We organize H.A.R.D. Hack because we saw a lack of hardware-focused hackathons and wanted to provide students with a more well-rounded hacking experience that incorporates both hardware and software development. This is especially important since the direction many technologies are headed towards an integration of both software and hardware components. The ability to provide students within UCSD and outside UCSD with an extremely forgiving platform to get hands-on experience with industry standard technology inspired us to organize the hackathon. This is because we feel that learning should involve a hands-on component  to one's education is essential for a holistic experience for budding engineers.

$2,095 in prizes

• H.A.R.D. Hack Theme Challenge
  Create a project to improve Health & Wellness / Quality of Life.
• alwaysAI Challenge
  How would you make an impact to the world, if you could give intelligent sight to a robot?
• Qualcomm Challenge
  Challenge is to make the best use of all the compute and connectivity options available on the DragonBoard development platform.
• NKK Switches + Digikey Challenge
  Best use of NKK Switches Hardware.
• Wearable Sensing Challenge
  Use one of Wearable Sensing's EEG systems. Build a useful wearable brain monitoring App. Reliability: How robust is the implementation? Desirability: How much would one want it? Practicality: How easy to use is the App?
• Northrop Grumman Challenge
  Create a self-driving vehicle that can navigate and move towards a VHF signal in the room.