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What users see when they get a match.
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A picture showing the inside of the device, as well as a picture of the conversation starter feature.
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The questionnaire which the user fills out. The answers can be uploaded to the device through WebSerial.
Inspiration
Loneliness amongst adolescents has skyrocketed in recent years, to the point where it has been declared a public health crisis in the US. Ironically, we have more technology than ever which is supposed to help connect us. Studies suggest that the problem is the replacement of in-person interaction with social media. Therefore, we sought to build a service which encouraged users to go outside and meet each other the “old-fashioned way,” while giving them the best chance possible of finding a compatible match.
What it does
The first step to setting up PEMDAS is to fill out the questionnaire online, which offers insights into your personality and gives you the chance to specify what exactly you’re looking for. Then, the webpage sends the results to your device over a serial connection. After that, you can take it anywhere you go, and it will scan for other PEMDAS devices in your vicinity. If you two have compatible profiles, both your devices will alert you about the other person, giving you a quick description of what you have in common.
How we built it
The web page with the questionnaire was made with React. The device scans for other PEMDAS users nearby using Bluetooth, and they exchange profiles. The “algorithm” for determining personal compatibility is very simple, relying on a few essential conditions (gender, type of relationship sought) and cosine similarity for the rest of your answers.
Challenges we ran into
We had bad batteries and the devices did not always get enough voltage to operate for more than a minute at a time. Additionally, there were some software bugs that came up regarding bad memory accesses, but we managed to fix them. Additionally, we lost a group member the night before the hackathon.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Our devices actually worked in a field test, and we completed all the features we wanted for the MVP.
What we learned
We learned the details of the Bluetooth Low Energy protocol, the Web Serial API, and one group member learned how to use React JS.
What's next for PEMDAS: Personality-Enhanced Matching Dating ASsistant
The current package is kind of bulky and it would be much more convenient to have it fit in a watch form factor. We could improve the efficiency and battery life by using a larger battery and by using a switching converter in place of the LDO on the microcontroller board.
We could also use a better display which would allow more information to be displayed. A RTC (Real Time Clock) could also be integrated so it could double as a watch.
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