Yeshivat Frisch’s engineering team won first place at the Center for Initiatives in Jewish Education’s (CIJE) first annual yeshiva high school Hackathon on January 30, at Yeshiva University. The team included Jon Katz, Abi Langer, Beni Romm, Dylan Speiser and Eitan Traurig.

The task of all the teams was to hear different patient scenarios, then—in just five hours—to brainstorm, create, code and test a prototype device to address the need utilizing a NodeMCU controller for remote monitoring over the web using HTML.

“Our challenge, which we did not know beforehand, was to design a prototype to help the senior citizens living at The Jewish Home Foundation,” said Speiser. “We were presented with different seniors’ issues and we chose to help one woman who wanted to travel and visit her family, but was unable to because of her medical conditions. We designed a sleeve, to be worn on the lower arm, which included sensors such as a heart rate sensor and an accelerometer.”

“It wound up being quite similar to a LifeAlert, only better because it included vitals and automatic fall detection,” continued Speiser.

The students had a great time putting their engineering skills to use for a great cause. “The most enjoyable part was working together on the project,” concluded Speiser. “We all had the skills necessary to make the project before the event even started, but putting them to use in the high-stakes, ultra-productive environment of the competition was thrilling. I would have had fun even if we didn’t win, but winning is nice, too.”