Do I Buy It?

Inspiration

Because students have the uncanny ability to be both lazy and broke, we wanted to serve this clearly undeserved population with a way to order all their needed essentials by voice from within hearing distance of the Amazon Echo unit, while respecting the limitations of a student's set budget.

What it does

We have a friendly, easy-to-read user interface that allows a user to create an account with a total balance and monthly spending budget. It also allows the user to track weekly and monthly spending based on purchases made through the Amazon Alexa skill (i.e. application). Because one Amazon Echo unit can be a shared personal assistant for many individuals, we created a database of accounts with the above mentioned attributes stored in a secure way for multiple users to access their own budget and track their purchases.

For the Amazon Alexa skill itself, it allows a user to use their voice to add various items to a list and the Amazon Echo unit will look up the item's associated cost and respond with (1) the item was successfully added or (2) the price of the item exceeds the user's set budget and could not be added. When the user is finished ordering items, the Amazon Echo unit will respond with the total price of all items in the list and the user's remaining budget after the projected purchase.

How we built it

The user interface was created in Android Studio, while the database was set up in Firebase and linked to the UI in Android Studio. The shopping assistant function was coded using Amazon Web Services's Lambda Computing Console and linked to Amazon Alexa's skill development console, which characterized the words that the personal assistant can preferentially recognize and process from a user.

Challenges we ran into

Interacting with a database and creating a front-end that can interface with the possibility of multiple users. Creating a function to take data from the web and build a knowledge of various items and their costs as well as get data from the real-time database in JSON using Amazon Web Services. Learning about Amazon Alexa's subtleties with intents, dual custom slot lists, and sample utterances in relation to loading from a real-time database and a growing list of items.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Successfully created a well-functioning user interface, gaining experience with the Amazon Alexa development console, experimenting with Amazon Web Services, potentially saving thousands of students from financial ruin and having to make an effort to purchase things.

What we learned

How to create an application using Android Studio, how to set-up a database in Firebase and link it to Android Studio, the Amazon Web Services Lambda Management Console and Amazon Alexa custom skills development console.

What's next for Do I Buy It

Linking up Amazon Alexa with the real-time database of users, expanding the capabilities of items to real-time web crawled data from major online retailers.