Device to aid deaf, texting app win at HackPrinceton

Two teams were named overall winners at HackPrinceton — one for creating a texting application and another for designing a product for those who communicate in sign language.

The hacking competition is designed to bring together college students from all over the country to compete for various prizes by working on their own software projects.

Rohan Doshi ’18, Juan Sepulveda Varon ’18 and Ruiqi Mao, a freshman from Brown, won the best software design category, whileEthan Gordon ’17, David Liu ’17 and Jeffrey Han ’17 won the best hardware design category.

While the two categories both employ software in their products, the hardware category requires that the competitors use an external device that is not a regular computer as an integral part of their finished product.

“I feel like I’m on top of the world right now,” said Doshi, whose team created an application called Justext, which was designed to enable users to send questions via text message to a server that replies with the information he or she is requesting.

For winning the best software category, the team was awarded $1,000 in prize money, three Dell touchscreen monitors, Bluetooth speakers and an electronic whiteboard, among other rewards.The team also won the Best Use of Microsoft Technology Award, which earned it another $4,000.

According to Doshi, the app is designed to connect all phones to the Internet, regardless of whether or not they have web browsing capabilities.

“For people with ‘dumb-phones’ that do not have Internet capabilities, this app can connect them to the web,” Doshi added. “We all have international backgrounds. We’ve seen how Internet connection can be spotty or nonexistent, and want people to be able to have information that people with smartphones can have.”

Sepulveda Varon added that winning felt “surreal.”

“I know how difficult this can be,” he said. “You need a great team to make it happen.”

On the hardware side, Gordon, Liu and Han won for designing a product called ASL Tegra, which allows deaf people to communicate more effectively with the hearing.

Specifically, the product uses an external camera to detect sign language movements — mainly letters of the alphabet — and translates those movements into text. The product allows for easier communication without the signer compromising his or her main way of communication with others.

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“I’ve always been interested in this type of project — I wanted an easy way to communicate with one of my deaf friends,” Gordon said, adding that he has considered designing a product similar to this for several months now and that HackPrinceton gave him the best opportunity to take the first step in making his dream a reality.

“It was pretty crazy to win. A lot of this was last-minute decision-making; it was amazing to do this,” Liu said.

For achieving first place, the team won $1,000 in prize money, three portable hard drives and a quadcopter, which is a remote-controlled helicopter with video capabilities.

Hosted specifically by Princeton Entrepreneurship Club, HackPrinceton had, in addition to the main competition, activities, lectures, networking sessions and workshops in which students could learn and connect with technology professionals about their companies and fields.

HackPrinceton is held twice a year, once during the fall semester and once in the spring.