Cozy Homes

Cozy Homes analyzes user home data along with local weather conditions to estimate energy usage and identify potential areas for improvement, such as upgrading to a more efficient heating system.

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Inspiration

When thinking of the winter season, we realized the amount of spendings homeowners must dedicate to utilities (e.g. heating, electricity, water, etc) due to shorter days and colder climates. Especially given this current winter, we realized that climate change, location, weather patterns and so many factors impact the environment in such drastic ways that spending of these utilities should not be averaged solely by month, but tracked in shorter intervals. As students and the next generation of homeowners, we wanted to create a tracker for these winter spendings that would assist us in savings and allow us to budget in these stressful economic and environmental times.

What it does

Cozy Homes tracks winter spendings on utilities, specifically HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning), water, and electricity. It then provides users with a comprehensive overview of how their money is being spent as well as the amount of power each utility demanded. A more detailed description of each utilitiy spending as well as advice on more efficient methods of saving both energy and funds is provided by Cozy Homes' very own AI chatbot, Cozee the Snowman!

How we built it

Cozy Homes is currently built as a web application. Originally, certain design aspects were built through Figma, with colour choices coming from the palette generator Coolors. To implement this web application, we mainly utilized HTML, CSS and Bootstrap for the design elements and thoughtful layout. Certain design elements including the Cozy Homes logo and Cozee the Snowman were created through Adobe Photoshop as well as the the open-source editor Krita. Cozee the Snowman's AI responses were created through Cloudflare's AI toolkit.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge we faced was figuring out how to implement the AI chatbot into the web-design aspect of our build. As of now, we left the AI as a preliminary design with the focus being on Cozee's presence on the Cozy Homes website and creating a pleasant user experience.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

One of our biggest accomplishments is the amount of design detail and interactive elements we were able to include in our build within the allotted time. The website is able to accomplish a lot more than we set out for in the original idea.

What we learned

Throughout the hackathon, we learned the importance of having a strong division of labour in the process of collaboration, especially when given a close deadline. As well, we learned how crucial consistent communication is between peers. By relying on this communication and separation of the workload, each person was able to contribute to the final result and could worry for their individual share of the work while still keeping everyone else informed on that aspect of the final project.

What's next for Cozy Homes

In the future, Cozy Homes has the potential to expand its data analysis and user assistance to seasons beyond winter, starting with summer. Once again, climate change and locations bring intense summer heat (even in Canada) that shift spendings from heating to cooling, lead to higher water consumption, and conversely lower electricity spending as the days lengthen. We would like to be able to support new and seasoned homeowners alike with their energy and utility spending throughout the year, but specifically during these intense and opposite seasons. As well, we would like to be able to expand Cozy Homes into a mobile app to improve its reach and convenience for users. Finally, in the long term, we envision Cozy Homes to be able to provide data analysis of user power and financial spendings to energy providers and other organizations involved in the pricing and supplying of these utilities.

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