Inspiration
The inspiration for our project stemmed from a shared interest in food around the world. The four of us met on the computer science study abroad to Italy this past winter, and we really started to bond most over all of the different foods we were trying. We wanted to create a resource that could not only have a practical use, but that could also be a cool application of the unique skills that each of us possessed. With backgrounds in computer science, art, and environmental engineering, we wanted to make sure we made something that synthesized all of our skills, and represented a fun idea with a good intention behind it.
What it does
Our program assists the user in identifying delicious recipes that they can make using just the ingredients they already have. We know that the typical medieval peasant was not very well stocked with food, so we figured it would be smart to allow them input on their ingredients so they could assuredly make a healthy meal. Additionally, we wanted some more interactive functionality, which is where our map powered by ArcGIS comes into play. We created a user-friendly interactive map that can display to the user different historical recipes from different countries during the medieval age. With just the click of a button, the user can travel all across Europe and find newly-generated recipes from places they may have never heard of.
How we built it
We implemented CSS, html, typescript, react, and Gemini to achieve our project goal. We created different files for our different components and pages and implemented the use of state in react to provided a user friendly interface. For the front-end portion of our site, we used CSS and html to create a medieval feel and for the back-end coding we used a combination of typescript and Gemini to create AI generated output based on the user input. We used ArcGIS Pro to create the map visual and shared the map through ArcGIS Online to ensure that it would have the correct functionality with the API and the website.
Challenges we ran into
Both the ArcGIS and Gemini AI APIs were unfamiliar to all of us so there was a little bit of a learning curve at the beginning. We ran into a lot more challenges early on, as we needed to figure out how to get ArcGIS and the website to play nice with each other. It was a struggle to even get the map to display in the first place, let alone allow Gemini AI to input recipes into the country's popup data. We also ran into challenges with configuring Gemini AI to do exactly what we wanted it to do. After a while of cracking at it, however, we persevered and were able to get both to work together well, with Gemini producing perfectly formatted recipes in exactly the way that we asked it to.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Getting the map to successfully show up on our website was one of our biggest achievements. Although it feels small to us now, that one issue took us a lot of time, and it felt really satisfying when all of that time paid off and we saw the map appear on the website. Additionally, we are extremely proud of the work we all put in to ensure that every part of the website was functional and felt interesting. We caught ourselves many times exclaiming how cool it was that this program was even possible, let alone how we all managed to work together and make it happen.
What we learned
We learned a lot, not just about coding but also about working well as a group. The four of us had a chance to bond over this experience and that's what helps our team stand apart. At the end of the day, we will be walking away from this experience with a lot more knowledge in a lot of aspects. We all better learned how to utilize React when creating a website, got a lot of experience with useful APIs like Gemini AI, effectively combined our diverse backgrounds in a way that made an interesting application, and put everything we had into these past 24 hours of coding.
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