On the 28th of March, hackers, makers and curious minds gathered at the Future Tech Centre for Century Hack, a celebration of Portsmouth’s 100th year as a city, Hack Pompey style.

We had tonnes of fun at this one and witnessed dozens of brilliant builds. There were a handful of social good apps made, ideas to help us recycle better, to provide mutual aid in disaster situations, and even to encourage and reward small acts of kindness in the city. There were ambitious projects like a 3D Portsmouth city simulator, hilarious hardware projects like a water-pistol armed fridge (yes, you read that right), and a range of excellent and silly games like a hotseat strategy game set in post-apocalyptic Portsmouth, and a rendition of Dumb Ways to Die: Portsmouth vs Southampton.

The day

Over 60 hackers came through Portland’s doors bright and early for breakfast: first-timers, veterans, students, professionals, hobbyists, the whole shebang. Teams formed quickly and strangers become collaborators before the coffee and pastries were finished – which were delicious by the way, thanks Farm Bakery!

After brekkie, Ryan opened proceedings with a short talk, and before we knew it we were all in the Future Tech Centre ready to hack.

Three deliberately open-ended focus areas were set for hackers to build towards, all with a tie-in to Portsmouth’s centenery celebration. Social Good, asking how technology could make a real difference in Portsmouth; 100, an intentionally vague theme inviting participants to interpret it however they liked; and Portsmouth 2126, challenging teams to imagine what Portsmouth and the world might look like a century from now.

Our hackers quickly settled in to their builds for the morning session which, as it often does, went by at the speed of light. Then it was lunch 😌.

Shoutout to our favourite local vendors Southsea Deli and Stones Throw Kitchen, for providing their best sarnies and panuozzos, both exceptional as always. Stones Throw has just opened sit-in spot at the food court by Portsmouth and Southsea Station by the way, check it out!

As we say, after lunch comes the crunch: it was focus and panic in equal measure for the afternoon session as features were built and bugs squished (eh, probably not actually). We helpfully bothered the teams with questions about their projects at this critical time, and then that was it! Time up! I hope you, dear reader, can get a feel for how fast the day goes 😅.

At 4pm, 13 teams were shortlisted to present their projects at the Show & Tell.

Nerves were high. For some it was their first time speaking in front of a crowd, but everyone was genuinely excited to show off what they had built and for good reason!

Before we highlight a few of the projects, here’s what was up for grabs...

The Prizes

Pulling together the prize list is pure joy, it’s a hit of retail therapy for us as we try to find the things that people won’t treat themselves to.

This year’s prizes were an exciting and eclectic mix, including some absurdly heavy boardgames, excellent gaming peripherals, a Raspberry Pi advent calendar leftover from the last event, a drawing tablet, microcontroller kits, and something we’re particularly proud of this time, a Bonsai Tree!? How’s that for deskware! There was something for every kind of hacker, all made possible thanks to our generous sponsors.

So then, without further ado, the project highlights!

Winners & Project Highlights

People’s Choice Award

Sim City: Portsmouth

Leon Ng

In a wonderful result, the People’s Choice Award was sort of jointly claimed this year by two very different but equally deserving projects. The fact that the public vote couldn’t separate them says everything about the quality on show. As fate would have it, a member of the Hack Pompey team ended up casting their vote late to break the tie — meaning that Leon just edged into the lead to lift the coveted (and shinier-than-ever) People’s Choice Award.

Sim City: Portsmouth is a web-based 3D city simulation platform for exploring urban futures under different scenarios, using real Portsmouth data and intuitive visualisations. It was bold, technically impressive, and locally grounded. It was also very reassuring — rising sea levels might not be that bad here according to some models. Still, we’re all the safer with those lovely new sea defences.

Check out the code or have a look at the demo.

People’s Choice Award Runner-up

Together

Shreya Jagannatha & Katie Griffiths

Together is a shared relationship dashboard designed for long-distance couples or friends, combining communication, planning, and fun into a single collaborative space. Two people can create private rooms, sync activities in real time, and access a modular dashboard of widgets covering everything from music and watchlists to games, checklists, an all-important decision-maker, and even a shared pet companion. The vote couldn’t split these two apart from Leon — which, given the theme of the project, feels entirely appropriate.

Best Project for Social Good

GoKind

Adil Mahmud Saad, Thomas Muhiwa Bwambale, & Warren De Souza

GoKind is a hyperlocal mutual aid app built for Portsmouth’s centenary. Residents post "kindness quests" — help carrying shopping, a lift to QA Hospital, or simply someone to share a cup of tea with — and nearby neighbours can pick them up with a swipe.

Inspired by real challenges documented by the University of Portsmouth and Healthwatch, including isolated elderly residents, transport barriers, and digital exclusion, GoKind makes Portsmouth’s strong community spirit visible and actionable. A live counter tracks progress towards 100 acts of kindness — one for each year of city status.

A deserving winner of the Social Good challenge, and honestly one of the most for Portsmouth projects we have ever seen at one of our events. Check out the code on GitHub.

Most Creative Use of "100"

100% Blackjack

Nazim Choudry & Jay Evans

We had some great entries attempting to incorporate the concept of "100" into their projects. The judges’ favourite was 100% Blackjack — a hybrid game between traditional blackjack and a platformer, where you collect playing cards to reach a score of 100 without going bust. Simple, but delightful. The physics for the protagonist blob were also, it has to be said, chef’s kiss.

Best Vision for Portsmouth 2026

Railroad

Evie, Arthur & Benjamin Leveritt

Railroad is a vision of improved transport for Portsmouth using automated vehicles. At first Evie considered rollercoasters for getting around — we still like that idea — but eventually came to the same conclusion as everyone else (especially Ming) that Portsmouth is in dire need of a monorail. We all know it deep within ourselves. Evie just called it out, sketched it out, and brought it to life with AI-generated images of increasing hilarity.

Watching a family collaborate on a project about the future of their city, presented with obvious pride and joy, was one of the highlights of the entire event. A genuine reminder of why we run Hack Pompey. Our future is in good hands.

Honourable Mentions

Water Watch

Joshua Fox, Mishanil Kazreen, Hiwa Rasul & Fahmi Ahmed

Water Watch deserves a special mention for its ambition and real-world usefulness. A real-time disaster navigation app that pulls live flood warning data from the Environment Agency and combines it with crowdsourced reports to route users away from danger rather than just towards their destination. Exactly the kind of project this challenge was designed to inspire.

EcoScan

Megan Knaresborough & Daniel Riddell

EcoScan was another standout — a mobile app helping Portsmouth residents recycle smarter by scanning barcodes, snapping photos of products, and finding the correct bin or local recycling point. Simple, local, and genuinely useful.

Fridge Guardian

Felix Aldam-Gates, Alex Gratton, Eleanor Rowland, Devora Moleman & Doctor J. Pepper

Fridge Guardian is a mounted water gun turret using facial recognition to identify and squirt anyone who dares linger at the fridge for too long. It was as beautiful as it was completely ridiculous, and for those of us who have been around since the early days, it was a wonderful callback to one of the very first Hack Pompeys, where a team built a party fridge. Some things never change, and we are very glad they don’t.

Here’s what the hackers had to say

“It was a really enjoyable experience overall, and we thought everything was very well organised. As it was our second time at Hack Pompey, we had a good idea of what to expect, which meant we could get started straight away. It was also great to see members of the organising team coming around to check in on us and offer support throughout the day.
– Adil Mahmud Saad

“Wonderful and enjoyable event to experiment with new ideas and make new friends!” – Leon Ng

“I got to bring my ideas and concepts to life, turning them into working code in just a few hours. It was an intense but incredibly rewarding experience - full of creativity, collaboration, and problem-solving. It was also wonderful meeting everyone and seeing the incredible, innovative ideas people came up with throughout the day. The energy during the presentations was amazing.”

— Shreya Jagannatha

“The chill atmosphere you guys created made the whole experience far less intimidating and actually gave me space to think, which is a refreshing change to the game jams I’m used to.

I especially enjoyed the presentations and voting segment where we were able to see eachothers creations, it was a super fun way to end the day.

P.S. The lunch was really good :)”

– Nazim Choudry

Acknowledgements

Cliché but true, Century Hack was one of our favourite Hack Pompey events to date. The quality of projects was exceptional, the atmosphere was welcoming and productive, and the local hacker community continues to grow stronger with every event. We want to give a massive thanks to our sponsors who made this possible.

First, a giant thank you to Waffle Studio, our Premier sponsor. Without their support the Hack wouldn’t have happened; to borrow the famous words from those little green aliens... "we are eternally grateful."

We also benefitted from the ‘Portsmouth 100 Community Grant’, provided by Portsmouth City Council. It’s an honour to take part in the city’s centenery celebration, and to be recognised and supported by the folks that keep our city ticking along means a lot to us.

And finally, a big thank you to the University of Portsmouth for supporting us for yet another event. The support from the School of Computing has enabled us to run every single event over the last 10 years!

And of course, a huge thanks to the Hack Pompey team

Ming, Sage, Jane, Jack, Tom and Ryan – thank you, the event couldn’t happen without your efforts throughout.

To Michael, Josh, Rieona and Alex – thanks for the last minute extra hands, every little helps!

A special shoutout and thanks to Habibur Rahman for photography, making all of us look good.

And finally a big thank you to to Charlotte Simonsen for the copious hours put in to get the event looking good and, most importantly, in front of people’s eyes 👀 - you’re a star! Thanks as always.

With all that said (and well done if you read it all), if you are already looking forward to the next one then we have some good news for you...

P.S. If you want to see a few more photos of the day, check out this drive. If we’ve published a photo of you when we shouldn’t have, sorry about that, please let us know and we will remove it.

P.P.S. If you were at the Century Hack and you’d like us to link to your socials or your projects, email us at [email protected] and we’ll update the page accordingly, or send us a message on Discord.

Past events

We’ve been running Hack Pompey events for over 10 years!
Some other events we’ve done include Hack the Unexpected, Good Vibes, Sustainability, Hack the Home, Fashion Hack, Wearables, Open Data, and the original Hack Pompey way back in 2014!

If you have any questions at all, please drop us a line at [email protected] or on our Discord.