Woodpecker

Interactive Media
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Inspiration

In the Anheuser-Busch presentation, he talked about how the best programmers are those like keys -- well rounded, very skilled in specialized aspects but overall very knowledgeable. We tried to have our project reflect this way of thinking. We went intensely into the ML/data side of things, but also included aspects from interactive media and cybersecurity.

What it does

When you spend money using Mastercard, your customer id, spending location/time/amount are all reported from the API to our database, which runs the modeling on it before sending it to the website.

How we built it

Using a host of technologies, including Python, SQL, Psycopg2, Wix/Velo, JavaScripy CockroachDB, AWS

Challenges we ran into

Getting a lot of the technologies to work together, most of us haven't taken any of the upper level CS courses that teach full stack development and have minimal coding experience. CockroachDB proved to be initially very stressful, but we got it to work. The ML model was also a nuisance to make run, but we worked through that as well.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The project as a whole, this was really a step out of our comfort zones in terms of complexity of the project and built something that we think is really cool.

What we learned

We learned the host of technologies above, how to function collaboratively, how to optimize what to do in the face of a deadline, and much more.

What's next for Woodpecker

We're waiting for a buy offer from Mastercard :)

With more time, we seek to build Woodpecker into a tool stores can vendors use to predict where customers will shop next. Credit card companies would also use Woodpecker to predict whether a purchase is fraudulent.

https://youtu.be/Dvg61BUoh-w: this is a link to a youtube video where we explain why the project didn't reach its full potential, so to speak. We tried our best, but not having any information of this prior resulted in us spending a lot of time on youtube/documentation learning the new technologies, and that didn't leave us with enough time to actually execute completely. Thank you for a great competition!

Built With

amazon-web-services
cockroachdb
javascript
psycopg2
python
sql
velo

Submitted to

Hack WashU
- Winner Best Use of CockroachDB (MLH Sponsored)

Created by

I worked on the backend data management and the ML models. My job was to establish the CockroachDB tables so that they'd function as a middle ground between the Transaction Notifications API and the website, as well as to write the code for the regression model performed on user data.

Ethan Nussinov
I mainly worked on Velo by Wix, setting up the JavaScript to allow users to sign up for a membership for our website. I also tried to connect our MasterCard Transaction API to Wix. I spent a lot of time learning Velo and JavaScript.

David Ffrench
I worked on the back-end; mainly trying to implement Mastercard API. I read through the docs and focused our attention on the ones that seemed the most feasible. The API created into a simple python script with callable functions that would be later deployed into a Flask server. I also assisted in implementing the database.

Eric Fang
Ideation; front-end web design with Wix - including all pages, forms, and animations; edited description.

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