Meal.ly

Two action graphs analyzed based on local org data, highlighting problems of food unavailability
The app's view from people in need's perspective: Prompt to select stores to follow free food info
The app's view from the food distributer's perspective: Prompt for the food distributer to take a picture
The app's view from the food distributer's perspective: Food resources detected, ready to send out sms messages to people in need
People in need get sms notification on free food info! and RSVPed for an orange

Inspiration

At the St Francis Community Center, people have seen so many cases of how children are saved from death, illnesses, and bad school performance from being able to feed themselves well. The children not enrolled in such programs are much less luckier. However, just a few miles away, the food wastage in supermarkets, groceries, and even that compiled in NGOs, are as prevalent as other cities in the US.

What it does

The app matches excess food with people that need it. The restaurants and organizations agreeing to give out free food at the end of each day have their food kinds and amounts scanned and input by the camera and the image recognition of our app, and all users are alerted of food sources within 15 mins of their closing time.

How we built it

We built the frontend using Android Studio and its native design element and the backend using flask. The image recognition function is realized using Google Cloud Vision API and the communication between frontend and backend is via and open sourced library called okhttp3.