Box Bot: A Box Tops For Education Project

Open source hardware project integrated with Alexa to encourage families to tinker together & raise money for schools

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Inspiration

I was cleaning out a drawer in my kitchen when I noticed a ton of Box Tops for Education (BT4E) coupons. I noticed that many of these were expired which was upsetting. This got me thinking of a few things: my daughter will be going to school in a few years so I should be more proactive in donating, these are preferred to be donated in lots of 50 so how can we make this easier on the coordinator, and how can we make it easier to track the impact we've made in our communities. This resulted in Box Bot. Box Bot is a very simple, DIY hardware project meant to encourage parents and kids (and even classrooms) to build a simple device together that helps them keep track of collected BT4E coupons. It's integrated with Amazon Alexa so families can know how much they and their schools are collecting at any time.

Full write-up can be found at: https://www.hackster.io/mportatoes/box-bot-a-box-tops-for-education-project-24b15e

What it does

Keeps track of how many tops you've saved and donated. Also provides nutritional info via USDA's free API.

How I built it

All free-tier services from AWS and roughly $20 in hardware

Challenges I ran into

Time!!!

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'll be proud if this inspires anyone to learn STEM or raises money for their schools.

What I learned

Learned how to use the API gateway

What's next for Box Bot: A Box Tops For Education Project

Maybe functionality to compare schools, competitions for local schools, more USDA services, etc.

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