Announcing the DeveloperWeek NY 2017 Hackathon Challenge Winners!

Every year, developers from across the country join Wowza in Brooklyn, New York for the 2017 DeveloperWeek Hackathon. The hackathon brings together people of varying experience and skill levels for a chance to socialize, learn, build something great—and win prizes of $250 in gift cards and $250 in Wowza gear. Entries are judged on originality, completeness and functionality.

The Wowza Hackathon Challenge Winners 

We love seeing people use their skills to build practical apps using Wowza technology, and this hackathon was no exception. Developers were given access to the industry-leading Wowza tool suite, including GoCoder SDK, Wowza Streaming Cloud REST APIs and Wowza Streaming Engine APIs, as well as the Wowza community for support. Three teams competed over a 24-hour period, with diverse backgrounds including students, skilled SaaS app teams and experienced C developers without Java, JavaScript, streaming or WebRTC experience. 

Wowza sponsored two challenges:

Challenge #1: Build the best iOS or Android live-streaming app using Wowza GoCoder SDK. 

Tools and technology provided:

• The GoCoder SDK.
• Wowza Streaming Cloud.
• Code samples. 
• Developer tools and tutorials. 
• Support from Wowza developers. 

The Winner: Peaceably Assemble

Peaceably Assmble, the winning GoCoder SDK team, built a mobile app for streaming protests and demonstrations in real time. It automatically uploads live-streams after they've been recorded, creating a permanent public record of the event. This is helpful in cases where the phone itself is damaged or confiscated, which often happens during protests and demonstrations.  

Honorable Mention: ZAMHack

Runner-up in the GoCoder SDK competition was ZAMHack. This team built an Internet of Things app that uses the input from external sensors to initiative live-streams when security incidents occur—for example, if a window in your home is broken, or a suspicious noise is detected in your backyard, the app will send a text-message alert, then live-stream the feed from the nearest security camera directly to your phone.

Challenge #2: Build the best WebRTC app using Wowza Streaming Engine. 

Tools and technology provided:

• Wowza Streaming Engine.
• Code samples. 
• Developer tools and tutorials. 
• Support from Wowza developers. 

The Winner: Headmounted Camera Livestream

This winning app uses WebRTC to deliver live-streams from a head-mounted camera to a website, so anyone can access the camera's feed in real time. This has practical applications for public safety and security, where supervisors and command centers could access live-streams from the body-cams or mobile devices of officers in the field. Though the developer who built the app had no prior experience with streaming or web development, he was able to use the Wowza GoCoder SDK and Wowza Streaming Engine to quickly win the contest.

DevWeek NY 2017 Post-Game: Tools for Building Your Own App

Building an app of your own? Use these resources to get familiar with Wowza tools and technology:

Wowza GoCoder SDK

Turn any iOS or Android device into a streaming camera with up to 4K resolution using the Wowza SDK. 

• Sign up for the free SDK trial license.
• Download the SDK.
• Consult the developer documentation for detailed information on installation, Getting Started, Developer Guides and API Reference. 
• Experiment with sample apps in GitHub for iOS or Android.
• If you prefer to build in a JavaScript framwork, check out the React Native wrapper for GoCoder. 

Wowza Streaming Cloud

Package and deliver live video and audio streams to any device, at any scale, with Wowza's streaming PaaS. 

• Sign up for a free Wowza Streaming Cloud trial account.
• Enable REST API access for your account.
• Wowza Streaming Cloud Login URL.
• Sandbox environment login. 
• REST API documentation. 
• REST API Live Stream QuickStart Tutorial. 
• Ruby Live Stream Workflow Example. 
• REST API Examples and Tutorials.

Wowza Streaming Engine

Wowza's media server software—deployable on your machine or in a cloud instance, and able to scale as you need for live and on-demand streaming.

Use Wowza Streaming Engine to build your own WebRTC chat application:

• Request a developer's trial license.  
• Download Wowza Streaming Engine (Select “Free Trial”).
• Request the WebRTC access package.

Additional Wowza Streaming Engine resources:

• Getting started with the REST API.
• REST API cURL examples.
• REST API PHP examples.
• Getting started with the Java API.
• Pre-built/compiled JavaAPI modules.
• Java API module source code on GitHub.
• Basic Java API code examples.
• Advanced Java API code examples.
• HTTP Provider code examples.
• React Native WebRTC endpoint.

Wowza Player

Embed this HTML5 player in your application or website for playback of video and audio streams. 

• Getting started with Wowza Player.
• Login for the Wowza Player Builder portal.
• Wowza Player JavaScript API documentation.
• Rails wrapper for Wowza Player on GitHub.

Need More Help?

Sign up for the Wowza #live-streaming Slack channel, where Wowza developers and streaming experts are available for live help. You can also check out the Wowza Forums to search our knowledge base, post questions and get input from the extensive Wowza community.