About the challenge

Hack Knight is a dynamic gathering of creative minds and tech enthusiasts where participants collaborate intensively on projects, competing for certificates and recognition. Our event serves as a catalyst for innovation, fostering connections and driving forward-thinking solutions. Come compete, meet with sponsors, and have some fun!

You may only compete if you have been accepted. Joining the competition on this website does not mean you get to compete!

Requirements

What to Build

You can build anything you'd like, whether it pertains to a track or not we want to see your projects shine! Hack Knight is here to gather creative minds to innovate and compete, so show us what you've got! Also, this hackathon is beginner-friendly, so we don't expect you to create fully-fledged projects

Interested in a Hack Involving Hardware?

MLH will be providing a hardware lab for students to create amazing projects during the event! You can find a list of all materials that will be available here:

Main Hardware

  • 9× Raspberry Pi 4B Kits
  • 12× Arduinos & Base Shields
  • 8× Logitech Webcams
  • 4× Google Nest Minis
  • 2× JBL Go 3 Speakers

Sensors & Components

  • 10× Grove Buzzers
  • 10× Grove Touch Sensors
  • 20× Grove LED Socket Kits
  • 3× Grove Temperature & Barometer Sensors
  • 12× Grove Buttons
  • 5× Grove Rotary Angle Sensors
  • 10× Grove Sound Sensors
  • 10× Grove 3-Axis Digital Accelerometers
  • 10× Grove Light Sensors
  • 3× Grove I2C Color Sensors
  • 4× Grove LCD Screens
  • 3× Grove Stepper Motors
  • 3× Grove Ultrasonic Distance Sensors
  • 25× Grove Cables
  • 3× Grove Moisture Sensors
  • 5× Grove Motor/Servo Driver Boards
  • 3× Grove Air Quality Sensors
  • 12× Grove Micro Switches
  • 6× Grove Thumb Joysticks
  • 6× Grove UV Sensors
  • 1× Grove NFC/RFID Tag Board
  • 6× Grove Infrared Reflective Sensors
  • 3× Grove 7-Segment Alphanumeric Displays
  • 3× Grove Stepper & Driver Sets
  • 4× Grove Servos
  • 4× Brushless DC Motors

Additional Components

  • 40× F/F Jumper Wires
  • 40× M/F Jumper Wires
  • 40× M/M Jumper Wires
  • Variety of Ceramic Capacitors
  • Variety of Resistors
  • 10× Breadboards

Tools

  • Wire Stripper
  • Wire Cutter
  • Curved Tweezers
  • Pointed Tweezers
  • Multimeter
  • Needle-Nose Pliers

The quantities are approximate and may vary depending on the hardware lab provided.

What to Submit

- Live demo required to win a track (science fair style)

- For any design hacks, all material must be submitted (i.e. figma, prototype, ...) and you must make it known in your presentations that your project is just a design

- For software, all code must be submitted via a GitHub link (any code pushed past the deadline or before the start of the hackathon will be disqualified)

- For hardware, please submit a video demoing the project, as well as any code via a GitHub link

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

13 non-cash prizes
Best Overall Hack
1 winner

Eurgonomic Mice
3 months of ElevenLabs Pro tier ($297 value per team member, 600k credits/mo)
1-year subscriptions for NordVPN, NordPass, Coveron and Incogni
1 GB of free data for Saily

Best Runnerup Hack
1 winner

Gaming Keyboards

Best Financial Hack
1 winner

Interview @ Diameter Capital & Yeti Cup

Best Health Hack
1 winner

Relaxing Night Light with Bluetooth Speaker

Best Environmental Hack
1 winner

40oz Reusable Tumblers

Best Beginner Hack
1 winner

Playing Cards

[MLH] Best Use of ElevenLabs
1 winner

Wireless Earbuds
3 months of ElevenLabs Scale tier ($879 value, 1.8 M credits/mo)

Deploy natural, human-sounding audio with ElevenLabs. Create realistic, dynamic, and emotionally expressive voices for any project, from interactive AI companions to narrated stories and voice-enabled apps. ElevenLabs will empower you to build rich, immersive experiences without the need for actors or complex audio production, using simply the power of AI.

Integrate fully autonomous audio experiences into your hack with ElevenLabs and give your project a voice, along with giving your team the chance to win some wireless earbuds!

[MLH] Best Use of Gemini API
1 winner

MLH Swag Kits
Google swag

It’s time to push the boundaries of what’s possible with AI using Google Gemini. Check out the Gemini API to build AI-powered apps that make your friends say WHOA. So, what can Gemini do for your hackathon project?

- Understand language like a human and build a chatbot that gives personalized advice
- Analyze info like a supercomputer and create an app that summarizes complex research papers
- Generate creative content like code, scripts, music, and more

Think of the possibilities… what will you build with the Google Gemini API this weekend?

[MLH] Best Use of Solana
1 winner

SenseCAP Card Tracker

The world of development is evolving fast and Solana is leading the charge with a network built to handle all of your infrastructure needs. Forget high fees and slow confirmations, it’s time to build applications that are fast, efficient, and scalable.

Harness Solana’s core advantages like blazing fast execution and near-zero transaction costs to make your hackathon ideas become real world projects. With Solana, the possibilities are endless.

- Create a game, social app, or consumer product that relies on instant, high-frequency transactions.
- Design a sophisticated trading, lending, or decentralized exchange (DEX).
- Build a prototype for supply chain, identity, or payments that can handle massive, real-world volume.

Show us how you can innovate with Solana for a chance to win some cool prizes for you and each member of your team!

[MLH] Best Use of Tiger Data
1 winner

Stream Deck Mini

Building high-performance apps under hackathon deadlines shouldn't mean spending half your weekend configuring complex databases or learning obscure query languages. Tiger Data extends PostgreSQL to give student developers an ultra-fast foundation for real-time data, time-series metrics, and complex analytics.

Why build with Tiger Data this weekend?

- Standard SQL Power: Query massive datasets instantly using the SQL you already know, with no complex NoSQL aggregation pipelines required.

- Unified Data Stack: Store relational user profiles and high-frequency metric streams side-by-side in a single database.

- Instant Dashboards: Serve lag-free, real-time frontend charts using pre-computed Continuous Aggregates.

- 90%+ Data Compression: Store millions of events on free-tier cloud instances without running out of disk space.

Whether you’re building real-time IoT monitoring, AI-driven analytics dashboards, or financial prediction engines, show us how Tiger Data powers your project. The team that demonstrates the most innovative, impactful, and performance-driven use of Tiger Data will take home some great prizes!

[MLH] Best Use of Presage
1 winner

Fitbit Inspire & Presage Perks

Presage is pioneering the Human Sensing Layer, enabling any application to understand a person’s real-time physical and emotional state. With Presage, you can leverage clinically-proven vital signs, movement, emotion, and/or focus tracking to build a project that gives the standard camera super powers.

Use any of the Presage SDKs to integrate capabilities like real-time heart rate, breathing rate, engagement levels, and facial expressions into your hack with just a few lines of code.
- Immersive Gaming & Entertainment: Dynamically change game difficulty or story elements based on a player's excitement or focus levels.
- Contactless Wellness & Fitness: Build a non-invasive app that monitors stress, recovery, or fitness performance.
- Accessibility & Security: Utilize vital signs for effortless authentication, or to enhance accessibility.
- Productivity: Design a tool that tracks focus or stress.

Build your next hack with Presage and show us the future of human-computer interaction! Win awesome prizes along for with the following perks from the Presage team:
- Free refills for Presage Development credits to accelerate you through your next three months of building
30% off all Presage usage charges for your first year after going live

[MLH] Best Use of Snowflake API
1 winner

Arduino Student Kit

Play with industry-leading LLMs on a single account using the Snowflake APIs. Adding AI capabilities into your application can be as simple as a single CURL command to Snowflake’s REST API.

Build customized applications, RAG powered chat bots, or embed AI-powered features into your app in half the time with half the hassle. Get started for free with a special, student 120-day Snowflake trial and check out this repository for an example of the Snowflake REST API in action.

[MLH] Best Domain Name from GoDaddy Registry
1 winner

Digital Gift Card

GoDaddy Registry is giving you everything you need to be the best hacker no matter where you are. Register your domain name with GoDaddy Registry for a chance to win some amazing prizes!

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Raja Sharma

Raja Sharma
Senior Software Engineer @ Bloomberg

Diego Perez

Diego Perez
Software Engineer @ Bloomberg

Nick Pisciotta

Nick Pisciotta
Software Engineer @ Boardable

James Oh

James Oh
Software Engineer @ Outtake AI

Sad Adib

Sad Adib
Software Engineer @ J.P. Morgan

Omobolaji Alabi

Omobolaji Alabi
Software Engineer @ Google

Will Pelech

Will Pelech
Software Engineer @ Datadog

Moses Parente

Moses Parente
Cloud Engineer @ FedEx

Ehab Abdalla

Ehab Abdalla
Software Engineer @ Baselayer

Arvind Majumder

Arvind Majumder
Associate Software Engineer @ Northwell

Saurav Luthra

Saurav Luthra
Associate AI Engineer @ Diameter Capital

Dr. Shweta Jain

Dr. Shweta Jain
Professor @ John Jay

Avijit Roy

Avijit Roy
Professor @ John Jay

Judging Criteria

  • Creativity
  • Completeness
  • Presentation
  • Alignment With Track
  • Design

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

Invite others to compete

Hackathon sponsors

Partnership
Platinum Sponsor
Gold Sponsor
Silver Sponsor
Bronze Sponsor
Drink Sponsor

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