MAKEwithMOTO Roadshow stops by NC State

The MAKEwithMOTO roadshow made a pit stop on Centennial Campus at North Carolina State University Aug. 16-18.

MAKEwithMOTO invites makers, designers, engineers, hackers, coders, tinkerers and entrepreneurs to meet on college campuses around the country to experiment with new ideas in order to maximize smartphone abilities.

NC State’s MAKEwithMOTO event, held outside of Engineering Building II, involved four teams: Barcelona, Batman, Blue Elephant and Transformers. The teams worked throughout the weekend creating product ideas, including intensive designs and prototyping, and then presented their ideas in a Google Hangout broadcast that was available live on the Internet and also viewed directly by Motorola executives.

Team Barcelona created a “smart” refrigerator system that tells users when their refrigerator is low on perishable items like milk and eggs. Team Batman invented a personal energy harvester that includes unique solar wearables and a longboard generator. Team Blue Elephant created a music cube, which allows users to play different instruments on their smartphone using buttons on the hand-held cube. Team Transformers created Hybot, a smart hydration system that uses sensors to monitor the amount of fluid in the bottle.  Ultraviolet lights irradiate the bacteria, and Hybot wirelessly communicates data to a user’s smartphone as a reminder of when to refill and rehydrate.

Participants and Motorola executives selected Team Transformers’ Hybot as the strongest product idea and awarded the team initial funding to further refine their product idea. Motorola will introduce the team to executives at Indiegogo and provide mentoring to help the team with further development of their product.

The winning team included the following participants: Alex Benham, a mechanical engineering student at the Stevens Institute of Technology; Brian Carrigan, an embedded control engineer at Cree; Leo Daniel, a sophomore in computer engineering at NC State; Ben Dunko, a sophomore at Enloe High School; Alexandra La Pierre, a sophomore in polymer and color chemistry at NC State; and Ksenia Sedova, a senior in computer engineering at NC State.