Pretoria, South Africa

RHoK Global June 2012

The School of Computing at UNISA (University of South Africa) in partnership with CSIR Meraka, House 4 Hack , and Pretoria-GTUG (Google Technology User Group) will host the Random Hacks of Kindness community-engagment initiative from the 2 - 3 June 2012. This is another opportunity for hackers, developers, technologist, and reaserchers to join hands to address different social and humanitarian challenges that affect our local communities.

 

During the planned weekend, software developers, subject matter experts, researchers, and the general community will gather together
with other developers in different locations all over the world and develop ICT solutions that could make the world a better place. For this
year the challenges are planned around (1) Education - Science and Technology (2) Safe Water (3) Citizen Reporting, and many others. For more information: see http://www.rhok.org

                                                                                                                                            

Registration Deadline: 
Friday, June 1, 2012
Hackathon Location: 
UNISA, Muckleneuk Main Campus, Kgorong Building (4th Floor, Function Hall)
Hackathon Details: 

Who is organizing?
The School of Computing at UNISA (University of South Africa, Pretoria) in partnership with CSIR-Meraka, House 4 Hack and Pretoria-GTUG (Google Technology User Group) will be hosting the Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK-Pretoria) community-engagement initiative.

Where and When?
UNISA, Main Campus, Kgorong Building (4th Floor, Function Hall)
Preller Street, Muckleneuk, Pretoria

Saturday (2 June 2012): 09:00 till late

Sunday (3 June 2012):   09:00 - 16:00


What?
Throughout the planned weekend, we will be Hacking for Humanity, that is, coding/programming around local challenges in Education (Science and Technology), Water & Sanitation, Citizen Reporting, and many more. Challenges will be made available on the RHoK website as soon as they get finalized. Challenges that were also tackled during the previous events (RHoK-Pretoria, December 2012, Water Hackathon (May 22, 2012)) will also form part of this upcoming event.

 
Why?
  • Volunteer your time and skills to build technological solutions that will make the world a better place
  • Become a community-engaged developer, social innovator, researcher, scholar, and community hacker.
  • Innovative solutions and progress made during the hackathon will be acknowledged with great prizes
  • Expect to network and collaborate with other developers, researchers, and subject matter experts.
  • Expect some nice refreshments and drinks.
What to bring?
  • Bring your laptop (loaded with your "open" development tools), mobile phones, laptop and phone charger,
  • Power extensions, your energy and your brains!
 
Registration?
 

NOTE: We have now reached our limit of registrations for the event - please contact us below if you want to register


More details and contacts: (www.rhok.org)
 

Event Leads: 
Jabu Mtsweni
Problems We Are Working On: 
DIM (Drip Irrigation Management) Chart
Related Sponsors: 

UI/UX design support provided by Azavea

Event Updates

Jun 3

RHoK Pretoria - H20 Detective are the winners!

Published by Jabu Mtsweni

Wow!

What a weekend we had at RHoK-Pretoria - "hacking for humanity" + "hacking African Solutions for African Challenges"! This was our RHoK #2, and the spirit and enthusiam was just over the top. From less than 15 developers in Dec 2011 to over 40 developers in 2012. We are already planning for December, and it promises to be "BIG" 

 

UPDATE:

 

Out of 8 challenges that were hacked over the weekend: The following challenges won 1st, 2nd, and 3rd prizes as per the hacking-jury. 

 

1st - H2O Detective

The hacking team of the weekend (i.e. H2O Detective) - came up with an android application that enables field agents to track, log, and visualize households based on their water usage patterns using geo-tracking and average consumption data from the local municipality. The purpose of the project is to assist managers in their decision-making around demand management and distribution losses of water at the local municipality level. The back-end for the application is complete, and the first prototype of the mobile interface is functional. They are deserved winners. The team was made up of 4 males and 3 females. It was one of the dynamic teams of the Hackathon in Pretoria. They go home with 1 year silver plan Github vouchers, Gift Vouchers worth R400 ($50), and one Galaxy Note - sponsored by House 4 Hack, which was won by one of the team members (Klass Kabini - male with white suite) - who was instrumental in developing the Android mobile interface.

Owner: @SeeSaw (NGO)

2nd - Proactive Citizen Reporter

This challenge was started in December (RHOK 2011), and great progress has been made since then, particularly considering that this was one team with the least number of "hackers". Ishmael Makitla (righ in the picture below) has been working on this hack continuously on his own. What was achieved this weekend was the crowdsourcing of "issues" from USSD and tweets with specific hashtags and plotting them on a map using the Ushadihi Platform. There is still a lot of work to be done on this challenge, but nevertheless great work over the weekend for a second prize. Ishmael won an Amazon Kindle (3G + Wi-Fi) - sponsored by SAP Research (IA&S) Africa, a Gift voucher for R200, and a 1 year bronze GitHub plan. 

 

Owner: Samuel Choritz

3rd - Offline Learning Material (videos etc) and Exercises on Low-cost Android Devices

KhanAcademy.org provides a large repository of online learning material (e.g. videos, exercises etc). The challenge was on finding a way to access and consume the material (e.g. video and exercises) on low-cost android devices (costing less than $50). What was achieved this weekend was a mobile interface in python, all running locally and offline and on a low-cost android tablet. Using JQuery Mobile - a simple UI was also developed to navigate through the different videos and exercises. This team lead by Toby Kurien (in the middle - picture below) from House 4 Hack won (each member): 6 month bronze Github plan, R50 gift voucher, and some keyrings with a tape measure.

 

Owner: KhanAcademy & African School of Excellence.

After all is said and done -everybody is a winner, and we are all looking forward to the next RHoK in December to be hosted @House4Hack or at Sowertech.

 

Hacking Regards

Jabu Mtsweni (RHoK-Pretoria Lead)

Schalk Heunis 

Ishmael Makitla

 

 

Read More
Jun 3

RHOKing African Solutions for African Challenges

Published by Jabu Mtsweni

RHoK-Pretoria started with a bang on the 2nd of June 2012. University of South Africa [UNISA] became a hacker-friendly place for "hacking for humanity". The hackathon started with warm welcome messages from the director of School of Computing @UNISA [Prof. J. Kroeze], followed by the Dean [Prof. G. Moche] who mentioned that "Hacking for Humanity" is critical to the University as it contributes towards the vision of the university: "In service for humanity". 

 

8 challenges were presented - and these included (to name a few): 

Virtual Science Laboratory for Resource Constrained Schools

The primary purpose of this challenge is on designing and facilitating the development of an open and easily accessible simulation environment that would make it possible for the learners in resource-constrained African Schools to practice and conduct their chemistry and physical science experiments anywhere and anytime.Preferably, the environment should be accessible via offline multimedia formats, such CDs, DVDs, or LiveCDs, and even low-cost devices. Internet connection should not be a requirement to use or access the experiment environment. 

Owner: University of South Africa

H2O Detective

In order to help managers understand water use patterns and how they vary geographically, a mapping application (e.g. Google Earth app) could link water meter data with meter GPS co-ordinates. Such maps could inform decisions around planning and investment for areas with low consumption or connection density (often poorer neighbourhoods and marginalised communities). The ability to include additional demographic data would allow for richer analysis.Overall, the ability to visualise this data on an interactive map would assist managers in their decision-making around demand management and distribution losses. They could even single out households with suspiciously high or low water usage (helping to fight leakage and corruption).

Owner: @SeeSaw (NGOs)

Offline Learning and Teaching Material on Low-cost Android Devices

The primary purpose of this challenge is to develop a tablet [Android-based] application that would be used in a classroom environment for teaching and learning.
The lessons in the classroom will contain video material from KhanAcademy.org as well as the related exercise modules from KhanAcademy.org. Find a way to display the KhanAcademy material on the devices using a locally hosted cache. The devices are of low-cost and have limited resources e.g. memory

Service Delilvery Grievances Reporter

Crowdsource information about problems, issues, challenges regarding public service delivery in municipalities. Map the issues reported  on the map using different markers and categories (e.g. problem types, cities, municipalities, severity, etc. Enable multi-channels, such as e.g. Twitter, Facebook, SMS, USSD, WhatsAPP etc to report problems.

Owner: Ishmael Makitla & Samuel Choritz

Suspected CarFind 

The problem is that to check the number plates of a suspicious vehicle is a very lengthy process and by the time it is confirmed, the vehicle is long gone (e.g. stolen).  So what is required is a mobile app, where someone can quickly check a vehicle (even while driving) using a mobile device. The application need to operate both online and offline

Owner: House 4 Hack

 

The hacking of these challenges is currently underway (3rd June 2012) with about 30 developers having turned up on a Sunday.

 

Read More
May 23

SAP Research, CSIR-Meraka, CENSE (UNISA), and Github

Published by Jabu Mtsweni

We are glad to announce that the RHoK-Pretoria event in June (2-3), will sponsored by the following organizations. We as of 23 of May 2012, we have 47 developers who have registered.

 

1. SAP Research (Pretoria) :

 

2. Center for Software Engineering, UNISA (CENSE)

 

3. CSIR-Meraka

4. GitHub

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