Thursday, March 16, 2017, 5:25 PM
Three students from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) have been the winners of the fifth edition of ‘Hackforgood’ Global with a first prize that is endowed with 6,000 euros thanks to the ‘Green Light’ project, a mobile application that is able to “translate” the state of traffic lights.
Jorge Fabegat, Javier Ferrando and Joaquín Montesinos, students of telecommunications and Electrical Engineering Engineering, are the makers of the ‘Green Light’ application, which combines the information of the Valencia City Council about the location of the traffic lights and the user.
“It is a mobile application that warns the blind pedestrian with a vibration or a beep or it can happen,” Ferrando explained. In order to obtain the real -time of the traffic lights, they resorted to an Arduino -Plaquette, an open source microcontroller and low costs, easy to use and very flexible, so designed that artists, designers, computer rookies and any interested person can make interactive objects or environments.
The 2017 edition is the most massive and has brought 1500 hackers together from 23 Spanish universities, who have presented 150 different projects in 15 locations. The first national prize is endowed with 5,000 euros, to which another 1,000 euros is added that the UPV team has obtained by being in the first position of the local phase.
The three students met at the ‘Makers UPV’ Association, a community of university students who are “passionate about making things”, and where they built 3D printers and drones.
At the moment ‘Luz Verde’ has won a maximum of three local prizes (‘Geo-OPEN DATA VLC’, ‘Think Big’ and first position of the Valencia headquarters) and the absolute prize in the world phase. In this way the ‘Think Big’ category, of the Telefónica Foundation, will enable them to continue to work on the project.
