Inspiration: We were inspired by the sheer amount of garbage that piled up just during the first few hours of the hackathon. We thought that maybe we could turn recycling into a bit of a challenge, tracked by the app and our sensors. We also thought it would be nice to have an alert every time our garbage and recycling cans were full in our dorms.
What it does: The hardware tracks activity using light sensors and the sparkcore to transmit data to the application. Every time it detects a piece of recycling falling past it, the sensor alerts the application which then adds a point to the user's team. It dynamically updates progress and tracks end dates for goals, making this application potentially useful for other productivity goals.
How we built it: We tinkered around with the tech we had available, just to see what we could do with it. Once we decided on building a sensor of sorts, we had to pick a medium for data to be used and transmitted to the user. Website design and servers became too complicated for us, so we started installing as many programs as we could, and AndroidStudio happened to be the program that installed the fastest.
Challenges we ran into: We could not figure out how to connect our web server to the application, and our attempts to populate the server with information to build our databases continually failed. We also ran into many hours of difficulty installing adequate programs for our use, and spent a lot of time troubleshooting just to get the platforms up and running. In addition, we did not realize that some of the hardware was not performing as advertised, and we did not have enough experience with the tech to realize it immediately. We had to rebuild the entire circuitry multiple times as a result. We also struggled with lack of sleep, and over dosage of caffeine.
Accomplishments that we're proud of: We all learned a lot, since we basically came to this hackathon with no experience and knowledge of coding and hardware, and we produced two semi functional products. We also managed not to attack each other or sleep through important deadlines and events.
What we learned: We learned a little bit about a lot of different concepts and programs. We got a lot of hands on use with micro controllers and other pieces of tech, not necessarily for our project, but just as part of the experience of the hackathon.
What's next for GreenGreen: We hope to get the app and hardware actually conversing with each other, or at least get them both fully functional separately! Future functionalities we plan to include are databasing to allow comparison of progress between users, and the ability to send notifications to other users. This would allow the app to be used for competition between users to see who is the "most green", on top of tracking the status of recycling/garbage bins.