Team takes out hackathon with hi-tech safety gear for cyclists

Team NIGHTRIDER wins PayPal's BattleHack hackathon

Team NIGHTRIDER has won the Melbourne leg of PayPal's 24-hour hackathon, BattleHack.

The group comprised Andrej Griniuk, Tom Frauenfelder and Christopher Michaelides and John Lyons; the first three were also winners in last year's Australian competition.

Team NIGHTRIDER built a cyclist jacket with embedded brake lights. The lights are activated when the cyclist slows down, and indicator lights switch on when the cyclist lifts either of the arms before a turn.

Additional functionality, such as a navigation system that indicates whether a cyclist should turn left or right by flashing a light on their wrist, can be purchased via a PayPal-enabled mobile application.

The group will be flown to the international BattleHack event in Silicon Valley, where they will compete for a $100,000 prize.

It’s the second time the BattleHack event has been held in Australia, and the third time overall for the global event. Events are being held in 14 cities in 2015.

The event is organised by PayPal and its subsidiary Braintree.

One of the drivers for the event is to give developers an opportunity to build applications that can benefit their local communities, according to John Lunn, the global director of the PayPal Developer Network.

That second benefit of the event from PayPal’s perspective is the opportunity to get direct feedback from developers about the company’s APIs, Lunn said.

Read more: PayPal’s BattleHack comes to Australia for a second time

Developers needed to employ one of PayPal or Braintree’s APIs in their entry, or an API of one of PayPal’s partners for the event.

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