Start Code 2024 was an exhilarating 48-hour hackathon organized by Start NTNU, where over 20 teams of students competed to develop innovative software solutions to real-world challenges. This year, the case was provided by Enmo AS, a startup focused on enhancing the efficiency of solar energy systems through their BatteryBrain technology.
Check out the application on the GitHub Repo!
Every BatteryBrain is connected to a local network. This can make it difficult to access the devices remotely. Our team created a robust solution for customers to communicate with their BatteryBrain devices from anywhere in the world, using SSH-tunnels and a centralized Rust server, mapping each request to the correct SSH-tunnel depending on the subdomain used in the request. Essentially, a quickly cobbled together Ngrok.
We also managed to create a sleek webinterface for users to monitor and control their BatteryBrain devices remotely, providing real-time data visualization and control options to optimize energy usage and storage. This webinterface also featured a world map, showing the locations of all connected BatteryBrain devices for easy monitoring, as well as a chat function between customers and Enmo employees.
After an intense 48 hours of brainstorming, coding, energy-drink consuming, and testing, our team emerged victorious! We were honored to receive the first-place award for our well-rounded feature-packed solution. The first-place prize was a sponsored trip to St. Gallen, Switzerland, to attend START Hack in April 2025, where we got to compete on the world stage! Safe to say we did not win this one...
You can read more about START Hack 2025 here.
This also landed me a Summer Internship at Enmo AS in the summer of 2025, where I was lead-developer for a new domain within the BatteryBrain technology. You can read more about my work at Enmo AS here.
During the hackathon, we utilized a variety of modern technologies to build our solution. Here are some of the key technologies we used:
Frontend : React / TypeScript / Next.js / tRPC
Backend : Rust / Actix / SSH / PostgreSQL / RabbitMQ
DevOps / Others : Docker / GitHub Actions / Railway / Nginx