bARrel

bARrel is an augmented reality application that helps you visualize your individualized water consumption

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Inspiration

We were inspired to make a water conscious application after seeing one of our suitemates take an hour-long shower. We were shocked at their wasteful water usage and wanted to find a way to help encourage people - generally, the younger generation - to pay more attention to their water consumption in a fun and more innovative way.

What it does

Our application, bARrel, provides a way for users to visualize their water consumption through augmented reality. They do this by inputting their water usage (i.e. cycles of laundry, the time it takes to shower, flushing a toilet, etc.) and having their water source- which is represented in a barrel - dwindle. As the user surpasses the sustainable amount of water, the water levels decrease in the barrel and the fish is closer to his death.

How we built it

We build the 3D modeled objects through Maya Autodesk, imported materials and shaders through Unity's asset store (as well as created our own), and fully scripted the menu system through Unity and C# after sketching out the UI design on paper.

Challenges we ran into

We had difficulty finding compatible fluid libraries in Unity. Most of the downloadable assets were unreliable, expensive, or had very little documentation on how to actually use the tools/run the demos. We spent the majority of our time trying to figure out an alternative to importing liquid libraries (in this case, Particle systems) -- but had issues rendering the physics and collider attributes. Lastly, due to Apple Developer's most recent update, we failed to export our project on to the iPhone.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We successfully 3D modeled everything that we had planned for the 2-day hack span and integrated them easily into the augmented reality user interface. We also successfully implemented our code and were able to creat realistic glass and water texture, as well as flying particles in the menu bar.

What we learned

EVERYTHING! -- especially in the field of particle systems through trial and error. It was our first time being in a hackathon like an environment, collaborating with a team in unity, and making things 3D rather than 2D. We also learned how to google better and get the right kind of help from mentors, etc.

What's next for bARrel:

We plan on retrying to export the application on to the iPhone, make more realistic water animations with physics properties, render the buttons in Augmented Reality, add more accurate water consumption measurements, include music and scripts to make the fish more animated and "characterized" (i.e. when the water drains out, the fish can begin to panic!), and maybe even monetize the application by having users "buy accessories" for the fish or have users unlock water challenges.

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