21/10/2014

Congratulations to the winners of our Raspberry Pi competition: ecoBerry (first place), iDrive (second place), and Game of Life (third place). This competition and prize money worth R50 000 was personally sponsored by Andile Ngcaba, Chairman for Dimension Data Africa and Middle East.

The ecoBerry team, which consisted of third year students Vincent Reid, Kevin Beyers, Matthew Sainsbury and Douglas Bentley, won a total of R30 000. Their Power Monitor project aims to provide users with the ability to keep track of their electricity usage, and give them some insight into how they can minimize their carbon footprint and reduce strain on the national electricity grid. Users can receive emails about national electricity alerts, as well as periodic reports on household usage. The system provides an easy to use web interface with a live view of electricity usage, as well as a prediction of what they could use in the future.

The iDrive team, which consisted of first year Computing Sciences/ Mechatronics students Rabelani Nengwekhulu and Magamane Ledwaba, won a total of R15 000. Their project is centered on the new technology of autonomous vehicles, which simply put is a vehicle that can drive itself without much human interruption. The amazing thing is that this technology eliminates human interaction thus eliminating the prospect of human error which is the cause of most automobile accidents.

The Game of Life team, which consisted of first year Computing Sciences/Mechatronics students Sithe Ncube and Denzhelanga Sadiki, won a total of R5 000. Their project, Game of Groves, is a network of Raspberry Pi powered water sprinklers connected to a massively multiplayer conquest game where you seek to control Green Landing and surrounding kingdoms by watering their plants in real time. Each kingdom in the game is connected to a small real life garden and players who show the most dedication in watering the respective gardens are crowned rulers and receive tribute when harvest arrives. If Cthulhu overtakes your score your points are reset to zero and you are kicked off your throne.

ecoBerry, the winning team of the Raspberry Pi competition at the Eastern Cape ICT Summit in East London. FLTR: Kevin Beyers, Matthew Sainsbury, Motse Mfuleni (Conference Chairman) and Vincent Reid. Not in the photo: Douglas Bentley.
FLTR: Vincent Reid, Kevin Beyers, Matthew Sainsbury and Douglas Bentley.
ecoBerry busy with a television interview.