openHAB Developer Hackathon Europe - General Planning & Discussion

We should agree on a location/date. Now that CeBIT dissolved I think the Bosch Hackathon in Berlin is a prime candidate, isn’t it ? I know the conference host, he’s also a OH community member and I’m sure he’ll help with providing a couple of seats for us.

Here’s a vague idea for a project that has been pestering my mind since I read about it in the forum:
Complex Event Processing.
CEP essentially is about creating more intelligent triggers by making them based on multiple (historic) data points plus “intelligence” to apply to these.

I’ll illustrate my idea by means of an example (I’m sure you’ll come up with many more ideas to apply this to) :
Today, a target temperature on a thermostat is set via cron or cal binding at a fixed time of day per weekday. A more intelligent and more user friendly approach would be to predict user presence from stored data (motion sensors or WiFi devices logged in, past times of manually initiated temperatures changes, whatever). The Nest thermostat devices have been a success because they provide some of that functionality, but just think how much better could we do if we were to make decisions based on the whole set of data that the openHAB instance of your house has access to.
Now my idea would be to create a more or less generic SW module that does the following:
Input would be a working set of items you can actively change (such as the thermostat target value), a set of target values to be optimized (room temperature, gas or power consumption counter) plus some conditions (to not be violated such as minimum room temperature or maximum number of boiler starts).
Next, we’d jump into some sort of learning phase: the user would manually set the thermostat value during this phase. After a suitable amount of time, this phase would be declared to end. The new SW module now would start looking for patterns and correlations in time and item values that corresponds to changes to the target item(s) and computes (however that can work is open for now) an “optimum” combined trigger for the members of the working set of items.
Of course this can be combined and enhanced with all sort of (“pluggable” ?) Machine Learning algorithms. But maybe there’s also external tools to already do part of that that we could integrate.

For sure this can just mark the beginning of a larger project and as said it’s just a vague idea for now.
Now looking for takers to develop that further. Just trying to plant a seed …

PS: I will move project ideas (including this one) to a separate thread each to further discuss them there
PPS: yes “Inception” is one of my favorite movies :smiling_imp:

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We’re already in contact with Bosch. More via PM.

Any progress in here?

Would just like to say that I also am very interested in attending such an event if it will happen. :blush:

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Not yet, unfortunately. We’re waiting for feedback from our contact partners.

Update: I cannot say something official at this point of time, but please save the date: 13 - 15th May. I think there will be more news within the next weeks :slightly_smiling_face:

:+1: blocked

That’s in the middle of the week, can’t promise anything in January already for this.

Just got an update. Until mid of March, we’ll have detailed information about the event :slightly_smiling_face:

Dang, when I think of getting over tegel again I start considering to drop automation interest and start working on a teleport in first place!
Hope some folks at these hackatons have an idea on how to get it over. :wink:

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Do it! Probably you’re done before the BER guys even if you still do home automation :smile:

Any news on this?

Good time to ask! Today after long waiting time I had the first real meeting with Bosch regarding the Hackathon. They want to include us into the event, but they’re still in internal clarifyings. The most important information: Date is shifted to 13th May - 15th May.

Definitely, you can already save the date, but at this point of time we have no openHAB participant contingent yet, this is still under discussion as well as other details. I hope it’ll be clarified until end of next week.

Generally, it would work like this:

  • Either the openHAB Foundation gets a participant contingent or people have to apply to the event via the normal application process by Bosch [under discussion].
  • Two or three Hack Coaches named by the openHAB Foundation will help and guide participants during the event. I’ll be one of these Hack Coaches. If you’re interested to be a Hack Coach, please ping me via PM (especially @maintainers)!
  • The openHAB Foundation prepares several Hack Challenges that are in line with Bosch’s Hack Challenges which you can find on the website.
  • Participants work in teams of 2 - 8 people. The event starts at 13th May in the evening (6pm) with team building. So participants will connect with each other and work out on which topics they want to work on.
  • Teams can work on one of the pre-defined hack challenges by the Foundation or can also work on another topic.
  • On 15th May, at the last day, teams can (if they want) apply to pitch their results on a bigger stage and compete against other teams. The pitch would be 100 seconds and I think in the end there will be prices for the “winner teams”, but I have no details regarding that yet.

I’d like to get some numbers now which helps in the contingent discussion. Short feedback within the poll would be highly appreciated!

  • I’d definitely like to take part
  • Not sure yet
  • I can’t/won’t take part

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Sorry, unfortunately that’s not possible for me at that time.
Would love to be there. Please make sure to get enough pics during the event. :slightly_smiling_face:

I’m looking forward to see list of challenges to pass over from openHAB foundation point of view. Everything I saw so far on event page is related to bosch ecosystem and products.

Thanks to @jb4711 efforts we already have working home connect integration, so maybe there are some improvements which can be implemented over there.

Thanks for the hint! We’re open to suggestions :slight_smile: Feel free to join as a hack coach if you’re interested in designing the challanges. I’m not sure if we’re allowed to make the challenges public before. Of course, participants are supposed to work on the challenges live at the Hackathon and not in advance (especially as there will be a contest at the end).

No worries. The challenges will orient on topics, not on vendors. Anyhow, as I said already, every team can work on whatever they want, nobody is obliged to work on the predefined challenges.

if someone needs a couch, give me a ping.

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Hi all,

good news! We got a contingent of up to 25 participants and I can finally announce that the event will definitely happen :slight_smile: I’ll now prepare the registration process and add the event on our website.

Cheers,
Patrick

fyi, I renamed this thread and will create a new one for the actual event announcement as soon as I prepared the registration process this weekend.

EDIT: Done. openHAB@BCW19: Developer Hackathon Europe (Berlin): 13th - 15th May 2019

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