MIDDLETOWN – What do you get when you combine Halloween candy, Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 series processor?
Alexa Trick or Treat.
That was the name of the award winning hack that students from High Technology High School, Middletown, programmed at a recent coding competition.
High Technology juniors – Katrina Florendo, 16, of Marlboro; Brianna Yao, 16, of Marlboro; Jason Yan, 16, of Holmdel; Lyndon Puzon, 16, of Marlboro; and Thomas Chan, 16, of Howell – won a challenge at the Halloween Hackathon competition on Oct. 27.
The Hackathon was sponsored by iCIMS, a recruitment technology provider with office space at Bell Works in Holmdel.
Students programmed a hack using code and digital materials designed to carry out a function. The function to administer candy using a voice command earned the students first place – out of 51 teams – in this portion of the 16 hour competition.
In an interview at the high school a week after the event, Chan said that to serve its function, the Alexa Trick or Treat used Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service Echoe, a device designed to respond to verbal commands, with an Arduino microcontroller or, as Chan referred to the device, a small computer.
Chan said the microcontroller was used along with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 410c processor as code was being created and written on a computer. A motor, Chan said, was programmed to released candy down a funnel-like structure on demand.
“(The device) would dispense candy when you said ‘Alexa Trick-or-Treat’,” Chan said. “(The microcontroller) can take inputs from electronics and output (the data) to a motor.”
The students said the thought process behind the completion of the hack was considered before the day of the competition. The mechanism’s final execution was developed and tested for the first time at Bell Works, they said.
“We started by making a mock up model out of styrofoam and cardboard,” Florendo said. “From there, we worked out different hardware we should use. Once we chose to use an Arduino with an Alexa, we got those.
“Some people worked on the Alexa component and some people tried to figure out the Arduino component. From there we started coding the individual parts and then we brought it together,” she said.
Students said they registered for the hackathon to gain experience writing code. They said the accessibility of the local competition was a determining factor in their entry.
“Unlike other hackathons, there was no application process,” Yan said. “With this, you just signed up and you can go. This was a great opportunity to go out and work.”
Florenda, who said the team received assistance from mentors on site, said “One good thing about the Hackathon is that it was good for beginners,” Florendo said. “There were a lot of mentors who specialized in different things.
“They could help you if you were having bugs in your program. Working with mentors every now and then would help us move forward and get farther in our project then we would have without mentors,” she said.
Students said taking part in the electronic and computer software courses offered at High Technology High School help prepared them for the competition.
Taking part in after school activities such as the robotics and coding clubs also provided the students with the necessary background needed to write and implement code, they said.
At school, the students continue to hone their skills in engineering and technology. All five are enrolled in Computer Software Engineering where they are currently using MIT App Inventor to create prototypes of mobile applications for Samsung smart devices.