Simphiwe and teammate win at Bxrderless Hackathon
The future is in good hands with Simphiwe’s innovations.
Simphiwe Radebe (21) from Elandspark has added another accolade to his name after winning the Bxrderless Hackathon in his category at the Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct in Braamfontein, which ran from August 31 to September 1.
This time, the accolade was for a great solution using geospatial technology to help farmers understand how climate change might affect their crops and measures they can take to mitigate that.
The theme was ‘Geotech: Using Open Source data application programming interfaces (APIs) to create geospatial solutions’.
“This time, I was with my teammate, Botshelo Ramela, and you get to see a great chart on past rainfall data from years back and how it can be changed for the future using predictive analysis. We also built an Internet of Things (IoT) device that does rain detection, soil moisture detection and light intensity. All this data helps the AI best advise you on real-time data and SMS functionality when it’s raining to turn your irrigation system off,” he said.
The start-up Bxrderless hosted the hackathon, and Geekulcha, Africa’s Talking and Digital Earth Africa sponsored it.
Founded by the visionary Sinethemba Mtshali, Bxrderless is a trailblazing climate tech start-up empowering entities to transition successfully into the green economy. This hackathon was about driving real-world impact, pushing participants to solve problems at the intersection of climate issues, API innovation and data visualisation.
The other two challenges on the day were:
Developing dashboards to visualise data through GIS mapping, reporting and analysis, and Think Tank/Innovation: Inviting non-coders to use technology to address climate action and policy challenges.
Radebe is not new to winning hackathons. Last year, he and his team, Green Titans, came second and won R20 000 in the hackathon at Sci-Bono.
There, he created an automatic plant watering system. It tackles the water wastage crisis by watering your plants only when the soil is dry.
Also under his belt are a handful of Apps he created. He keeps shining and taking the south to the world.
WATCH: Simphiwe releases his fourth app
