Inspiration
We were inspired by Twilio's sponsorship, and thought it would be a great idea to make a SMS-based browser. As time went on, we came up with more and more ideas and our final result shifted to a more general query tool.
What it does
Currently, we have a number set up on Twilio to send/receive SMS messages, and a webhook written in Python (Flask) to handle queries and responses. In addition to our original internet search idea, we also ended up adding a weather app and a chat bot. The weather app finds the nearest NOAA station to a city and returns a GIF of the weather forecast. Our chat bot uses the ChatGPT API to generate responses based on user input. The user can also enter search queries to Mojeek, but excessive queries often result in rate limitations and IP blocking.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
It was definitely really cool to learn something new with Twilio. We also were able to exercise Python skills that we've been learning in our classes and solve hard problems. Some of us were also unfamiliar with using Git on the command-line, and so this project was a fantastic learning experience.
What we learned
We of course learned a lot about using Twilio for SMS messaging throughout this project. We also learned about some useful Python libraries and different ways to do specific things. Unfortunately, we did learn that many web browsers don't appreciate when you try to automate the search process, but we just shifted our focus and powered forward!
What's next for TTS
Ideally, we would love to figure out the other features we were working on (namely better search engine integration). Due to time constraints, we decided to try to focus our efforts for now, but we are looking forward to solving these problems in the future!
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