Telecom giant Dialog Axiata, in partnership with Ideamart, hosted a NB-IoT Hackathon for the first time in Sri Lanka. Held on the 17th of March, the hackathon brought together 9 teams tasked with creating NB-IoT services using Dialog’s IoT platform or making existing services NB-IoT compatible. Dialog’s developer relations and community development arm, Ideamart, conducted over 15 NB-IoT awareness sessions around the country for students and startups.
The hackathon was carried out in two phases. Phase one consisted in a pre-hackathon event on 15 March to educate participating teams on Dialog’s NB-IoT network, special device packages, IoT developer kits and the future of IoT in Sri Lanka. Phase two was the hackathon itself, held on 17 March at the Dialog Head Office Auditorium.
The first place winners, Team Death Squad from Innova IT Systems, received LKR 150,000, while 1st runners up, Bite Code from the University of Peradeniya won LKR 100,000 and 2nd runners up, Team Strangers from University of Rajarata and Team Myhub from MyHub.lk received LKR 50,000. Consumer based services initiated at the hackathon included a water quality monitoring tool for the Anuradhapura district, infant healthcare products and fitness bands that use the NB-IoT network and Dialog’s existing IoT platform.