FreshVault

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Inspiration: Inspired by the common issue of household food waste due to forgotten expiry dates and my passion for machine learning applications in everyday life, I drew from IoT-enabled smart fridge concepts that integrate remote monitoring and inventory management to create a practical tool for busy students.

What it does: FreshVault tracks expiry dates for food and medicines in your fridge, sends timely notifications to prevent waste, features a chatbot for querying inventory and suggesting suitable medicines or recipes, and includes a recipe finder that prioritizes expiring items to suggest meals, all while ensuring ethical limits like avoiding direct medical advice.

How we built it: We prototyped the app using Lovable for no-code/low-code development of the UI and core features like inventory tracking, then leveraged Cursor AI for custom code enhancements in the backend, integrating Supabase for data storage, NLP APIs for the chatbot, and external services like Spoonacular for recipe suggestions, with deployment on Vercel for seamless access.

Challenges we ran into: Adapting Lovable's no-code limitations for advanced ML integrations required extensive tweaks with Cursor, while ensuring secure handling of sensitive medicine data and accurate expiry logic involved debugging edge cases and refining chatbot prompts to maintain reliability without overstepping into unverified advice.

Accomplishments that we're proud of: We're proud of rapidly building a fully functional MVP with AI-driven features like the intelligent recipe finder and chatbot in a short time, creating an intuitive mobile-friendly interface that reduces food waste, and successfully integrating ethical safeguards for user safety, making it a standout project for hackathons.

What we learned: We deepened our skills in AI-assisted tools like Cursor for efficient coding, no-code platforms for quick prototyping, ethical AI practices such as limiting medical suggestions, and full-stack integration including APIs and databases, while gaining insights into user-centric design for real-world applications.

What's next for FreshVault: Next, we plan to add IoT hardware integration for automatic inventory scanning via cameras, enhance the ML models for personalized recipe recommendations based on user habits, expand to include energy monitoring features, and explore partnerships for broader deployment.