Deer Timer

Inspiration

It is really easy for a university student to procrastinate and get distracted when they should be studying. As university students, we wanted to create an application that encourages students to stay focused while studying. In addition, our project is inspired by the mobile app Forest.

What it does

Deer Timer works as follows: (1) A deer is on screen for the duration of the app’s runtime. (2) The user can enter a certain amount of time they would like to study for. The application will count down from this time. (3) If the user switches windows away from the application, the deer will spontaneously combust and slowly die. The user being away from the application window is our way of indicating that the user is getting distracted by something that isn’t relevant to what they’re supposed to be focusing on. (4) If the user never switches windows, then the adorable deer stays alive, and the user receives the satisfaction of saving them.

How we built it

We used Python and the PyQt libraries. We also used various sources from the web for the sound effects, music, and graphics (cited below).

Challenges we ran into

Learning PyQt5 was a new package we had to learn, so it was somewhat of a learning curve. In addition, we learned DaVinci Resolve to help with some of the deer image creation.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We thought the screen detection (detecting window switching) would be difficult to implement, but it was actually the opposite, so we're proud of that. Also, making a user interface that connects every component we all made together felt fulfilling. In addition, we think our deer is quite cute 🦌.

What we learned

(1) PyQt5 (2) DaVinci Resolve

What's next for Deer Timer

We plan on incorporating more ways we can tell that the user has been distracted. An example of such is using the user’s webcam and machine learning to detect if the user has picked up their phone.