The Grand Finale of Smart India Hackathon-2017was hosted on 1 & 2 April 2017. Smart India Hackathon-2017 was launched on November 9, 2016 in New Delhi by the Union Human Resource Development Minister Shri Prakash Javadekar, in collaboration with i4c, MyGov, Persistent Systems, NASSCOM and Rambhau Mhalgi Pabodini to harnesses creativity and expertise of students. It was a 36 hours non - stop digital product development competition during which teams of thousands of technology students built innovative digital solutions for the problems posted by 29 different central government ministries / departments e.g. Ministry of Railways, External Affairs, Ministry of Defence, ISRO, Ministry of Tourism, Department of Atomic Energy, etc.

Two teams from Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon were selected to present their solution to the problems under the respective ministries:

1. The team “Detect & Direct” comprising of four students of ECE, two students from CSE under Ministry for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) at GIMT, Guwahati.

2. The team “Mind Bloggers” from Electronics & Computer Engineering Dept. under Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEFCC) at Sri Krishna College of Engineering, Coimbatore.

The team Detect & Direct stood as Second Runner Ups in the competition under Ministry for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) at GIMT, Guwahati and bagged a cash prize of Rs 50,000.

The ‘Grand Finale’ of Smart India Hackathon 2017 was organized simultaneously across 26 different cities. Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi addressed Smart India Hackathon 2017 via video conferencing.

The project Road Monitoring and Maintenance System was under the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) and Problem statement: Monitoring of roads and projects through Space technology with Problem code: #NER5. The Team Detect & Direct constituted of 6 Team members: Akshay Kumar (Team leader) (ECE - Roll no. 17193), Sachin Vats (ECE - Roll no. 17231), Vishes Kumar Yadav (ECE - Roll no. 17248), Nilesh Kumar Singh (ECE - Roll no. 17212), Dinesh Bajaj (CSE - Roll.no. 16054) and Bharat Kumar (CSE - Roll.no. 16038) and mentor Mrs. Sanghamitra V. Arora (Associate Professor - ECE department).

The major highlights of the project were monitoring the progress of roads at construction sites using satellite images and UAV images, an intelligent road asset monitoring and maintenance system for regions not accessible by satellites due to cloud cover of dense forest cover. The system can identify and report the location of potholes and cracks on the roads which cause drivers to lose control of vehicle, for pollution checking of vehicle moving nearby and capture the image of its number plates for further actions. The system can be fitted in any government vehicle for identification of obstruction caused by overgrown trees and shrubs which blocks view of traffic signs, pedestrians, or other vehicles, the system can identify the level of light intensity on roads and can decide whether more lights are required or not. 

Project entitled Air Pollution Control Plant under the Ministry category Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change (MoEFCC) and Problem statement: A surveillance system for air pollution monitoring, warning and management with Problem code: #MEF16. The Team “Mind Bloggers” constituted of six members: Monica Godara (Team Leader) (Roll No: 16768), Deepanshu Bansal (Roll No: 16766), Akansha Marwah (Roll No: 16762), Amit Saini (Roll No: 16763), Shweta Saini (Roll No: 16773) and Anoop Tiwari (Roll No: 16765) and 2 mentors: Dr. Neelam Ruhil and Ms. Parul Bansal.

The major highlight of the project Air Pollution Control Plant was to design an artificial plant which will sense the level of pollutants gases in the premises, as well as it will give an alarm when it exceeds the sustained value. Sensor reading will be processed by signal conditioning unit. Microcontroller was programmed in such a manner that when it receives output from signal conditioning unit which predicts a exceed in threshold limit, the buzzer will ring. Further the alert through message can also be generated such that when the level of pollution increases, the authority will automatically get a message alert on their mobile phones.

Every team was subjected to three judging and three mentoring rounds at an interval of 6 hours. The practicality of the application and the innovative approach of the team towards giving the solution were strictly scrutinized. The prizes under different categories included Rs.1,00,000 for the winner, Rs.75,000 for the first runner up, Rs.50,000 for the second runner up and Rs.10,000 as inspiration award  and also the teams will get a chance to be part of the NASSCOM’s 10,000 start ups programme.

The hackathon was an excellent exposure and encouragement to the budding engineers and it helped them to recognize and believe in their true abilities. The students got a glimpse into what can be accomplished in a relatively short time frame with limited resources.  The idea of taking up a current problem was the catalyst for an innovation and resulted in a comprehensive proposed solution.