Pomogarden - A Plant-Inspired Pomodoro App

In Pomogarden, the classic Pomodoro technique for focused studying is reimagined into something magical and leafy.

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Inspiration

Pomogarden was inspired by the Pomodoro technique developed by Francesco Cirillo. We aim to provide a functional and relaxing Pomodoro timer for the user, with extra special features for your hard work! These days, studying can be a tiresome grind, and we hope that this little virtual garden will bring you some comfort between breaks.

What it does

Pomogarden packages the following features into an adorable, garden themed web app:

  • Three cute, interactive plants that grow as you complete Pomodoro cycles, to help you track your progress!
  • Get to know the tranquil bonsai, the grumpy cactus, and the dandy daffodil! They love to talk during the breaks between your Pomodoro cycles, and each of them has their own style of wisdom to share!
  • Listen to relaxing music (or mute it, and listen to your own music - up to you!)
  • Be alerted when your focus/break sessions have ended!

How we built it

We used Flask to build the Pomogarden web app. Our delightfully cozy UI was almost entirely hand-drawn and assembled with HTML/CSS and Javascript, which we connected to a Python backend using Flask. We made use of Cohere's Chat API to generate the speech for our plants' varying personalities.

Challenges we ran into

A major challenge that we faced in this project was the fact that our Cohere API trial key was rate-limited and very slow, which made the UX rather unresponsive. We managed to scrape together a short-term solution by pre-generating some messages from the Chat API, but ideally, Pomogarden acquires an API key with higher rate limits.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of our warm and inviting UI and we're proud that we managed to put together a project with Flask and Cohere despite knowing nothing about these two tools prior to DeerHacks!

What we learned

We learned how to use Flask to build web apps and we learned how to use Cohere's various LLMs and associated APIs.

What's next for Pomogarden - A Plant-Inspired Pomodoro App

The next step is to implement more personalizable features, such as allowing the user to choose the amount of time they want to set on the timer or choosing their own music.

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