Sunny

A Potential Future Webpage Design of Sunny

Inspiration

My inspiration was from my own life and people around me. Growing up, I've seen many of my relatives struggle with mental health disorders and more recently, mental health has become a problem among my peers. Even I myself struggle with metal health sometimes. I remember at one point my mom just casually said, "Don't you ever wish there would be someone to talk to whenever you want?" and that got me inspired to do a chat bot for my project!

What it does

My website/app is meant to be a friend to those who just need someone to talk to or to vent to. There is a bot you can talk to or ask any questions.

How we built it

Github and Repl

The first thing I did was setup the Github and Repl. I wanted an efficient use so I chose Repl to program on. It is also very accessible for people who don't have installed clients to run code.

OpenAI

I first experimented with Chat GPT. I found that there was an option to finetune OpenAI's bots instead of Chat GPT because the API has not been released yet. However, in finetuning the bot, you needed to provide your own data. I attempted to train the bot, but it took too much time and it was not very efficient. I then discovered some of OpenAI's bots that have already been pretrained and I took the code in Python.

Curl, Python, and Javascript

Javascript is used for making websites, but I could not call the API in JavaScript. I would have to code it myself. I then discovered there was Curl code, in which I could covert it manually to Java Script.

API Keys

I fetched API keys and ran the code. It was not working and after a solid around 4 hours, I got it to work! There were issues with OpenAI's API keys as well as the JSON file.

Bootstrap, HTML, and CSS

The last step was stylizing the website with Bootstrap, HTML, and CSS. This was tough because at one point, it somehow messed up the JavaScript code. In the end, it all turned out fine and now I have a working demo!

Challenges we ran into

The desktop I originally was working on had crashed multiple times, but luckily it was not that much of a setback. My teammates had also stopped responding and did not commit anything to Github, so it was quite a frustrating time for me. With whatever time I had left, I tried to minimize code bugs only to run into another issue. When I converted Curl to Javascript, there wee quite a bit of ssues not only connecting to the API source but also converting the string into a JSON file format that OpenAI actually understands. It took a while, but it eventually worked. The last problems I ran into were Bootstrap deciding not to function and how the HTML file accidentally altered the Javascript file. All in all, the demo turned out to be fine and I'm glad I could work around most issues.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Getting the API to work in JavaScript after hours of work was one of the accomplishments I'm most proud of. Doing this alone was not what I planned, but I am very proud for doing what I can to make it as good as I can with what time I had left. I am also so proud of the fact that I had the guts to do a hackathon in the first place! I may not walk out of here with an award, but I can at least say I tried.

What we learned

I learned a lot through this hackathon. Being my first, it was quite the tasteful experience and I did enjoy the workshops and activities! Programming the website was very fun for me and I hope to develop it further throughout the next few months. Though my teammates did lack communication and there were multiple code bugs or technical issues, I learned a lot about how hackathons work, debugging code, and learning to persevere through issues, even if it looks like it can't be fixed.

What's next for Sunny

I will put together a team and we can custom train/finetune the AI bots or start from scratch. I also would like to create a more aesthetic interface but simple to use, and get more proficient in Bootstrap as well. At one point when the AI bots are pretty stable, I hope to make animations for each of the bots and then convert it to an app!