The annual Black Forest Hackathon in Offenburg is a unique event organized by Black Forest Innovation GmbH in cooperation with Offenburg University of Applied Sciences. In this competition, talents from the fields of programming, design and engineering come together over a weekend to develop an innovative solution within 48h.
This year’s edition of the Hackathon focused on the theme of “sustainable technologies”, so we at GARANT-Filter took the opportunity to act as a sponsor to present a special challenge for the participants.
That was the Challenge 7:
Develop an intelligent control system for extraction during metal scrap melting to optimize energy consumption.
A dedicated team took on this challenge and built an impressive prototype out of Plexiglas and aluminum profiles that represented a melting furnace. The melt was creatively represented by an LED light band. Using a Raspberry Pi camera, the team trained an AI to recognize smoke generated by a smoke machine. When smoke was detected, the fans were activated and ran until the smoke was exhausted. Thanks to this innovative solution, the team won the prize for the best vision.
The award ceremony was another highlight of the event. Our Managin Director Mrs. Sommer had the honor to present the prize for the best pitch to the team Weltretter, who dealt with the challenge 9 “Water consumption” by Hansgrohe.
By supporting events like the Black Forest Hackathon, we aim to foster a culture of creative thinking and problem solving that will enable us to develop sustainable and efficient solutions to tomorrow’s environmental problems. We firmly believe that innovation is crucial to effectively meet the challenges of the future, such as climate change. We at GARANT-Filter enjoyed participating in this event very much and we would like to thank all participants, organizers and sponsors for this great weekend.
Photos: Mr. Fichtner
