MakeNJIT, in Second Year, Focuses on Infrastructure Hardware Hacks
An all-freshman team, Rackify, was the top NJIT winner and third overall at this year’s MakeNJIT hardware hackathon, creating a smart bicycle rack that automatically locks your ride by activating an RFID reader and extending an arm through the spokes or frame.
Rackify members Raghav Bharath, Prabhav Sharma and Tanush Tammanagoudar (electrical and computer engineering), Burhan Naveed (computer science) and Matthew Levine (mechanical engineering) came up with the idea in response to MakeNJIT’s themes of smart- and urban infrastructure.
The device could be retrofitted to traditional bike racks, lowering the barrier to entry because nothing needs to be replaced or thrown away, explained Levine, an Albert Dorman Honors College member and NJIT robotics club officer, from Egg Harbor.
“We wanted to make something that would be basically like a parking space for bikes and scooters,” Levine said. “It was designed within the first hour of the event, and then the rest of the day was basically spent manufacturing it.”
Rackify and the event’s other teams, totalling 250 college and high school students, performed their work in the NJIT Makerspace where they had access to tools such as 3D printers, laser cutters and a carpentry workshop. Volunteers from the makerspace and Albert Dorman Honors College were on hand to help keep things running.
Levine said the makerspace is what set NJIT apart for him, compared to other schools that he considered attending.
Event organizer Nakul Kochar, a graduate student from Kenilworth studying electrical and computer engineering, noted that the event wouldn’t happen without a team of volunteers, sponsors and speakers. Supporting organizations were NJIT’s Newark College of Engineering and Albert Dorman Honors College, along with various IEEE groups. Corporate sponsors were Analog Devices, Astrodyne, Bluepoint Wind, Juicy Platters, John Deere, Marotta Controls, Ranial Systems, Rishabh Orchards, and ZT Systems.
Kochar normally spends his time studying the security implications of computer RAM. But with his MakeNJIT hat on, “The goal was to kind of give participants the leeway of working with modern tech, in the sense that a lot of people have some kind of smart home or smart infrastructure in their household. So take that, see how you can improve on it and build from there.”
Another NJIT team, Park Shark, won the BluePoint Wind theme of Smart Marine Conservation.Other winners were City College of New York, which took first overall and the Rishab Orchards theme of agricultural excellence; and Academy for Mathematics, Science and Engineering High School, which won second overall and the Albert Dorman Honors College theme of Sustainable and Green Urban Design.
MakeNJIT began last year as Byte Into Hardware, contrasting vs. the university’s established annual HackNJIT event, which focuses on software.
