TADHack Global 2021 Summary & Winners - Blog @ TADHack - Telecom Application Developer Hackathon

Thank you to everyone who took part in TADHack Global 2021 from all around the world. We had over 1000 registrations, kicked off a new initiative TADHack TEENS in Sri Lanka (150 registrations), had 3 in-person locations (Berlin, Chicago, and Orlando), South Africa achieved a MASSIVE 400 registrations, and many hacks did an excellent job in mashing up the sponsors. Well done everyone!

We had an amazing turn-out at TADHack Orlando at Valencia College, far exceeding my expectations, I had to double the lunchtime food order. It was gratifying to see everyone’s delight and relief in finally being able to hack together after an 18 month long break.

Thank you to our global sponsors, without whom, TADHack would not be possible: Symbl.ai, jambonz.org, Subspace, AWA Network, and Telnyx.

Thank you to Ayoba, MTN, hSenid Mobile, and Ideamart for making TADHack South Africa and Sri Lanka possible. Both are world-leading examples of country-wide innovation ecosystems.

Symbl.ai Winners

$1000. RescueR by Ebtesam Al Haque, Doug Moore, Amy Sliwinski, Muntaser Syed, Vincent Tang, Davindra Tulsi, and Chris Woodle.

Autonomous rescue bot with sonar mapping and telecommunications technology to quicken response time of trapped victims.

jambonz.org Winners

$400. Node-Red Jambonz Conf Call by Sam Machin. This is a re-implementation of an application Sam built for his father in law at the start of the pandemic to run his church services via a PSTN conf call. Originally built with the Vonage (Nexmo) API, for TADHAck he rebuilt it using Jambonz and says it is much neater.

$300. Open Source and Contributing back by Dan Jenkins. Jambonz enhancement to allow Subspace SIP Teleport to be setup directly from directly within Jambonz. Here’s a longer video that provides much more context and details of the contribution.

$300. RescueR by Ebtesam Al Haque, Doug Moore, Amy Sliwinski, Muntaser Syed, Vincent Tang, Davindra Tulsi, and Chris Woodle. Autonomous rescue bot with sonar mapping and telecommunications technology to quicken response time of trapped victims.

Subspace Winners

$400 Open Source and Contributing back by Dan Jenkins. Jambonz enhancement to allow Subspace SIP Teleport to be setup directly from directly within Jambonz. Here’s a longer video that provides much more context and details of the contribution.

$150. Streaming Through Subspace by Vince Puglia. My hack was designed to leverage the Subspace Packet Accelerator in order to optimize various streaming protocols in an effort to reduce glass-to-glass latency and network packet loss thus enhancing the overall viewer experience.

$150. GlobalTURN mix by Philippe Sultan. This hack shows how to integrate GlobalTURN with the WebRTC library from Vonage. It also presents a Chrome extension used to display statistics about the published WebRTC stream in real-time.

AWA Network Winners

$1000. The AWA Effect by Ronny Graefe, Ali Barin, and Omer Faruk Aydin. The hack visualizes that AWA does save money. The imported prices of a few phone numbers are compared and visualized. A number generator has also been built to create various number sets.

Telnyx Winners

$2500 Telnyx Verify prize is Rescuer by Ebtesam Al Haque, Doug Moore, Amy Sliwinski, Muntaser Syed, Vincent Tang, Davindra Tulsi, and Chris Woodle. Autonomous rescue bot with sonar mapping and telecommunications technology to quicken response time of trapped victims.

$100. SMS Synthesizer by Jerry Reed. Play music on a synthesizer by sending it an SMS.

$150. Maftuha by Talhah Patelia and Adela Bootha. A single secure application in all aspects of schooling using facial recognition (image processing), identification and sentiment analysis.

$200. Proktara by Nandula Perera, Suvin Kodithuwakku, Dilhani Gamhatha, Dilan Perera, and Raveen Fernando. We introduce ‘Proktara’ the all-in-one exam hosting platform as a software as a service. Proktara is ideal for any entity which can be an individual or organization who needs to conduct online evaluations, for the benefit of exam coordinators, proctors and students.

$250. ICOAE by Yasith Samaradiwakara, Isuru Harischandra, Nisan AbeywickramaAsela Pathirage, and Naveen Rajan. In case of an emergency a patient can inform by single button press through our hand held device to the emergency service (e.g. 1990 hotline, Nawaloka Hospital) and at the same time a request will be sent to the server with patient details including location, pulse, blood pressure, temperature etc. Emergency service personnel can use our web dashboard to inform the nearest available ambulance and the ambulance driver can track the location of the patient through our mobile application.

$300. Enterprise Business Reputation Scoring System by Alex Eastwood. The hack aims to create a data network in which carriers, service providers, and enterprises can share information centered around decentralized IDs for businesses and phone number assignment to monitor reputation using AI (similar to what SendGrid did with email). This community network can monitor for fraud, spam, and update business reputations in near real-time, and be integrated into existing onboarding processes to “weed out” bad actors, while also giving us a way to quantitatively ID senders of “good” traffic in the industry. It also provides an avenue for easy A-Level attestation for STIR/SHAKEN, and the inclusion of BPO call centers in number assignment.

Joint Symbl / Telnyx AI-Driven Communications $4000 Prize

Wizard Chess by Lily Madar and Steven Goodwin. Play chess with your voice, making it accessible for those with visual impairments or less able motor skills. The code is a basic Node app, running on a server which starts by making a Telnyx call to the conference room, which symbl.ai then joins. From there, anything said into the phone is processed by symbl.ai and passed via websockets to the web page. Computer moves are relayed by voice in the opposite direction to only the human player. (In earlier drafts the voice spoke to everyone, including symbl.ai, but since the moves the computer spoke were invalid for the human, nothing bad happened!)

Colloqui11ly by Lily Madar and Steven Goodwin. ccessible conferencing solution (using TTS and STT). It makes the conference available to all by allowing some users to interact via text message (both to “hear” the chat, and respond) while others get the audio experience.

Podcast Annotator by Lily Madar and Steven Goodwin. Hands-free note-taking while listening to a podcast stream. You first start a podcast from the webpage, which initiates a call to your phone. (But it could also be triggered by DTMF tones.) At this point you can listen to the podcast, and say things like “Good point” and “must look that up”. These phrases are transcribed and added to a timeline for later review. Once the podcast ends, this review is sent via SMS.

Colombia Winners

$500. coffelytics by Nicolas Calderon, Federico Calderon, and Angie Canchon. Make life easier for farmers by giving them tools to improve their skills, bring the producer and the final consumer closer together and standardize and technify the coffee production chain with transparency.

$300. OrigenCAFE – Rapture – Julian Gutiérrez, Maria Juliana Marin, AndresGonzalez, Johan Sebastian. Web system that allows coffee producers to see information about consumers who buy their products, and coffee consumers to learn more about the people behind this process.

$200. HackieMe by Juan Sebastián Caldon Fernández. MOCAPP is a mobile application that will allow you to further explore the origin of the product you are consuming. This will be done by scanning a QR code that will be found on the coffee packaging, where you can access specific data such as the name of the producer, location geographical location of the coffee plantation and images of it, etc.

Orlando Winners

$300. Notify by Solange Ormeno, Massi Escano, Haritha Diraneyya, German Gamboa,Mike Groff, and Hunter Henry. Virtual assistant for annotating meetings. It writes a transcription for the call as well as gives captures the meeting topic.

$100. Citrus Harmony by Jennifer Agosto, Kyle Willams, Alejandro Duran, and Ryan Harrigan. An appointment bot that uses ai that schedules for you and sends confirmation texts.

$100 Museum Assistant by Jared Ashcraft and David Sikes. App-free SMS-based technology that allows a museum or gallery patron to send messages for additional information, help from staff, and the ability to send in a review on completion of their visit.

South Africa Winners

$1000. Maftuha by Talhah Patelia and Adela Bootha. A single secure application in all aspects of schooling using facial recognition (image processing), identification and sentiment analysis.

Tele Health Your Way by Lerato Tlhako, Godwill Fortune Manamela, Sipho Matakane, Andile Wilson. Local Prize: Laptop awarded to team member Lerato Thlako for Best Female Hacker). It’s about solving health related issues and provide information for users about different types of doctors and vaccines.

Stoka by Naomi Bisimwa, Christine Bisimwa, Carol Khoza, Andile Skosana, Thandanani Ncobo. Local Prize: Pre-Placement Interview provided by local sponsor TCS to team member Christine Bisimwa and Leveraging the Ecosystem Prize of R2500 Takealot Voucher. Platform for small businesses to reach their customers and make sales.

Taxis by Sydney Mhlanga, Praise Olowe, Tebatso Molokomme, Vongani Jasitio, and Mokhati Mokhati. Local Prize: Best Usage of Platform R2500 Takealot Voucher. Taxis is an e-payment platform integrating traditional taxis, mini-buses and buses payment from cash to electronic payment.

Sri Lanka Winners

Winners. $250. In case of an emergency (ICOAE) by Yasith Samaradiwakara, Isuru Harischandra, Nisan Abeywickrama, Asela Pathirage, and Naveen Rajan. In case of an emergency a patient can inform by single button press through our hand held device to the emergency service (e.g. 1990 hotline, Nawaloka Hospital) and at the same time a request will be sent to the server with patient details including location, pulse, blood pressure, temperature etc. Emergency service personnel can use our web dashboard to inform the nearest available ambulance and the ambulance driver can track the location of the patient through our mobile application.

1st runner up. $150. Proktara by Nandula Perera, Suvin Kodithuwakku, Dilhani Gamhatha, Dilan Perera, and Raveen Fernando. We introduce ‘Proktara’ the all-in-one exam hosting platform as a software as a service. Proktara is ideal for any entity which can be an individual or organization who needs to conduct online evaluations, for the benefit of exam coordinators, proctors and students.

2nd runner up. $100. Ayush by Lasal Jayawardene, Chamika Wijerathne, Kirthika Senathiraja, Janindu Pathirana, and Rusini Gunarathne. Ayush is an AI-powered digital stethoscope that helps in the early detection of Respiratory and Cardiac diseases, with help of state-of-the-art Deep neural networks and ML models.

UK Winners

$250. Wizard Chess by Lily Madar and Steven Goodwin. Play chess with your voice, making it accessible for those with visual impairments or less able motor skills. The code is a basic Node app, running on a server which starts by making a Telnyx call to the conference room, which symbl.ai then joins. From there, anything said into the phone is processed by symbl.ai and passed via websockets to the web page. Computer moves are relayed by voice in the opposite direction to only the human player. (In earlier drafts the voice spoke to everyone, including symbl.ai, but since the moves the computer spoke were invalid for the human, nothing bad happened!)

$125. Open Source and Contributing back by Dan Jenkins. Jambonz enhancement to allow Subspace SIP Teleport to be setup directly from directly within Jambonz. Here’s a longer video that provides much more context and details of the contribution.

$125. Node-Red Jambonz Conf Call by Sam Machin. This is a re-implementation of an application Sam built for his father in law at the start of the pandemic to run his church services via a PSTN conf call. Originally built with the Vonage (Nexmo) API, for TADHAck he rebuilt it using Jambonz and says it is much neater.

Congratulations to Everyone who took part in TADHack Global 2021

At Enterprise Connect 2021, on Tuesday, September 28 at 12:30pm – 1:15pm, some of the TADHack results will be given at “Hackathon Report: Focus on Programmable Communications.“

Here’s a preview of my presentation.