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Our Inspiration Moving abroad for university is an exciting experience, but it also comes with many challenges, especially for international students. As international university students ourselves, we know how difficult it can be to decide what to pack, stay within airline’s luggage limits and figure out what to buy after arriving. We realised that students often need to switch between multiple websites and apps to plan their move, with no single platform connecting all these decisions. This inspired us to create PackBuddy, an app that helps students plan their move and settle into their new home more easily.

What It Does

PackBuddy brings together five useful features:

Smart Packing Calculator: Estimates luggage weight and helps students avoid exceeding baggage limits with a AI scanner that helps detect items through images.
Dorm Room Fit Checker: Helps students check whether their belongings will fit in their accommodation with a 3D room studio.
Bring or Buy: Compares whether it's cheaper to bring items from home or buy them locally, with a generated recommendation.
Transport Planner: Helps students find suitable transport based on their luggage and budget.
Move-in & Move-out Tracker: Tracks belongings, room conditions, and things to organise before moving out.

How We Built It We started by thinking about the problems students face when moving to a new country. We then came up with five main features that could help solve these problems and planned how to combine them into one app. Our main focus was making PackBuddy simple and easy to use, so students can find everything they need without switching between different platforms.

Challenges We Faced One of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to estimate luggage weight and space accurately, since different items have different sizes and weights. We also had to consider how to compare prices across countries and account for different airline baggage policies. Another challenge was deciding which features to prioritise within the limited time of the hackathon.

What We Learned As complete beginners in coding, none of us had any programming experience before joining this hackathon. We had to learn everything from scratch, from understanding the basics of coding to figuring out how to build a website. It was quite challenging, and we spent a lot of time figuring things out and fixing errors. We also learned how to turn an idea into something practical and solve problems along the way. Most importantly, this hackathon pushed us out of our comfort zone and showed us that even without any coding experience, we can still bring our ideas to life.