Inspiration
We are a group of college students, and all of us have experienced food insecurity to some extent. Additionally, we have observed a significant amount of food waste on college campuses. This observation has sparked our curiosity because food waste typically indicates a surplus in supply, while food insecurity often stems from a lack of access to food. This led us to ponder, "Why don't we create an app that connects these two issues and works towards solving both?" That's why we have developed this FoodShare.
What it does
Basically FoodShare is an application where you can register/login then take/upload picture about food/groceries that you are no longer in need for others who live nearby. By doing this we both reducing food waste and food insecurity at the same time. A 2-in-1 experience.
How we built it
We build it by using react-native and firebase for a more minimal, simplified backend. None of us have prior experience with mobile application or firebase backend, so much of the development process was either Googling on Stack Overflow or grinding through pages of document.
Challenges we ran into
Our lack of experience with the technologies we chose to use greatly slow my overall development speed.
We also ran into problem of packages and dependencies management since react-native and react-native by Expo is two different things. We also have trouble with config for firebase backend and also uploading imageURL onto fireStore is a problem of its own. We also meet some problem with googling error because Expo change its since for every new version so answer on StackOverflow is outdated so we have to refer to document of Expo.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We really proud because despite of the lack of experience in the chosen tech stack, we still go with it to trying out new thing and bringing users the most intuitive experience. And reading tons of document is a huge achievement too
What we learned
We learned how to use tech stacks that unfamiliar with us: react-native and firebase. Also we learn how to config firebase backend for react-native expo front end. In general we also learn more about mobile app development and navigating efficiently through documents. We also learn to communicate ideas and effectively collaborate on Github with pull/push requests.
What's next for FoodShare
We are really wanting to push our limits so we will try to implement chat room/function so that we can chat with other users and also ML model to auto label the food based on description or auto filter the food listing based on our preference and/or diet.
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