Breadcrumbs

View free food locations via Google Maps
Fill out a quick and easy form to add events

Inspiration

If you ask a student how they find free food on their college campus, they're bound to tell you a story about how their friend's friend or that person from intro computer science added them to an email list or a group chat where people occasionally send out alerts for free food. They might even have a Google calendar to organize. These means are limited to specific social circles and aren't always effective, so we wanted to create one streamlined application in combination with an alexa skill that would allow organizations and individuals to promote events by posting a map location and a few details about free food. We were also inspired by how much food restaurants waste. One of our teammates witnessed a restaurant around campus throw away a large bowl of food when the order was incorrect! If restaurants could quickly log the extra food for others to pick up for free for themselves or to take to homeless populations, unnecessary food waste could be avoided.

What it does

The Alexa skill and application allow you to specify the location, organization hosting, type of food, and a message for an event on a college campus that has free food available. Created events may be viewed or heard by users.

How I built it

We made Alexa skill was built in the aws console using a lambda function. We created the web application with Angular and various node packages. The web application uses an Angular Module built on the Google Maps api to display the locations of events by obtaining their latitudes and longitudes.

Challenges I ran into

Creating an Alexa skill is challenging! The learning curve was steep, but through tutorials and a workshop, we were able to make progress on the skill. We also ran into a challenge connecting our web application to the Alexa skill using Dynamodb. If we had more time, we would work on this connection to ensure that the web application and Alexa skill are working off the same data set.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Even though working with the Alexa skill was challenging, it was really rewarding to finally get the dialog functionality working. It was our first time using Alexa and the documentation was confusing to follow, but we were still able to create the skeleton of an operational skill. Our team was also able to work together really well to divide up the work in terms of who would be responsible for researching certain topics and following tutorials. We were able to communicate effectively throughout the process to create our final hack.

What I learned

We learned the basics of how to create an Alexa skill and what a lambda function is. Also, it was the first time writing in javascript/node js for some of us, so that was an interesting experience figuring out syntax errors. We also learned how to use the Google Maps api alone and in combination with Angular.

What's next for Breadcrumbs

We would want to get the dynamodb functioning so that Alexa and the web application would both add and pull entries from the same database. The database would have to self managing, deleting events after they happen so it doesn't recommend events that have already passed. We would also want to refine the location functionalities so the user could specify their location and give a radius so Alexa and the web app would only recommend events within that radius. We could extend the app to benefit the social good by allowing restaurants and other businesses to work with local food charities, or specify when they have extra food so they don't waste it.