Inspiration
We were thinking of what problems affect us in daily life and realized that compulsive eating and snacking is a problem many in our group have. Since we realized that this a fairly common problem for many we wanted to create an app that could both help anyone that struggled with such a tendencies to combat them.
What it does
The idea behind the project was to use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to scan and pick out the amounts of nutrients from a nutritional fact list. All you have to do is take a picture of the list from whatever snack you are eating using your phone, and the app will do the rest. However, we could not get the OCR to properly work so we just used placeholder values instead. Once it finishes scanning the nutritional facts list, the app would then store all collected data (sodium, sugar, etc) in a database (again, we had to use placeholder values). Every time you use the app it adds that data to the database and keeps a running tally of how much of each nutrient you are consuming. The app also sets daily limits and will notify you when you hit those limits. The purpose of NutriVision is to easily display to the user what they are consuming and how much throughout the day, and help them stick to their diet and foster healthier eating habits.
How we built it
We built the project using React Native as our language of choice (specifically because it is perfect for mobile development) and Expo Cli, and Android/iOS emulators to develop it. We also utilized several APIs (all used APIs are cited in the project files) to implement the OCR, database, and compilation of data into graphs and charts for the user to see.
Challenges we ran into
The biggest challenge was setting up the mobile development environment as the group as a whole had very little experience with mobile app development. In particular, using the Android and iOS emulators to test the app was a challenge considering how much time it takes to properly install and set up all the individual components.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The accomplishment that we are most proud of is creating an app that has huge potential to be expanded upon in ways that could impact real positive change on people's lives. The medical applications of NutriVision go far beyond just tracking how much sodium or sugar you eat, it could provide crucial data to doctors about their patient's lifestyles and make diagnosing certain conditions much easier.
What we learned
We learned that, to create an app, one must rigorously follow the development process. Usually, we would start our projects by getting right into the code, which might be fine for something like a school project, but for something as multi-faceted as a real app, we had to be a lot more conscious in how we approached the task. As such, we spent a considerable amount of time brainstorming a truly unique idea and thinking of exactly how we were going to implement every detail. This gave us a much more solid direction when it came to developing and testing the code, thus making us much more efficient (which is especially important when one is faced with as tight a deadline as 24 hours).
What's next for NutriVision
The next step for NutriVision is to get the OCR working properly so that we can have a fully functional app. Due to the strict time constraint of the hackathon and the lack of resources for debugging, it was certainly ambitious to try and implement OCR. However, with more time, we could fully implement the OCR and bring our project to its original intended conclusion (would also open us up to many further applications as well).
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.