By Brendan Rees
Nine teams of tech junkies converged at Berwick’s Casey Tech School with only 40 hours to present a project of how to make Casey a smarter city.
As part of Casey’s free ‘LORA Hackathon’ event, the competition saw teams of developers, entrepreneurs, designers, academics and the general community come up with ideas of ways to better harness Casey’s LORA (long range) network – one of the biggest wireless networks in Australia.
Held from the 30 August to 1 September, entrants were supplied with access to the LORA network, datasets, hardware, 3D printers, soldering stations and more.
The teams pitched their ideas to a panel of judges who awarded prizes for the most innovative ideas.
The LORA network is designed to enable smart devices to send and receive data without a cost to the community, and is available to everyone. For example people can access apps to remotely turn on and off items such as lights or sprinklers.
To celebrate the launch of the network, members of our The INNovation Crowd, council’s bespoke support program for local entrepreneurs and technologists, joined Casey Council officials at Casey Tech School Friday 30 August.
At the opening, Casey mayor Amanda Stapledon said she was excited to see so many community members supporting the future of Casey.
“The ideas generated during LORAhack will help us in our endeavour to create Australia’s most liveable city,” she said.
The ‘Mayor’s Choice’ Award was presented to #TEAMDORY, for their solution to reduce social isolation in parents of children with disabilities.
Team Dory member coordinator Jai Mahajan said his team was humbled to receive the award and will pitch their idea to external stakeholders to explore potential pilot programs.
Team #GRAYANGELS won the main prize of $2,000 for their solution, which used advanced sensor technologies to produce clothing to detect the location and falls in the elderly.
