WaffleBot

Inspiration

Inspired by the Waffle House Index, a surprisingly effective metric used by FEMA to determine the severity of storm disaster recovery, WaffleBot was intended to be a discord bot that could provide alerts to users if waffle houses near them were closed. However due to inexperience with almost every step of the process, WaffleBot currently functions as a general purpose discord bot with some minor geolocation functionality included.

What it does

WaffleBot's primary feature is returning a nearby waffle house to a user on inputted city and state. Various novelty features are also included with WaffleBot, including returning a randomly selected photo of a waffle, as well as a parody of Cowsay.

How we built it

Using Python in Visual Studio Code, we additionally used the Pycord API wrapper for Discord. In addition geolocation is handled using geopy, a wrapper for many geolocation APIs including Nominatim, which is based off of OSM data.

Challenges we ran into

We originally ran into difficulties trying to use various APIs, including an API wrapper for Last.fm that eventually went unused. Uploading to Heroku was an arduous ordeal as well due to inexperience with the platform and required formatting of files.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm personally proud of learning how to work with APIs given the little I knew previously. Working outside of the bounds of an IDE felt very liberating! - Kylo Nocom WaffleBot is eternal as long as the hosting provider is online and I feel powerful. Also, writing the find_waffles command was enjoyable as returning real world addresses that lead me to waffles is always a good thing. - Luke Naylor

What we learned

We learned how to implement API wrappers into our programs, greatly expanding functionality. I also learned how to upload web applications to Heroku, which I am particularly proud of - Luke

What's next for WaffleBot

WaffleCoins - store data for each user of a quantity of WaffleCoins, use these for fun minigames and the like. Waffle Alert System - the original intended functionality of the bot, if a user opts in with a location, WaffleBot will Direct Message them when waffle houses near them close and severe weather occurs. BanWaffle - moderation functionality so your server is guarded by buttery goodness itself

Team Leader Discord Username: TripL#2182