Billy

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  Main Page, where you can see previous bills, profile info, and more.

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  Scan Page

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  Confirmation Page (after scanning & itemizing your bill).

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  Edit Page, in case you'd like to add, remove, or update any items.

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  Selection Page, where you and other users can split the bill.

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  A sneak peek for our database implementation!

Inspiration

Necessity is the mother of invention! We were sick of having to work our way through long bills and even longer discussions of who-owns-what, so we took our chance at solving it.

What it does

Billy's main function is an image-to-text recognizer that itemizes bills and allows users the opportunity to pick and choose what items they want to pay for. The recognizer uses image-to-text software to parse the bill and converts it to JSON using AI. Unfortunately, we were unable to fully implement this by the deadline.

How we built it

Billy was created using React Native with Expo Go. Reponsibilites were split between frontend, backend, and the text-recognizer implementation.

Challenges we ran into

HackBeanpot's short time window definitely made itself present during our development. As our first and second hackathons, we spent a lot of time debugging and figuring out our team's flow. Parts of the code that would add more functionality, but demanded more time and research to implement, were left out to adjust for the nearing deadline. Additionally, the limited capabilities of AI with image processing posed a challenge when trying to implement the bill scanner.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our team is very happy to have competed in HackBeanpot, as it is two members' first time competing in a hackathon (second time for the other)! App-wise, we pride ourselves on Billy's smooth frontend experience.

What we learned

Some of the main points we took away from not just creating Billy, but this hackathon as a whole:

New Technologies: Working in a full-stack environment taught us a lot about the "other side" of what it is to code. We learned about React components, contexts, database design and queries, user authentication, and the process of linking them all together to create the best experience for the user.

Time Flies when You're Having Fun (or coding): Many of the features we wanted to implement were unfortunately compromised in order to have a semi-functional MVP by the deadline. That just means we get more time to work on it in the future! The team dynamics over the past weekend highlighted the collaborative aspect of coding, and we're more than ready to get back into it.

What's next for Billy

We're very excited with what we have set ourselves up for. The next steps would look something like integrating the database for Billy, creating authentication policies and intuitive queries. We'll also be adding more functionality to the app itself, like generating links to share one bill to other devices. We've got our work cut out for us, but we'll do it so you don't have to!

Built With

• expo.io
• figma
• react-native
• supabase
• tailwind
• typescript