Origin story
Even though it isn't difficult to take care of most flowers, many plants become eventually ignored or forgotten, left to die of thirst. On the other hand, some flowers can die of overwatering when you care a little too much for your plants. This app was made for the casual plant-lover who has a hard time watering their plants regularly.
Made in the memory of one of our team member's gentle Ikea flowers, who died of excess water.
What it does
Plantr suggests how often your plants will need watering. After entering which plants you own, it reminds you to water your plants only as often as they need, based on a database of the most commonly-owned plants.
Other information is also available from within the app, including:
- Recommended sunlight exposure
- Descriptions and tips on growing your plants
- Links to various accessories that complement indoor flora
If you miss a day's watering for any reason, you can tell the app to remind you at a later date.
How we built it
Before any sort of programming, we came together and brainstormed ideas for different kinds of apps. At first, we thought that maybe we'd make some sort of social network but specifically for students to discuss their classes and highlight important notes or links, but we were the most intrigued by an app that would help aspiring gardeners take care of their silent pets. We assigned each other roles to focus on different parts of the app and got to work.
Challenges we ran into
This being our first hackathon, we went into this project completely blind. None of us had any experience building an Android app before, so our biggest challenge was navigating the complexities of app development. It was also a challenge working together as a team, having to synchronise our files as to be able to work on the same version of the application. Although we still don't fully understand the many features of GitHub and Android Studio, we still learned a lot in our collaborative creation process.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Considering our inexperience, we're proud of having produced a prototype close to what we originally intended. Our ability to coordinate and assign different roles was an important factor in our accomplishment, as well as being able to survive a reduction in number and still produce a working product. We learned a lot about Android development.
What's next for Plantr
The UI and the amount of plants in the database are both components we could definitely improve if we were to develop this app further. We could also implement local stores offers of vases and other decorative pieces ("accessories") as a way of keeping interest in the app.
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