EcoDEX

EcoDEX — Discover Nature, One Snap at a Time

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Hello! I'm glad to see you here! 👋 I am Harsh Raj - a passionate student, currently on the path of finding the right college to pursue a degree. I am also a self-taught programmer, who has a great interest in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and nature. In order to challenge myself and to use the skills I've been learning and apply them to something meaningful, I decided to participate in this hackathon. As a result of that, EcoDEX was born.

Spring has always fascinated me. Everything begins to bloom, animals become active, and life just seems to wake up all around. But I also noticed how disconnected we sometimes are from the natural world. That sparked a question in my head:

What if we had something like a “Pokédex” but for real-life plants and animals?

I thought this could be a fun, educational, and gamified way to bring people — especially young learners — closer to nature while learning about biodiversity using AI.

What I Built

EcoDEX is a mobile-first web app that lets users:

📸 Snap a photo of a real-world plant or animal.

🤖 The image is analyzed using AI (powered by qwen2.5-vl-72b-instruct).

📖 The app returns a beautifully generated “EcoDEX entry” about that species — including name, description, rarity, and fun facts.

🧭 Users earn XP, level up as nature explorers, and build their own EcoDEX collection.

👩‍🔬 They can also chat with an AI scientist (Deepseek-R1 in backend), Dr. Maya Chen, who answers ecology-related questions, helps identify species, and makes learning feel human and interactive.

The UI has a dark, clean, neon-themed interface inspired by futuristic exploration and AR-style gamification — making it fun while still being educational.

Social Good & Impact

EcoDEX isn’t just a tech demo — it’s designed to inspire eco-awareness, especially among students and urban users who rarely connect with nature. By encouraging outdoor exploration, learning through play, and even casual citizen science, it empowers users to:

Understand local biodiversity.

Cultivate a love for flora and fauna.

Get involved in seasonal phenomena like spring blooms and migrations.

It is built to be inclusive, fun, and educational for all ages.

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