Pantry Pal

Keep track of your pantry-- AND your cravings with Pantry Pal!

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Inspiration

Since we personally are always forgetting what's in the pantry, we immediately knew to make a pantry-data-basing project that was quick and easy to use. While we were at it, we came to also realize that when you don't know what's in the pantry, you usually ALSO don't know what you want to eat.

What it does

This app that runs on both Android and IOS is a database app that produces a persistent storage of all your groceries on your phone. To fix the tediousness of adding groceries to their personal database, our program uses an API called UPCItemDB which identifies items and their quantities by scanning the UPC on the grocery item with the user's phone camera. Using their databases, users can access the recipe generation feature to have Claude suggest recipes with precise quantities of each item in their pantries. Users can finally choose to make the recipe, in which the associated quantities of ingredients used in the recipe will be removed from the pantry-- reflecting it's IRL representation after cooking.

How we built it

The entire app was built using JavaScript, React, and Node as well as Claude API, UPCItemDB API, and Expo mobile app development tools.

Challenges we ran into

Since apple development tools cost over 100 dollars to use, we ended up having to restrict our testing to android devices only once we switched to a more secure and reliable way of using the Claude API key. However, the styling and menu buttons were specifically designed to look and work exactly as they do on android-- and with just about 100 dollars, the app can be built and run on IOS without any modification. Furthermore, the UPCItemDB API we used did not quite recognize every grocery item UPC, so we implemented a feature for the user to easily add the item name and quantity themselves ~ if need be.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We built a working full-stack mobile app without any prior mobile development experience, and managed to incorporate an interesting usage of Claude's API key, which was a first for us as well.

What we learned

We learned that Android mobile app development is a very easy field to explore, and we learned how to integrate Claude into all our future mobile apps!

What's next for Pantry Pal

We would like to incorporate Pantry Pal into part of a larger project for shopping lists integrated with a corporate shopping application-- like Walmart. We hope that the convenience of a database which associates pantries, shopping lists, and your very own cookbooks together can help make everyone's life just a little be friendlier!

Built With

  • and-node-as-well-as-claude-api
  • expo.io
  • react
  • the-entire-app-was-built-using-javascript
  • upcitemdb-api
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