Building Brilliant++: Our 36-Hour Hackathon Journey
How we built an AI-powered education platform and secured 2nd place at HackNUthon 5.0
I'm excited to share our recent achievement at HackNUthon 5.0, where our team secured 2nd place overall and in the EdTech track. Among 800+ participants and roughly 200 teams, this was a significant milestone for us. Here's the story of how it happened.
The Vision
Online education, despite its convenience, often lacks engagement and personalization. This insight led us to create Brilliant++ (the name reflecting our programming roots). We envisioned a platform that could transform how people interact with online courses.
During those intensive 36 hours, we developed several key features:
- An intuitive course creation system
- Automatic video transcript generation
- AI-powered adaptive quizzes
- An engaging leaderboard system for motivation
Technical Implementation
For those interested in the technical aspects, here's our stack:
- Next.js with TypeScript for a robust frontend
- tRPC for efficient type-safe API communication
- PostgreSQL with Prisma for reliable data management
- Google's Gemini AI for intelligent content processing
- Cloudinary for seamless media handling
Challenges and Solutions
The journey wasn't without its challenges. At 3 AM, we faced critical issues with our AI integration. Another major hurdle was dealing with Cloudinary's API - its inconsistent response formats and unclear documentation made video processing a real challenge. What should have been simple upload and transformation operations turned into a debugging marathon.
The hackathon environment, though intense, brought out the best in our team. Even during the most challenging moments, our collaborative spirit kept us moving forward. The constant flow of ideas and mutual support made complex problem-solving manageable.
The Presentation
The final presentation was a defining moment. Running on a mix of adrenaline and determination, we demonstrated our platform's capabilities. The judges were particularly impressed by our AI-powered quiz generation system, which automatically creates relevant questions from video content.
Future Prospects
The project is open-source and available on GitHub: Brilliant++ Repository. Given the positive feedback and potential applications, we're exploring possibilities to develop this beyond its hackathon origins.
Acknowledgments
We're grateful to CSI Nirma University and Crest Data Systems for organizing this opportunity. Special thanks to my teammates - Darshil, Palash, and Yuvraj - whose expertise and dedication were instrumental in our success.
This experience reinforced an important lesson: with the right team and focused effort, it's amazing what can be accomplished in 36 hours. For anyone considering participating in a hackathon - it's an invaluable experience for both learning and innovation. ☕