Hacker Info - Hack the Hill

Welcome to Hack the Hill, here you will find many useful resources to help you complete your project and information about the hackathon. Happy hacking!

📖 Table of contents

📱 Socials

Discord: https://discord.gg/8JNxJVMNrF

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/hackthehill

Devpost:

Twitter:

Instagram:

📣 Contact us

Email: [email protected]

🏅 Competition Information

Please read the rules to ensure your project and team is eligible to compete.

Hack the Hill Hackathon Rules

🏅 Challenges (and Prizes!)

You can participate in one or more challenges. Prizes will be awarded to one project that wins the challenge!

Network Security - Ciena Sponsored Challenge - $1750 Prize Pool

Challenge Topic: Network Security

Prize Distribution: First Place $1000. Second Place $750. Third Place $250.

Challenge Statement: Create a secure application that leverages data encryption to prevent possible security risks.

Challenge Description:

One of Ciena’s priorities is network security as secure connectivity is essential to support high-performing and reliable products.

Develop an application such as a video streaming platform, messaging app, web app, or any app involving a multi-host network. Your app must implement include all the following conditions:

  • The data packets transferred between the network elements (nodes) need to be encrypted.
  • The Data Encryption Standards need to be complied for packet transportation. The minimum key length needs to be 256 bits.

During judging, Ciena will be looking for the following to be included in the presentation or documentation of the project. The following aspects do not need to be implemented; however, they should be addressed during the presentation.

  • Network Performance Metrics
  • Network Bottlenecks
  • Potential Security Vulnerabilities

Bonus points will be awarded for consideration or implementation for the following.

  • Potential network attacks can include Spoofing, sniffing wireless transmissions, a Man in the Middle (MitM) attack with wireless transmission to intercept and/or modify data, Sending improper commands to the controller and backend servers, etc.
  • Potential loss of communication, server/network element unreachability and packet loss
  • Multi-host network with a minimum of 4 network elements (nodes)
  • Develop a custom encryption algorithm for encrypting and decrypting data packets.
  • Develop redundancies for potential network attacks stated above.
  • Develop redundancies for potential network losses as stated above.
  • Collect and analyze performance metrics for packet transportation - Develop a summary report for packet transmission statistics. Transmission statistics include the following but are not limited to:
  • Number of packets transmitted.
  • Number of packets lost.
  • Time taken for packets to be transported from Origin to Destination.

Retail Experience Challenge Presented by Canadian Tire - $1750 Prize Pool

Challenge Topic: Customer Connectivity

Prize Distribution: First Place $1000. Second Place $750. Third Place $250.

Challenge Description: For over a century Canadian Tire has strived to Make Life in Canada Better.  There have been amazing technological advancements over the last hundred years in the field of communication and collaboration technologies. In particular, these technologies are becoming increasingly comprehensive enabling the connection of people using video, chat, calendar scheduling, task assignments, and more.  All this connectivity can be automated into any number of flows to ensure efficient seamless interactivity with the right people engaged at the right time.

Your challenge:

Connect Canadian experiences with Canadian customers with the Canadian Tire Retail family (Canadian Tire, Sport Chek, Atmosphere,  Mark’s, Part Source, Party City, Gas+) using connectivity technologies.  Enhance customer experiencewhen shopping and help ensure stores can provide a great and efficient experience to customers.  Some things to consider as part of this challenge

·What are the Canadian experiences and retail experiences you are targeting?

·Who are the key people involved?  This can include people involved providing the experience, the customer, store staff and Canadian Tire employees outside the store including customer support and other corporate office roles

·Be sure to convey how collaboration will work with your idea including building proof of concepts

·Be prepared to talk to the feasibility of your idea including some of the high-level benefits and costs

There are many technologies that enable people to connect with one another through video, chat, scheduling capabilities, task management and more

  • One example is the Microsoft 365 Platform. These technologies can be integrated in any number of ways using Microsoft Graph APIs
  • **** The platform can be accessed through Microsoft’s Developer Program including a free sandbox environment
  • https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/dev-program
  • Other technologies can be used as well either instead of or in conjunction with the 365 Platform

Game Jam Challenge Presented by Maker Jam - $1750 Prize Pool

Challenge Topic: Ecological crises

Prize Distribution: First place $1000. Second place $750.

This challenge is limited to 15 teams. Please use this Eventbrite to sign up as a team. Teams must have 2 to 4 people.

Challenge Description: Our societies are currently facing a series of unprecedented ecological crises: climate change, biodiversity erosion, deforestation, water pollution, etc. Through their games, the teams participating in the Game Jam are invited to explore, describe or discuss the causes and consequences of the ecological crises facing our societies. Teams can also explore, describe or criticize solutions or strategies that can be adopted to address these ecological crises.

Teams can choose the nature, form factor, and mechanics of the game. Games can be digital games, board games, card games, or any other kind of game.

Rules_Game_Jam_V3.docx

Maker Con Challenge Presented by Maker Jam - $1750 Prize Pool

Prize Distribution: First place $1000. Second place $750.

This challenge is limited to 15 teams. Please use this Eventbrite to sign up as a team. Teams must have 3 to 6 people.

Your project must be about one of the following:

Best User Experience (UX) - $300 Prize

Prize Distribution: First Place $300.

Challenge Description: New products should be accessible and intuitive to use for all kinds of people. User experience does not only have to be limited to graphical user interfaces. The form factor, other sensory information (audio, haptic, etc), and accessibility will also be considered when picking the best UX project. Any project is eligible for this challenge!

Best Developer Experience (DX) - $300 Prize

Prize Distribution: First Place $300.

Challenge Description: Improve the software development process with an add-on, extension, game engine, or any tool to make a software developer’s life easier and more efficient!

Best Cybersecurity Project - $400 Prize

Prize Distribution: First Place $400.

Challenge Description: To compete in this challenge your project can utilize cybersecurity principles, educate users on cybersecurity topics, or improve the security of existing systems. In general, anything relating to cybersecurity can compete in this challenge!

📋Judging

Judging will be done live. You have the choice of a live demonstration or showing the judges your Devpost video presentation. There is the option to do the judging online or in-person depending on whether you are attending on-campus or virtually. We will make the judging schedule public after the submission deadline.

📃 Judging procedure

  • There will be 1-2 minutes for setting up, 5 minutes for presentations, and 1-2 minute Q&A. If you are unable to make the live presentation or are not present within the first 2 minutes, your Devpost submission will be used to judge your project.
  • We will be cutting presentations after 5 minutes to ensure all teams will be able to present.
  • In-person judging will be done at the CRX venue, rooms will be posted on the schedule. Please wait quietly outside your designated room 5 minutes prior to your assigned timeslot. There will be staff coordinating the queue for judging.
  • Online judging will be done on Zoom, the link can be found on Discord. Each team will be assigned a breakout room number. Please join the meeting 5 minutes earlier, with your name displaying “FIRSTNAME LASTNAME [DEVPOST PROJECT NAME]”. A staff member will move you to the correct breakout room.

👀 Judging criteria

Judging Criteria - Hacker Edition

⏰ Project Submission

Projects will be submitted on Devpost for all projects, both in-person and online. Your Devpost submission will be viewed by judges and will be made public for everyone to view. This section contains all the information you need to ensure your submission on Devpost meets the requirements. So it is very important that you read this section carefully!

📏 Rules

Please make sure your submission follows the rules below:

  • Your team must submit your project to Devpost by 9 am EST on Sunday, March 5th to be considered for judging. Late submissions will not be accepted
  • When submitting your project, you can select as many “challenges” as you like to be considered for the prize.
  • You must include a link to your GitHub repository. Your GitHub commits will be reviewed during judging to ensure the project was created during the hackathon.
  • Your teammates must also be added to the Devpost submission
  • You must indicate your team’s status (IN_PERSON, VIRTUAL, HYBRID) in the Devpost

🎥 (Optional) Video

Teams can submit a video presentation under 4 minutes. Your video will be used for judging if you are unavailable to attend the live judging session. Your video can be put on any video-sharing platform including YouTube, Vimeo, Google Drive, etc. Please make sure your video is public.

Your video can include the following, but are not limited to:

  • A demonstration of your project’s functionality
  • An explanation about how your project works and the problem it aims to solve
  • Challenges you faced while making your project

Optionally your video can be used to present your project to the judges if non of your team is unavailable to present a live presentation.

⌨️ Submitting on Devpost

How to enter a submission

Watch the video if this is your first time submitting on Devpost!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCa7QFFthfU

🙋‍♂️ Getting Help with Tech Issues 🙋‍♀️

Stuck on a tech issue that you can’t seem to find the right answer on Stackoverflow? We have plenty of mentors to help you overcome those technical hurdles.

To get help online, send a message in #Questions and one of our mentors will reach out to help you find a solution to your problem.

To get help in-person, go to CRX C408 or ask any of the Hack the Hill staff.

👩‍💻 Hackathon project resources 🧑‍💻

🖲️ Hardware Resources

Need some help with using an Arduino or ESP32 for your project? We have put together a guide with external resources to get you started!

Hardware Guide

☁️Get Free Access to Sponsored Tools

Sponsor Provided Tools and Services

🌐 How to use GitHub

github.com must be used to store all your team’s projects. Judges and anyone interested in your project will be viewing the code you store in your GitHub repository. GitHub allows everyone to collaborate on the same code by providing version control (similar to viewing edit history in Google Docs). It can help you manage and keep track of the code that your team writes.

📚 Resources

You can get started by watching this 3-minute video:

Here are additional resources:

Join our Discord server