Project Diani was a 24 hour hackathon project based off of Arduino, which was written in C++ where my main job was creating the documentation and the website for it. The team was composed off our lead C++ dev, Sahib, along with Batuhuan as C++ assist, and Dorian our overall designer, and me as our front end.

9:00 AM

We arrive at 9 AM and enter. The opening talk starts at 10. I meet Dorian for the first time, we met originally as discord friends on the NYCHS server. We chat and Sahib manages to slip in and sits behind us without noticing.

10:00 AM

The organizers start talking. I don’t remember what they said.

11:00 AM

Hacking starts. We come up with a list of ideas, and I set the deadline of 12:00PM to start working.

12:00PM

We can’t decide on a realistic idea, we have a bad password generator, alcohol simulator, and making stack overflow but different.

1:30PM

We attend a talk about web dev or something.

2:00PM

I bring up a past idea about arduino I thought about during MegaHack where I didn’t end up submitting anything because we drained our energy arguing about what to make.

2:30PM

I get the team to agree.

3:00PM

We get started and we are very inefficent since only one of us knows C++ and we are only building on arduino based product.

9:00PM

We finish the MVP, a dyslexia diagnosing aid, which resembles the vibe of simon says.

After 9:00PM

We more or less stop working on the project itself and instead on the devpost and documentation website.

6:00AM

We make some changes to the delay time on the arduino and finish up the devpost

7:00AM

We eat crappy breakfast.

8:00AM

We more or less finish and stop doing anything

10:30AM

Submiting happens.

11:30AM

We talk to the judges about our project.

12:30PM

We eat lunch.

2:00PM

We present and win first place.

Lessons Learned for any hackathoner!

Don’t attempt to learn or try too many new things at once for your MVP(Minimal Viable Product). It’s better to finish early and focus on having a great presentation and fun. If you have time after that then feel free to work on adding interesting features or integrations. Don’t build a project that takes more that a third to a half of your allowed programming time. No matter what, make something that has impact and that can be tried by the audience. If you reinvent the wheel, make sure you can do it in a day and better(not just different). If you don’t reinvent the wheel(original), its ok to make something not off as high quality. Aim to come up with an idea fast, allot just an hour, you probably will need longer but just pretend you only have an hour. Most importantly, remember all these rules can be broken, it’s up to you and what you want to do at the hackathon. Have fun!