Spandh

Feel your soul, Share your feelings.

Inspiration

Heartbreak, Synesthesia, Longing, loneliness, Best Memories. I had once promised a friend of mine[we were also in a weird unspoken situationship kindof thing as we are both gals who claim to be straight]. She wanted to go the coldplay concert that happened in India, it was a once in a lifetime thing, who knows when it will happen again, but we could not get the tickets nor afford. So I wanted to make a lighting bracelet and whole vibe of the concert right in our rented flat/PG flat/hostel. We used to have parties during our college at my flat by turning of lights, very dim light and playing music on the TV via spotify and youtube and enjoy ourselves with other friends. A house party. I miss that as I moved away. We all separted and she called me and asked that she missed it too. SO I really wanted to make her experience that again and I cannot afford coldplay tickets so I wanted make my own version at home. Top with that I experience life in synesthesia as when i feel stuff, I see colours first before understanding what I feel. It's like a movie colour grading. But I am not that great at explaining my feelings to others or I feel the intensity is not conveyed efficiently. I want the other to feel exactly as I feel or trying to show/explain. I could see on her face often in moments that she also had so much going on in her head, such intense feelings but could not say anything as she could not explain, did not understand and there is no word to explain. So I thought, what if there was a replica of my soul which could explain better, which could conveys my emotions and 'make her feel' how I feel when I listen to a song about her. And then she would play a song of her choice and I would ' feel how she feels about that song in the context. It's like us talking in music and making each other feel our emotions. It's not a new way to communicate, we already share songs with those we want too with hidden sub-contexts, but this way when the app utilizes the light source of the TV, laptop, phone or the smart devices in the room, it can create the light show using colour light intensity and shadow to create the environment, the vibe based on how the user feels about that song. With the lighting of the room and the light show, the others will feel the emotions too, same as it works in a movie hall, or any such experiences, we have lighting, music, people part of the situation so context and immersion. The social aspect will add to the empathy. It will helps people not sympathize, but empathize better. Not just 'understand' but 'fee' by recreating the vibe of the room. This would need me to make an engine, that is a replica of my soul, the user's soul so it feels the same way and can express itself. Rather than being just a communication tool where user shares how they feel, the engine will feel the music and express it's emotion. So the engine will have it's own soul that feels the songs and then expresses using colours via the available light source. As the users use the app, the engine's soul adapts[learns] to morph into the user's soul. If we take the medical neuro scans of human listening to music, and the neuro scan of our engine's soul, they should be identically, that means the need of context, trends, etc etc as well. Quite a complicated project but if it works it can be revolutionary, by giving a soul to machines. So it will be like two engine's with souls communicating by using songs and colours/lights and we humans as observers get better cues due to the social phenomena. A basic example of why it will work to enhance the conveying of emotions is the fact that we often get stuck in issues when it is our own story, but we see what's happening between two other people as an outsider. Sometimes the outsiders view helps self-realisation and saying things we cannot or are shy to say. It can deepen and intensify emotions, help those feeling lonely or depressed in the silence of night, feel like they are understood, even if momentarily. This app will be used as the basic model for users as well as to train the engine. When it's neural network is ready and starts learning, if good enough to be almost human-like soul, we can maybe use it for humanoids :) I am a non-coder, non-techy person. A Sociology graduate. But I have always been 'the weirdo on MapleStreet' [Stranger Things and Eleven fandom say hi!]. This is my first hackathon, also suggested by one of my mentors/friends who is the CEO of the company I currently work for remotely. So, I went ahead and tried it out, but my main focus was on having fun and make my vision come true. So I will be continuing to develop it even after the hackathon is over. I knew finishing it in 3 days is impossible haha, but my vision and intent is strong enough and I am having fun building with AI so yes, I went forward with it. It's a very emotionally driven project, a way to immortalize my own emotions, my love and memories for someone I had to let go but our love is still alive. I don't know if it's a needed project or will it be able to defeat apps like Spotify[I dont want to get rid of Spotify anyway cause I like it and that's not the main aim], but if it works out and people start using it, they like it and subscribe, it will also be bittersweet of the fact that their is so much love in the world, and so much goes unsaid cause we cannot express. That people are finding it useful and enjoying. We it soothes even one person as it will sooth my heart, I will be happy cause I struggle to let go. I am on a career break to be honest, the remote work is just random as of now so I dont lose touch with reality, but I was so down, still am, but this whole project and hackathon was so fun I was hooked to my laptop day and night[literally] and did not feel tired or annoyed at all. I was enjoying after 2 years. The app is not even ready, but my vision is. If the app works out and a lot of people use it, pay for it eventually, then I will have a passive income, which I am trying to build with all my might but couldnt find a way. That passive income in bulk will help me have the job that I actually plan to do, without sacrificing my freedom, which otherwise I was feeling may get restrained. People often think social work and a luxurious happy free soul life are opposite poles. It is not, and to prove it I want to be both financially strong as well as work a job that directly can change the social structure of my country and the world in turn[gov.job]. Too much back story there, let's not start or we will be here reading this for weeks. I want to be rich, very rich, no hesitance saying it, cause I want to feel free and have choices. I want to pamper all my loved ones, I want to be the magical creature that fulfils wishes for all my loved ones and random people who I may come across in this life. That genuine joy they feel when they dont understand why someone would do so much for them selflessly, is so pure, it give me butterflies like a child. It makes me believe in magic and good. It helps me 'create' good and believe in magic is often the last straw for many when life gets too dark, so though I am a very logical person myself, I want other's , my loved ones to always feel magic in the world, and so make that possible, it needs a LOT of money and financial power, so I will do that for them. This will be my last attempt. If it works, then my life and all around me, everyone's life will change drastically. My retired parents will be able to travel to the mountains and hills they wanted to visit but cannot. I can take my friends and crush to the places we promised. I can secure my future, without sacrificing actually 'living' life, not just surviving for the sake of surviving. Else my next move will be to settle for the gov.job next year onwards[takes exam]. I intend to bring positive change around me, but financial power speaks a lot here, so I dont want my heart, mind, soul, vision and philosphy to underperform due to worldly things like money and items, but I also dont want to be sacrifice unnecessarily. There should be balance. I have a lot of plans lined up, and this can be the only first stone of the stairs. For now, I just want to enjoy the fact that I am reliving all those special best fun memories of my life till date while working on this project. So thankyou for the nudge to get out of my dark room. I hope, winning something or anything from this hackathon can help me that secret angel for those around me. It makes me smile.

What it does

In the current version submitted - Users can sign up, sign in, and then upload mp3 file to listen to songs and a basic visualization will play in sync with the song. when user refreshes the page, the welcome message randomly changes. These are the things that are working properly currently.[what I was able to make in 3 days as a first -timer. Never made anything before .-. That's all! :D

In the ideal version, The users can use live mic/speakers[imagine travelling in a car or autorickshaw with your friends or family and vibing, or playing a guitar and singing], uploading mp3 files, Spotify and youtube to play songs. The engine's soul, will listen to the songs to and analyse the songs to feel them and create visualizations to express how it feels. The engine's factory soul will be trained on neuro scans of humans listening to songs, will have trend contexts to categorize vibes, emotions better, will have the context of at what time the user is listening to the music, how is the weather around, any social or news context if relevant.it will have long term emotional memory and will keep learning thus developing it's soul, as the soul ages as people say. It will randomly ask people for feedback if the engine's emotions are correctly matching the user's emotions on the songs vibe or not. Users can then select from a pre-defined option buttons or even write down what they want to which maybe just a word or full chapter long stories, just as we narrate or gossip to a friend when crying or experiencing something, when we want to talk to someone, when memories and thoughts or overload of feelings take over and the user want s to talk or share it. Our engine's soul will remember it as is and learn from it too. As it's long term emotional memory, in future as well whether the user plays same song or similar, it will remember the context and react accordingly, emotional intelligence. Not simply be a reminder, but 'react' accordingly, feel accordingly as time goes by like humans do. When thousands of such user's data is used by the engine anonymously, it will grow faster like a child seeing and learning in the real world. Once the engine is atleast decent enough to start learning from user data and express in a basic way, we can integrate the smart lights or bracelets, etc around, to connect and be controlled by the app to use the physical world lights and shadow to create the environment and vibe. Will create a system for the engine to learn how to use those lights to express the emotions as it does in visualization. Make it compatible for TV's too. I had another version of it, without any user authentication, i tried it on the TV to see how it lights up my dark room, it was cool. Will add it later to sync with the engine we make. The users will have a profile page and a settings page. The admin and superadmins will have a admin mode toggle button which will show them a control panel and analytics. They will also have controls to change permission level for users if they want. In future there will be premium subscription but the main soul experience will not be gatekept. Premium will mostly be for things like device usage, number of device/users, shared rooms feature like discord that is planned for future, occasional talking with the engine where the engine's soul tells you small one liners to check on you/talk to you/lift you up/or as appropriate to the user's emotional DNA, fantasizing using story imaging so the engine's soul can also imagine stuff like humans[more context but more training needed]. The fact that everyone feels differently for the same song, in different intensity, context, vibe, it will know that. The fact that human emotions are not monotoned, we feel multiple emotions to create one larger emotion, like a recipe, example - when angry, we are sad, helpless, pumped up, scared, angry, sometimes even relieved or shame, etc, multiple things in different quantities like ingredients in a dish, and thus the overall larger emotion of anger. But often we feel very intense feelings or bonds which we are unable to explain to others, or there may not even be a word for it, so this soul engine will help to express them cause it wont guess, but feel the same emotions as by that time it will become your emotional DNA. We will incorporate the playlists feature and sharing soon, and slowly make all the things functional which are just currently visible in the design.

How we built it

I started on bolt for the design and the authentication system using supabase for database.

Challenges we ran into

A very difficult story for someone like me, from a non-tech educational background xD I had no clue about these next.js, nodes etc terms are in building tech stuff. Never ever made anything like that. So that was a challenge to learn fast and adapt to work with it, thanks to AI too as it was handling the major coding parts. I had to mostly do the managing part.

I registered quite late as I was not confident about participating in a hackathon, I thought like engineering pros go into it, I will make a fool of myself for knowing nothing because whenever I see two people in such discord servers talk, it's all terms, so I was demotivated even though I wanted to. But a little push from a friend and YOLO attitude helped me push through. The passion to make my vision work and create something awesome like the first emotional intelligence engine. So I registered very late and then got builder pack late, and when I did get the pack, then code was not working. I tried contacting the bolt team on discord and the email so many times but the AI agent kept me stuck on email with no human returning back to me, and on discord they gave up. So I had to waste more days waiting for my plan to downgrade first. 2-3 days went in that. Then again upgrade to use the code. So I actually was able to start on bolt for the hackathon on 27th June. So this newbie did all that in 3 days :")

I did not have the finances, running short this month, as I told you on an emotional break so not working so much, just contractual at times at my office. So I had to choose between something I really wanted to do and was saving up for last 2 months, but I used it to get the pro version for AI to make this because from my past experiences I knew the free version s wont be enough. Also, I am a paranoid person so I dont use cards, I dont even have a credit card yet, but I still arranged for something and used a card for all these pro AI subscriptions. Broke my fears, risking it.

I messed up with this whole thing of github branching thing. I was working on bolt and when the web view of the app got perfect as I wanted, I checked that the mobile view needed work. I had already deployed that version on netlify and continous deployment was on. I did not know what is branching and how to use it so I kept editing in bolt to make the mobile view perfect too. In process of making the mobile view, the web view broke :") So I was all worried as to what to do now. Tokens are gone, and it wil never be as good as it was, I wanted what was there before. I checked the netlify deployed version and it was a mess. I started trying to find where are is the old version as I thought github automatically creates versions. Apparently it does not :") it just keeps track of changes made or I didnt know how to use maybe. But I could not find the old version. I tried finding it on netlify, couldnt find anything. there was a download option but it did not give me the exact files as it was originally. Then i thought of an idea that let's reverse the process. I made a branch of this mobileview-perfect-webview-broken version and then reverted everything i did on bolt till i was back to the webview-perfect-mobileview-notgood version and then made another branch for that. FINALLY i got it back, but now my mobile view and webview perfect versions are in 2 different branches so I have to carefully get it merged using AI without breaking any of it which will be difficult so I have kept that for later, after hackathon. Then i was also able to find that we can add and change branches inside botl too! I was already using the main branch of github but then i could change between them which help me learn to use ntlify and deployment practices in a better way, reducing risk of messing up that bad again. In the process I also found that we can go back and forth in the versions we deploy on netlify till a limit by locking the published version which prevents automatic publishing[till now I didnt know deploying and publishing are two different things]. So now it's better.

Next was that everything worked perfectly in bolt, but the page kept loading on the netlify deployed version. When I someone resolved that using AI, it got reversed. Now it is working on Netlify deployed version and not in the bolt preview. So in an attempt to make it work on both deployed version and bolt preview some things broke :) bugs came up and things got a little messy again. No time left, so will work on finishing up the mess after hackathon now. It basically broke the spotify, youtube and mic, some stuff in it. That's why only the upload is working now. But I am not sad, I know I can fix it again. Will do it after hackathon deadline. Authentication works and I am most happy about that haha.

My friends or no one around seem to be as excited or helpful to test or see what I am making, so was a little to test as I was excited to show the process. I am too shy for social media and keep going after people like this, so I did it myself. But testing and training in coming future will be needed as the engine gets ready. So a bit worried about that but I will find some way, I am sure.

My deadline for some very important work in office[my promotion, chance for equity, and employment itself is on line]. The deadline is 30th June as well, and I have not even started and it is hugeeeee. I dont know I will finish so balancing both hackathon and the office task was anxiety inducing. I still havent started the office task because i kept coming back to this project, and didnt realise how the time went by and the day had ended. I checked the time and it is already 12am. This went on for all these 3-4 days. I will submit now in rush, eat something and start the work. Only god can save me now, I gotta pull some superhero move lol[laughs in pain]. Risked too much I think, that's why I will be a little disappointed if I dont win anything at all, like not even those $1000 ones, cause then what excuse will i give in office if I cant finish that task by morning 6am[the tasks should ideally take weeks]. Anyway, that's the reason I have hopes to win something in this hackathon, plus that amount can really change my life, and I can also continue developing this further which otherwise will be at stake cause I cannot afford to buy pro and tokens from coming month. It was a one time risk and sacrifice :") My pocket is empty now. I will do some magic. I know it. Dont know how, but I'll push through so another nighter it is.

I dont know most of the tools provided in the builder pack, and being from the non-coding background I need AI to implement them, use them, debug project as after any change, things break apparently. So tokens got over, limits exceeded so was asking hours to wait. So could not use many. Like I wanted to use RevenueCat for subscriptions but I could not as bolt tokens were over, I am still checking the platform, dont want to risk it by asking other AI to do is, as is breaking a lot and i need to wait hours right now to use them. Similarly i wanted to use the custom domain provided in the builder pack but bolt tokens were over so I could not try it. I am sure some other things in the pack would have been useful too so I hope we can still use them after hackathon ends, no deadlines on using them as many are just free or discounted for 1 month or 6 months or so. Hence, I dont want to waste them till I make my engine completely.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I made my first working app with authentication. Authentication has been my enemy wherever I tried to learn to use AI and build something lol. I now have a way to compete with the tech peeps with engineering degrees to create my own stuff and monetize. I learnt the basic using of supabase, github, claude, what is deploying, what is local server and the fact that bolt preview and deployed view work differently, documentation and much more in the process of this hackathon. Else, would not have been able to do that.

What we learned

I learnt that i enjoy making these techy stuff. It help me get clarity on what exactly should be my suite for making apps and softwares -Bolt[hackathon tokens so pro will be needed], Claude pro, Github Codespce with Copilot[free but pro will be better so it does not limit me]. These three are OG if unlimited context and tokens are provided. Even if not unlimited, it can be worked with but will take more time and more debugging needed as some breaking and mixing up will always happens due to their different styles which is both their strength and weakness. So it's fine. It gave me a real experienc of how things ar ebuilt, what mistakes to look out for, a bsic understanding of things work while building stuff. I saw so many other on Discord, which should be that just going with the flow and making a mess is okay. I should keep trying and mess is part of the process. Finding ways around is part of the process. It taught me how to debug using ai properly and manage context transfer when chat limit exceeds. Still not perfected as still some context is lost, but much much better than before when it was a mess. I learnt how to use github basics atleast which is huge. I learnt and now have a tool to deploy stuff. yay! I basically learnt how to talk better to AI and work with it. Oh and yes! I learnt how to plan breaking down a big idea and sequence it, i messed up twice or thrice too. This submission is an example, old me would have not submitted anything as nothing would be working at all. Piling up everything at once. But I made few things work step by step so I am satisfies with my submission even if it not in the bigger plan I have.

What's next for Spandh

A name change probably haha, maybe Pulse, or something. 'Spandh' heartbeat/pulse derived from the hindi word 'Spand'. Though it's a beautiful and deep name, it may not be as catching, so still considering more options. Implementing the whole vision of the ideal version I mentioned above in what it does and inspiration sections. Getting rich and free in the forsaken world if I win haha[Daenerys is taking over me, help]