Carbon-footprint

does a lot...for the environment

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Inspiration

  • we wanted to do something that has a real-life application, but we didn't know enough stuff to do most ideas in 24h
  • this idea was cool because it calculates your carbon footprint, helps you sort your trash, and gives you ways to improve the environment in your local community
  • has a lot of potential for future development
  • we wanted to make an app that was accessible (with proper labels on html, big fonts, flexible margins, etc.) for people using screen-reader, mobile devices, or other assistive devices.

What it does

it's a web app that has 3 parts:

  1. carbon footprint calculator
  2. after carbon footprint is calculated, a google search is done to find ways of reducing your highest CO2 consumption in your local community
  3. image recognition component that takes in a user-uploaded image of a piece of trash, and tells the user what type of garbage it is (organic, bottles, etc.), and how to dispose of it.
  4. Second implementation was supposed to give the user the option to upload images (and specify what it is) so it can help train our machine to be better. The more images that are uploaded, the better the machine's accuracy.

How I built it

  • webpage is built with JS, HTML/CSS
  • carbon footprint calculator is built with JS
  • image recognition is built with Python

Challenges I ran into

holy shit all of them

  • enabling python backend to take javascript variable and outputting a python variable (didn't end up working)
  • learning JS
  • image recognition is too specific

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

  • we were especially environmentally-conscious today, recycling all our cans correctly and stuff
  • we learned JS in basically one day
  • pimping out our html page
  • overly accurate image recognition

What I learned

  • the difference between a front and back end, setting up a server
  • github
  • JS
  • i get snappy when i'm tired
  • sam (the volunteer) is the definition of happiness and enthusiasm
  • we don't have to know exactly what we're doing to do a great project, but advanced planning and adaptability on the fly definitely helps.

What's next for Carbon-footprint

  • we need to find a way to connect the Python backend so the user can upload an image, and have that image be automatically used for image recognition
  • it'd be cool if we were able to collaborate with some of the other hardware teams here making robots that actually sort trash, because together we could make a very capable product.
  • improve UI
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