Text to Present

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  Example messages pt.1

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  Example messages pt.2

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  Had to use a localhost in the meantime due to difficulties with pythonanywhere

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  The text messages sent displayed on the GUI

Inspiration

Roy had recently attended a wedding and his cousin had deployed a project that allowed him to take in the greetings and messages for the newlyweds from the attendees. He shared this story with our team and it inspired us to implement something similar.

What it does

When the application is ran by a client, the client is able to send a text message through Twilio that is sent to the database of the program. There, the server reads information and displays it on a GUI.

How we built it

At its core, Text to Present is a client to server interaction that utilizes a spreadsheet database as its way of reading and writing information. To send information to the database in a user-friendly way, our team thought of using the Twilio API in order to communicate with the database. From there, the database stores all the messages sent in their respective spaces within the spreadsheet; the server is able to read through this database in order to display it on the graphical user interface. Openpxyl and Tkinter were python modules/frameworks used to accomplish the aforementioned functions.

Challenges we ran into

Initially we did not intend to use the Twilio API and thought that an approach solely using socket communication would be the best method. However, due to complications in merging the GUI with the database and socket programming, we had to scrap that idea. Another main challenge was adjusting to the physical and mental tiredness of the Hackathon.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Given that this was the first Hackathon for Roy and I and the second Hackathon for Shaka, we are proud of being able to present a final product despite the obstacles we ran into. Inexperience played a large role in our struggles but its through these mistakes that we are even more proud of being able to complete our task.

What we learned

We learned to not start coding right away and to have a better plan before starting right away. Efficient time management would have minimized stress and exhaustion; we managed our time mediocrely.

What's next for Text to Present

We hope to optimize the application to have a more functional and overall better looking GUI. For the database, we hope to upgrade it from a spreadsheet database to a mySQL database or something similar.

Built With

• openpyxl
• python
• tkinter
• twilio