Software Development

See the 10 Philly Codefest hackathon project finalists

Charlie and Jack Giammattei won the grand prize -- $5,000 -- for their Monitor.me project, a hardware hack tracks your pulse whenever you’re using your smartphone and alerts you if it senses signs of atrial fibrillation. The Giammattei brothers also won last year’s CodeFest, with their healthy eating web app, Healthify.me.

The winners of Philly Codefest, Charlie Giammattei (left) and Jack Giammattei with Drexel College of Computing & Informatics Dean David Fenske. Photo by Sean Quilty of Drexel’s College of Computing & Informatics, courtesy of Drexel.

A pair of brothers came out on top again in this year’s Philly CodeFest.

Charlie and Jack Giammattei won the grand prize — $5,000 — for their Monitor.me project, a hardware hack tracks your heartbeat whenever you’re using your smartphone and alerts you if it senses signs of heart problems. The Giammattei brothers also won last year’s CodeFest, with their healthy eating web app, Healthify.me, which never fully launched.

Last weekend, Philly CodeFest (formerly Philly Health CodeFest) brought over a hundred student and professional programmers together for two days of civic-minded hacking. Sponsored by the College of Computing and Informatics at Drexel University, CodeFest challenged teams to build data-driven web or mobile apps that would benefit the city and citizens of Philadelphia.

This year, teams had the option to create solutions in the area of healthcare, as well as government, media, data visualization, cyber security and hardware. During the initial judging on Sunday afternoons, teams were only allowed to present a two-minute pitch of their project — no visual or digital aids — an unexpected change from last year’s competition, according to some participants.

philly codefest

PhillyCodeFest participants from left: Vu Bui, Duc Nguyen, Thach Nguyen, Quoc Le. They built an app that finds parking spaces. Photo by Dias Gotama.

From the initial judging, judges chose the top ten teams to move on the final round. Find them below.

Monitor.me — Grand prize; Best Hardware Hack
Team Members: Jack Giammattei, Charlie Giammattei
This hardware hack tracks your heartbeat whenever you’re using your smartphone and alerts you if it senses signs of heart problems.

Flying V — Second place prize; Venture Capitalist Choice Award
Team Members: Chris Hoopes, Dave Ferello, Pak Lee
A web app that visually organizes data sets (such as apache logs) and helps users instantly recognize patterns.

Threaded Thinking
Team Members: Alex Roscoe, David Tozour
This app maps the Philly Sheriff’s purchase of delinquent homes and combines it with data the Philadelphia Bureau of Revenue and Taxes.

Show Us The Money
This app visualizes the Philadelphia School District budget and lets users calculate potential solutions to the crunch with “What If?” feature.

Healthiest Kids on the Block
Turns healthy eating into a competitive game that lets users get points for buying nutritious snacks at Healthy Corner Stores and gain “territory” against their friends.

Censeo — Independence Blue Cross Award
Team Members: Matt Barnett, Jason Walsh, Brandon Him, Qingfeng Yang, Ilya Rogov
This app maps the concentration of doctors by specialty across the United States, and contrasts those numbers with average life expectancy rates.

Healthy Choice Saga
Like Candy Crush, this web game teaches healthy intake. (Too much junk food and your avatar will get a little rounder.)

EZ Parking System — Majority Student Team Award; Best Mobile App
Team Members: Vu Bui, Thach Nguyen, Duc Nguyen
This app allows users to search, filter and pinpoint available parking spots around them.

Motion Explorer — Dean’s Choice Innovation Award; NextFab Studio Award
Team Members: Scott Lerner, Reid Welliver, Corey Shoenfeld, Isikcan Yilmaz, Burim Derveni
A motion-powered wheelchair that was demoed in smaller scale.

Empower to Improve — Women in Technology Award
Team Members: Trey Morris, Bill Powell, Maia Kowalchuk
This is a web app with the goal of getting more people to see doctors by organizing group visits based on shared health problems. It helps doctors attend to their patients in the most efficient way possible.

CodeFest and their sponsors gave away a total of $14,000 in prizes.

Updated 2/28/14 12:16 p.m.: A previous version of this article did not identify all the members of team Flying V. Pak Lee was also on the team.
Companies: nvigor / Drexel University

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