Streamable video link

Since devpost only accepts youtube, here is the video link: https://streamable.com/lu4rm

Inspiration

We wanted an easy way to get the dining hall's menu using Alexa.

What it does

It reads the menu of one of the dining halls at UCSC.

How we built it

We took the example codes given by Amazon and modified it to suit our needs. To be specific, everyone started by trying to get hello world to work. Then the hello world code was changed to instead read out the entire menu.

Challenges we ran into

This is our first hackathon and we were all beginners. Everything had to be learned, how to scrape a page for text, how to make an Alexa skill, how to use Gradle, etc. The 12 hour time limit was also very stressful to work with.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We made Alexa do what we wanted! We got her to collect the entire menu and read it out loud.

What we learned

We learned how to use Jsoup to collect information from a webpage and prepare it so it is in an easily understandable format when read aloud by Alexa.

What's next for Menu Reader

The ability to read only a specific meal, to read another dining hall's menu, and perhaps the ability to read foods made with only a certain ingredient.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates