FindR

One person's trash is another person's treasure. We propose a solution where people who have reusable things to give or find it on the curb can post it on the website for others to find.

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Inspiration

Sustainability: living by following the principles of RRR: reduce, reuse, recycle. We were inspired by the reuse of goods and products that occurs when people donate their belongings or decide to take things home from off of the sidewalk.

What it does

It provides a platform dedicated to finding discarded stuff on the curb, for people to post about it in a public space, and for users to take those as per their needs.

How we built it

We created a web application for our idea. We used basic HTML with bootstrap for our frontend, and developed the backend in Python using the Django framework. For this hackathon we used the Django's inbuilt file based database to store here.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into multiple challenges

  1. Saving photo in a file storage and displaying it on the HTML page.
  2. Could not leverage Google API as we hoped to.
  3. Could not configure the application to be hosted on the cloud.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to create a working web application with features to add an account, post any offerings with photo(s) of the item(s) and the locations where they are, another user searching the area for available items, and marking it as "picked up" when it is picked up so as to remove it from the market.

What we learned

Things are not as simple as they look. It took a lot of time , before even touching any code, to learn the basics and to set up. For example, Django, the framework we used, was new to some of us. Some of us also had a difficult time installing dependencies and preparing virtual environments to help develop our webapp. Things we thought that might have been small or simple, ended up taking a lot of time and the combined effort of multiple group members.

What's next for FindR

Create a more robust website with added features which are more user-friendly. Add a points system for donors to create verified donors, helping control any spam on the platform. Push notifications for users, notifying them when a new item that matches the request of that person is found and posted.

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