Inspiration
This project is inspired by how often we stray off task during the day. This project is meant to help keep you on task and boost your mental wellbeing!
What it does
It tries to keep you on task by checking the processes you have running. If a game is detected, it will constantly notify you to close the game and focus. A time counter is there to keep track of how long you've been working, which will pause if a game is running. Once you've worked enough, you can take a break.
How we built it
We experimented with many languages to build this, but ultimately decided on using javascript because it is the language we are most familiar with and has a library that can easily create an application. We researched how to detect background processes, and incorporated that along with an algorithm to determine if it is a game or not, and finally created a display to keep track of the time and for the user to interact with.
Challenges we ran into
The biggest challenge we ran into was detecting the open windows and processes. The reason we had to look through many languages was that they have different levels of complexity for the detection system. We also had to take into account our knowledge of each language. After determining to use Node.js, we had to research ways to do that, and many of the libraries we found were not compatible with our computers. Thus, we had to use the more basic systems. We experimented with many methods to improve efficiency, which sometimes did not work out.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Our accomplishment is figuring out how to detect the windows and processes. We originally had no idea how to implement that, and managing to figure that out was a big accomplishment for us.
What we learned
We learned many new things through this project since it required us to research more about different libraries and many methods, in both javascript and HTML. We also learned that there are many ways to accomplish the same goal, but there will be trade-offs with each way. We have to decide and pick the best-suited method by researching each one in detail.
What's next for App usage monitor
The main goal in the near future is to vastly improve the application detection system. The method is very primitive but does not require many other packages on the computer to run, which may be a problem for lower-ended devices. We are also planning to create a macOS application, which will require an entirely new system for detecting the applications.
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