TouchGrass

Discussing the frontend and backend architecture!

Inspiration

Hi, Eddie here! I came up with the idea of this app because of my girlfriend. Since becoming a software engineer, I have spent a lot more time indoors. That did not make her happy. I decided I wanted to create an app that allowed me to grow my programming skills, but still provide her with her nature walks. That is when it hit me to make a scavenger hunt app that could be used on our nature walks. I convinced three people at a Knight Hacks team building session to join me on this fun journey to create TouchGrass.

What it does

TouchGrass is a web app, powered by Google Gemini API, that allows users to identify objects from their device so that they can enjoy the generated scavenger hunt within the app.

How we built it

TouchGrass was built by four handsome software engineers who split the work between four concepts: Eddie and Vepaul worked together to learn state management and pushed their skills in making the web app look great! Our resident API enthusiast Micah focused on building, communicating, and connecting Google Gemini API to empower the user to be able to identify objects during the generated scavenger hunt. Finally, Tarun deployed a flask server to allow communication between the frontend and the databases he built using SQLite.

Challenges we ran into

Eddie: “Git bugs and keeping the main branch stable with four separate branches feeding into it presented a lot of challenging problems!” Turan: "Preventing the corruption of data when implementing communication between the frontend and the backend was a challenge I ran into!” Vepaul: “It took me a while to pick up state management when using React hooks!” Micah: "We had to try a few different computer vision approaches, and learning the different Google APIs took some trial and error. Additionally, setting up deployment of our app with nginx was a little difficult to figure out."

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Eddie: “Git bugs and keeping the main branch stable with four separate branches feeding into it presented a lot of challenging problems!” Turan: "Preventing the corruption of data when implementing communication between the frontend and the backend was a challenge I ran into!” Vepaul: “It took me a while to pick up state management when using React hooks!” Micah: "It was really exciting to learn about how LLMs can be used in the context of computer vision. Additionally, I got to learn about Computer Vision models, even though we didn't end up taking that approach."

What we learned

Eddie: “I am proud that I could be relied on for version control and debugging.” Vepaul:”Designing a sleek frontend and picking up on state management.” Turan: “Properly hashing passwords to make the app more secure.” Micah: "I learned how to use Google Gemini API

What's next for TouchGrass

Turan: “ I want to further push the proof of concept of this scavenger hunt app by implementing custom scavenger hunts.” Vepaul: “ I want to implement collaborative community features on the app.” Eddie: “Google streetview + TouchGrass would be first class” Micah: "I would like to implement custom scavenger hunts and flesh out some of the existing functionality."