RUpright

Video Camera
UX

Inspiration

While we were sitting around thinking of ideas of what to code, it suddenly occurred to us how bad all of our postures were. A lot of us sit at our desks for countless hours and it has led to terrible posture. We wanted a fun way, interactive way to help stay accountable on our postures.

What it does

A Raspberry Pi camera views you from the side and measures your neck and torso angles in real time using computer vision. When you slouch for too long, the system triggers the Gemini API to generate a customized roast. The insult is then played out loud through a Google Nest to force you to sit up straight.

How we built it

We used a Raspberry Pi and USB camera running OpenCV to track body key points and calculate posture angles. A Flask backend processes posture events, manages local SQLite logs, and calls the Google Gemini API to generate roasts. Audio responses are then streamed directly to a Google Nest speaker on the local network.

Challenges we ran into

We faced a lot of challenges when it came to connecting everything together. By far the biggest issue was connecting all the pieces together. It took us a while to configure the hotspot from our computers and output them to the other devices. We needed to use a hotspot because the Google Nest needed Wi-Fi to function and Gemini needed Wi-Fi to connect to the servers.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We built a seamless end-to-end pipeline connecting physical hardware, real-time computer vision, backend logic, and generative AI. The system reliably tracks posture locally on the Pi while keeping API calls lightweight. Best of all, we turned a boring health issue into a hilarious and effective user experience.

What we learned

We learned that a good project takes a lot of patience. Not everything can be finished in an hour. :))

What's next for RUpright

We would like to replace the Google Nest with a simple speaker. We thought about extending the idea to checking if the user is on their phone, and alerting the user to stop scrolling and finish their work. We think this is a similar issue to the posture issue.