UCLA IEEE Idea Hacks 2025

IDEA Hacks is the premier hardware-focused hackathon on the West Coast.  Hosted by IEEE’s Student Branch at UCLA during 36 hours on May 2-4 (delayed from January by the LA fires), it provided hundreds of students from UCLA and local community colleges with an opportunity to develop their own tangible products.  Throughout the experience, the organizers provided parts, tools, space, food, and workshops all for free, so these students could focus solely on their projects.

This year was the 11th anniversary of IDEA Hacks; and the theme — “Supercharge” — encouraged students to bring an electrifying mix of innovation and energy to our hackathon.  The three subcategories were: 

Super Human  – Enhance aspects of your daily life and become your best self!

Super Nostalgic  – Take a journey back to your roots and embrace your old self!

Super (in)Sane  – Break the mold and discover your true self

Attendance

IDEA Hacks reached a diverse audience, with 200 applicants this year coming from a wide range of backgrounds.  Approximately 150 students competed, with a total of 20 projects submitted for judging.

Students participated from UCLA, UCSD, UCI, Cal Poly Pomona, San Jose State University, Georgia Tech, University of Georgia, Stark State College (Ohio), Pierce College, El Camino College, Santa Monica College, Cerritos College, and LA City College.

The students attending IDEA Hacks had diverse technical backgrounds, different levels of hands-on experience (purely electrical to purely mechanical knowledge), and years of project experience to students only getting started in engineering.  Idea Hacks supports students of all backgrounds with multiple technical workshops and abundant technical support from volunteers to ensure that as many students as possible can learn and have a valuable experience.  Partnerships with other student organizations helped increase diversity in the event’s leadership and included the following organizations:

• American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
• IEEE Women Advancing Technology through Teamwork (IEEE WATT)

There were 10 judges composed of industry representatives, faculty, and UCLA alumni who judged the 20 submissions over two rounds.

Eugenia Cho and Evan Bird, IEEE External Vice Presidents, worked tirelessly in January and May to create a very successful event, along with many other IEEE officers who volunteered their time throughout the weekend.

Winning Projects

The judges were impressed by all of the students’ projects. A complete list of final submissions is available on the Devpost (https://idea-hacks-2025.devpost.com/project-gallery), and here are the winners:

First Place Overall: Vinyl Vision

Team members: Sawyer Ferrell, Zach Fischer, Wyatt Grover, Rasul Li
Devpost: https://devpost.com/software/vivis
Description: From the humble beginnings of a beat-up record player, we resurrected life anew. With the theme of Supercharge we started brainstorming how we could take hobbies we were passionate about and supercharge them! Many of us shared a great passion for music and album art and we wanted a way to incorporate that into how we enjoyed music on a daily basis.

ViVis listens to what you’re listening to and supercharges it! Taking in either input from a vinyl or Bluetooth, ViVis will display what song you’re listening to, the artist who sang it, and an album cover associated with that song to incorporate all parts of the music into one place.

Second Place Overall: Co-Motion

Team members: Matthew Chandler, Premkumar Giridhar, Parth Pandhare
Devpost: https://devpost.com/software/rc-human
Description: We were inspired by the idea of giving mobility and agency to people who don’t have it—and doing it in a way that doesn’t rely on invasive surgery or expensive robotics. With the theme of “Supercharge”, we asked:  What if someone with limited movementcould be “supercharged” by a trusted companion remotely guiding them?

That led us to build CoMotion, a remote-controlled, non-invasive human augmentation system using TENS and GVS stimulation.

CoMotion is a wearable system that lets one person remotely control another’s physical movement in real time.  The system can assist people with disabilities, enable remote physical therapy, or let a trusted person help someone move with confidence.

Third Place Overall: GEORGE-inator

Team members: Karina Bender, George Grigoryan, Emilie Liao, Connell McCarley, Suraj Shah
Devpost: https://devpost.com/software/george-inator
Description: We were inspired by the original date for IDEA Hacks, which unfortunately was postponed due to the infamous LA wildfires in January. In the following weeks, it was clear that the county of Los Angeles had not taken the necessary preventative measures for a place with such a hot and dry climate, leading to the destruction of over 57,000 acres and the deaths of at least 30 citizens. We sought to create something that would allow for the city of Los Angeles as well as elsewhere to take a more proactive approach to preventing wildfires.

The Global Enhancement Operation to Restore Geological Ecosystems, or GEORGE-inator, is a rover that can be let loose into the wild like a fire-preventing Roomba. Equipped with a spinning rake mechanism, it is capable of taking in dry brush and processing it in an internal woodchipper, leaving behind flat pieces that will have a more difficult time burning due to the lack of air pockets between the timber. The back is also equipped with a small flamethrower to carefully burn away any easily ignitable scrap pieces in a controlled manner before they spark a much larger blaze. In addition to these fire prevention measures, the GEORGE-inator also includes a spinning chamber that drops seeds native to the area to help with reforestation after a wildfire occurs. Mounted sensors can determine the type and the depth of the top layer of ash after a wildfire, as well as the presence of any mycelium or mushrooms that are indicative of a recovering ecosystem.

Sponsorships

Sponsorships were essential to the success of IDEA Hacks 2025.  Beyond providing funds for parts, food, the venue, and other supplies, students loved interacting with sponsors. Talking with corporate partners was one of the most popular components of IDEA Hacks. There were three key sponsors: Digi-Key, Infineon, and Texas Instruments.

Future Recommendations

In future hackathons, it would be good to have a more diverse use of hardware/boards.  Directors should encourage students to look beyond just Raspberry Pis and ESP32s.  If the directors can promote the use of more advanced/specialized systems, it could attract greater interest from companies looking to showcase their products, while also giving students broader exposure to different hardware platforms.