Happy 5-year Birthday, Garage48 Hardware & Arts!

The 5 year milestone of Garage48 Hardware & Arts hackathons was met with 32 ideas pitched on the opening evening, ranging from an automatic window opener to a programmable USB for every child studying in Estonia. This celebration of creativity, teamwork, prototyping, hardware and arts is in 5th gear as the nearly 150 participants from across all the Baltics and beyond have formed teams and started working on their
prototypes.

The event is organised by the University of Tartu, the Estonian Academy of Arts | Eesti Kunstiakadeemia and Garage48 in cooperation with the Est-Lat Accelerate program and Estronics cluster.

We had 32 ideas pitched, from which 17 ideas gathered teams around them to start developing physical prototypes over this weekend ahead. 


Ideas in development are:

1. Gocu. Great Online Companion for You. Robot with a miniprojector, that will be able to show anything through interactive activities as it recognises your face and your voice. Read bedtime stories for children or help adults cook or repair a car. It doesn’t just Google for you, but has it’s own ecosystem of content.

2. ROCK-PAPER-SCISSORS. A solution that plays rock-paper-scissors with you, so you can play the game alone.

3. What is my purpose. A robot that passes you things on the table (let’s say the salt is too far and you’re too lazy to stretch to get it).

4. Malelaud. Electronic chessboard to   automatically record the chess game and do a game analysis, which is needed for studying games and that also enables playback as the recording will be saved in a server. 

5. SPOODY. Let’s develop a superpower for humans like the Spiderman has - a poximity monitor that turns on a vibration mechanism to alarm the person about the approaching threat.

6. Hit the node. Modular game platform for young children, where node points inside the house give them physical and thinking tasks to develop the children’s abilities and skills.

7. Fox and Candy. A different perspective on toy manufacturing to change the tooling (toys) for the workforce (children) of the future.

8. Noodlebot. Fully automated noodle vending machine for noodles of various cuisines available, that boils them and adds spices according to the eater’s wishes.

9. Thermal Signature Imitation. A thermal signature imitation for humans with either a chemical or physical solution. (One option would be thermobelt.)

10. PIN. A physical personal pin to socialise more easily.

11. Old ladies. Make Lithuanian old ladies great again! A robot that makes traditional Lithuanian sweets, that old ladies in Lithuania are right now making.

12. 100y Independence Puzzle. A labyrinth that has 100 levels to celebrate the 100 independence years for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

13HodlBox. The first piggy bank for cryptocurrency.

14triKKKolor. Automated weaver, a program that is guiding the changing of the predefined colors.

15. Programmable USB. Make every Estonian high school student learn the skills of a hardware programmer.

16. A Real-life mail spam filter. A mail spam   filter that separates the promotion  letters and   journals from the “real” letters  in a physical       mailbox.

17. 1 > 4 . Swiss army knife for Geometry, a device   that connects all different devices used for geometry   lessons.

Have fun, be strong and creative, teams! 


Read also about the ideas, that didn’t get approved this time:

18. DIGIBOOK. One digital workbook for schools containing all study materials to:
*stop children carrying heavy schoolbags full of books,
*making studying process more modern and
*saving trees

19. Apartment Building OS. Broomstick knock of the 21st century. A tool to communicate with your neighbours inside the apartment building to get to know whats whose cat is in the hallway or to alert your neighbours, if their apartment is flooding.

20. Pain in the ... Indicator for martial arts training, that shows if the pain level of the trainees is in a specific range.

21. Dog Training Mat. Dog training tool for the klicker and treats training concept that helps the trainer to measure the dog’s success.

22. Emotion Cylinder. Do you really know what you want? A solution that would reflect your emotions through matching a person’s emotions with certain colors. The device itself would be a collar on the hand.

23. Guideks. Your pocket guide for novelties. An application that gives you instructions for using electronic devices and will be an interactive replacement for paperback user manuals.

24. Hear me out. App for recording audio all the time and deleting it also after a certain time, with the purpose to be able to save something very interesting or an amazing quote that was said in a conversation.

25. Twitcher. A platform for making triggers for donations by streamers.

26. Shake cards. Sharing your business card info like through a physical hand shake.

27. Smart Magnifying Glass. A device that scans the information tiny product labels and reads them out for grandmas and grandpas who can’t see to read them, but want to know the product info and expiry date.

28. Himmeli lamp. Create a lamp by using programming in the traditional ornamental lamp making art from Lithuania.

29. Open my window. Automatic window opener and closer during the night, so that you could always have enough fresh air.

30. PicaBoo. A device that deletes blurry or weird-face pictures already from your camera, so that the photographer shouldn’t have to go through them to delete them.

31. Orphan idea. A solution for classical music players to get rid of reading the notes from the paper and tapping on the screens.

32. Anti-UHM. Algorithm that filters out aa-s / uhm-s, when somebody does them as breaks between talking, for example in a podcast.



About the author

kadri tiisvelt

Kadri is the COO of Garage48 with years of experience as a hackathon organizer and community builder. She loves to create and bring together supportive environments for starting entrepreneurs who wish to make their ideas into valuable services and products. 🌸

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