #7 Pick Charity – Jim & Melinda Wyatt for ThankYouBuck
- #8 Plus One – Bill Reed for a Solar Panel and Battery Monitor
Contestants were graded by a judging panel of Brother executives, as well as guest judge Marie-Philippe Gill, the voice behind the internationally renowned technology blog Girl Knows Tech. Each hackathon team was tasked with building an application that prints labels, receipts, or full-page outputs (invoices, logs, contracts, etc.) on the Brother QL Label Printer, P-touch label maker, a PocketJet series printer, a Brother RuggedJet series printer/labeller, a TD series printer labeller, or a full-size printer/scanner.
“I was beyond impressed with the level of skill and passion from the Brother Hackathon participants,” said Bob Brady, Senior Product Manager, Brother International Corporation.
“Every team put so much thought, creativity, and enthusiasm into each entry, applying their expertise for incredibly innovative results showcasing how Brother products and SDKs can solve for a range of needs.”
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Tags : Brother Hackathon Innovation Winners
