A 8-strong team of Lithuanian hardware enthusiasts, engineers and software developers last week took part in Garage48, the largest hardware hackathon in the Baltics. They brought back from Estonia both a sandwich machine prototype and some ideas for fostering makers’ community in Lithuania.

Garage48 is a series of events for hardware enthusiasts founded in Estonia in 2010. It is meant to boost the formation of hardware-oriented startups. While numerous hackathons for software developers exist in Lithuania, Ugnius Zasimauskas, one of the members of Lithuanian team that visited the latest Garage48 event in Tartu, admits that Estonian hardware community is currently leading the Baltic region.

Garage48 Hardware&Arts 2016 from Eesti Kunstiakadeemia on Vimeo.

More than 100 participants came to the event, some 30 ideas were pitched during the first day and 19 prototypes/products were finished by the end of weekend. Ugnius says these numbers can easily compete with major Lithuanian software and gaming hackathons, the only difference is all these products were hardware.

“Our team was also amazed by the amount and quality of technical equipment both the University of Tartu and sponsors provided. There were plenty of Raspberry Pi or Arduino controllers that we could take home after the event, a Latvian 3D printing company brought both printers and dedicated people working with them to the event, there was a laser cutting machine that returned the pieces we designed in a couple of hours, let alone minor electronics and wiring we needed. That’s truly serious in terms of hardware”, – Ugnius admits.

At the same time, there was a lot of media attention: the event was streamed by two media channels and the winners took part in the morning show of the national Estonian TV. Also, the event was truly international as it had many participants from Latvia in addition to the Lithuanian team.

By the way, Ugnius was surprised that members of Estonian National Defence College took part in the event. There was no particular subject this time, but many participants of Garage48 were inspired by the pitch from the military guys, and so prototypes such as bullet counter or false radio signal device were created over the course of weekend.

Ugnius’ team came up with an idea for a sandwich machine they called “Burger Queen”. It is meant for bars and pubs, and it allows to automate sandwich making and to offer some quality food as compliment for the patrons. “We want to combine hospitality of Spain with innovation of Japan”, – Lithuanians were pitching on the stage.

The winners of this hackathon were Genosity, it is a gene testing machine that will target school system and will help students to learn about their own genes in biology classes.

You can find out more about the winners and other participants of the latest Garage48 hackathon in their website.

By the way, hardware hackathons are coming to Lithuania. Book March 4-6 in your calendar as Hacker Games hackathon will have the first in Lithuania hardware track in Kaunas. Also, there are hardware events planned for Login 2016 conference later this spring.