Check out the winners from last weekend’s HopHacks

Oculus Rift and IBM’s Watson joined APIs and GitHub commits among the offerings for the next generation of devs at the most recent edition of Johns Hopkins’ student-run hackathon.
HopHacks attracted more than 160 students, who produced 31 projects over the 36-hour event. About 60 of the students were from JHU. The rest of the participants traveled to Baltimore from Georgetown, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, University of Delaware, SUNY Stony Brook and Penn State, as well as other colleges in Maryland.
The student teams had access to unique resources, such as APIs from Bloomberg and Dropbox, as well as Watson. 
Here’s a glimpse at the winners:

1. A guitar came away with the top overall prize. AirJam uses motion-detection technology from Myo. Throughout the weekend, the team added power chords, scales and the ability to call up other instruments like piano and acoustic guitar.
2. Clamor, which was awarded second place overall, gives a nod to the early days of Facebook when we were all divided by college. The app is designed to allow anonymous users to take and share pics of their good times on campus. Then, users vote up or down. Only then can they see what college the picture was from. There’s also a national leaderboard to pit colleges against one another.
3. Seeking a middle ground between friendly wagers and fitness, third place overall winner Dash allows friends to place small bets on their running goals. The app allows users to schedule races, set up a bet and transfer money. The developers believe it also has potential for larger races.
4. Print Maps, which received an honorable mention nod, uses Mapbox GL JS to display higher-resolution maps in browser windows. The team thinks that will make maps more visible when they print.

Two finance-driven apps were given nods from the judges for their use of Bloomberg’s API:

• XChange uses the data to develop a program that’s designed to predict exchange rates up to two weeks in the future. The predictions rely on stochastic modeling and other economic factors.
• Invest1K uses an algorithm that makes “purely quantitative” recommendations about when to buy and sell securities.

Here are some other projects worth knowing about:

• OcuMOL Leap is a new tool for 3D molecular analysis. It uses PyMOL, Oculus Rift and Leap Motion. It’s modeled after CAVEs, which are used by scientists to examine protein structures and other complex data.
• Dentrainer also uses Oculus Rift and Leap Motion, but focuses on the teeth. The program creates a 3D environment for dentists to practice cleaning teeth. The dental pick (that’s the sharp thing that cleans plaque) is replaced by a stylus. The teeth even move.
• We all know Watson is a Jeopardy whiz, but does he have FDR’s ability to explain things in an intimate setting? One team set to find out with Fireside with Watson. The app adds a chat capability that allows users to ask Watson questions. There’s also a group chat component. Developers don’t have any liability for whether you like the answer, but they do have the award for Best Use of Watson.
• The best of use of Dropbox API went to Droplet. The app adds an SMS interface to Dropbox that’s designed to make the process of uploading files quicker. They see news organizations as an eventual beneficiary. Just let us know where to download!

And then there was the one that didn’t quite make the cut:
https://twitter.com/HopHacks/status/564486834970165248
Check out more HopHacks projects