Pantry Chef

Inspiration

As college students, we often have trouble coming up with new things to cook and when we do find a recipe we like, we don't have the ingredients for it. We are sure this problem is not unique to us, so we made Pantry Chef.

What it does

Pantry Chef serves as a tailored culinary assistant for the student lifestyle. Its standout feature allows users to explore recipes using ingredients already at hand. This is made possible through a user-friendly barcode scanning function. Simply point your camera at multiple barcodes, and Pantry Chef efficiently updates your inventory, providing a real-time overview of available options for cooking.

How we built it

We built it using various Python libraries. We used Streamlit for the UI, OpenCV to read the camera info, Pyzbar to get the universal product code from the barcode, a barcode lookup api to get the official name of the item, and the OpenAI API to suggest recipes.

Challenges we ran into

We had a hard time integrating the CV and barcode lookup API with the Streamlit UI.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of Pantry Chef's ability to suggest a variety of recipes and scan multiple barcodes at once.

What we learned

Creating Pantry Chef was an invaluable learning experience. It provided us with a comprehensive understanding of a range of technologies, including Streamlit for crafting seamless user interfaces, leveraging the OpenAI API for intelligent recipe suggestions, and utilizing a barcode lookup website's API.

What's next for Pantry Chef

Pantry Chef could be improved by adding embedded YouTube videos of cooking recipes based on the ingredients in your pantry. Additionally, implementing a feature to estimate the average expiry date of different items and sending timely notifications (via the Twilio API) when items are approaching expiration would enhance the app's utility, ensuring users can make the most of their pantry items while minimizing waste.