Inspiration
My project partner was eating breakfast and he saw a bottle of milk that had expired as he was going to throw it away, he thought of the idea of making a program that helps the user keep track of foods before they expire so they don't have to go to waste.
What it does
This program is a simplified version of what we intend to expand upon soon. In today's world, there aren't any good ways to keep track of when your grocery items are going to expire. People often find themselves having to buy food items that will expire in a month or two, and then completely forget to finish them before they expire. This is why we created this app, in order to help users keep track of the food they bought and actually finish them on time so less food gets wasted. For demonstration purposes, we have given the program a mock - shopping list to use so it can correctly calculate when the food item is going to expire and so the user can decide whether or not to eat the food item. The user can also add items though they won't show up in the fridge as images. There is also a feature that keeps track of time, so you can see how long food has been sitting in the fridge. There are options to speed up and slow down the time so you can see the process of the food expiration in the fridge.
How we built it
We built it using Java Swing and GUI on Atom Teletype so we can collaboratively work on it over the hackathon. We first started by drawing out what the interface should actually look like so we can program out the basic layer. Then, we created the shopping list and added items to it. Then we added a drawn-out image of a fridge and some images to the fridge of basic food items usually found in fridges. We finally made a timer and the ability to change the speed time passes and added a way to eat food items and get notified when food is about to expire.
Challenges we ran into
Some of the biggest challenges we ran into were how to set up the interface so it is as nice to look at as possible and how to make it easy to use at the same time. We finally settled on drawing the fridge out on our own and adding everything into the fridge so it looks realistic.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are really proud of how the drawings and the images turned out and how the project looks overall since this is our first hackathon ever. We are glad to be able to gain the experience we did today and we even plan to pursue this project after the hackathon and hopefully make it a real app.
What we learned
We learned how to work with Java GUI at a high level and make base-level apps that can be further developed into real apps. This was our first time making a useful and impactful project and we really learned how to develop apps that can be used by people everywhere.
What's next for SmartFridge
We plan to convert this program we are submitting today into a real app and make it more accessible to everyone. We also plan to remove a bunch of the elements that we provide as features of the app, such as the shopping list and the expiration dates, and make them user-enterable or more automated.
here is the link to the files of the project https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KWlc_1DwiItlS2QdY1-Ged4x2zw_ip1l?usp=sharing
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