Teams from Curtin Malaysia excel in hackathon

Miri – 21 May 2018 – Three teams from Curtin University Malaysia (Curtin Malaysia) – AllStarz, Liquid and Xipher – swept three of the top prizes in the recent HackWeekend held in conjunction with the International Digital Economy Conference Sarawak 2018 (IDECS) in Kuching.

The two-day HackWeekend, the first hackathon to be held in Sarawak, saw participants engaging in collaborative programming to produce web, mobile and digital hardware solutions that could potentially solve real-life problems faced by government agencies.

The participants were given 48 hours to come up with solutions based on three categories:   Agriculture (using the four pillars of the Internet of Things or IoT  to transform and enhance Sarawak’s agricultural industry and related auxiliary services); Tourism (designing solutions allowing digital natives to tailor personalised travel experiences either in cities, rural areas or jungles of Sarawak); and Smart Cities (leveraging sustainable smart technologies to provide clean, reliable and cost-efficient energy or water supply to rural communities).

The three teams consisted of students and academic staff of the university’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and student members of the Curtin Malaysia Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Student Branch.

AllStarz comprised lecturers Dr. Garenth Lim King Hann, Dr. Law Kah Haw, Dr. Yam Ke San and Pang Po Ken, while Liquid was made up of students Bong Chu Jun, Chai Pei Gen, Kavin Chelvan Sylvestyne Kathiravan  and Nurul Ain Binti Hamizan. The teams placed first and second in the Tourism Category.

Xipher, third placed in the Smart Cities Category, consisted of students Chiam Dar Hung, Ng Kay Li, Ivan Ang Jie Xiong and Alex Tai Yi Jiac.

Dr. Lim said it was his first time joining the competition. His team proposed a solution that integrated gamification and artificial intelligence in a mobile app that collects information on Rafflesia, the world’s largest known flower found in Sarawak, via tourist networks.

“By using the gamification idea, the app can encourage the development of agricultural science through crowdsourcing, as well as a reward system that can help reduce the resources spent in locating the plants in the jungle,” said Dr. Lim.

Nurul Ain, who is the Curtin Malaysia IEEE Student Branch’s head of logistics, said her team presented a mobile app that can help plan jungle trekking routes. The idea generated considerable interest among the audience and obviously impressed the judges as it was adjudged winner in the Tourism Category.

“It was a great motivation for us to turn our work into a real product someday,” Nurul Ain remarked.

Meanwhile, according to student chapter vice-president Ng Kay Li, Xipher proposed an innovative solution for energy metering in rural areas via IoT using smart plugs inserted into power sockets to calculate energy usage of households. The harvested data is transmitted to a main server via mesh topology using a network of street lamps in towns or villages and subsequently uploaded onto the Internet for ongoing monitoring.

“This solution can reduce the need for meter readers to visit rural settlements regularly to take meter readings,” said Ng.

The competition’s judges comprised Professor Jugdutt Singh, Chief Scientist and Chief Advisor for Digital Economy Sarawak; Dr. Anderson Tiong, Chief Executive Officer of Sarawak Information Systems Sdn. Bhd. (SAINS); and Mary Ann Michael Benzi, Co-founder of Catz Media Analytics.

Themed ‘Data to Fuel New Economic Growth and Quality of Life’, IDECS 2018 was a platform to better understand how digitalisation and future technologies can shape and change how  people interact, both in the workplace and in their daily lives.

HackWeekend was founded by a group of friends in Kuching who lamented the fact that there were no hackathons being held in the state. They organised the inaugural HackWeekend in October last year in conjunction with the Forum Belia TEGAS. This was quickly followed by two subsequent events – in December at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) in collaboration with DreamCatcher, and in February this year in conjunction with SCaTFAIR 2018.

Liquid proposed a web app that helps to gather information on the Rafflesia, the world’s largest flower found in Sarawak.

Members of Xipher in discussion with their mentor from a government agency about development of smart cities.

Winning teams AllStarz, Liquid and Xipher posing for a group photo on stage.