Eurodite winner HackSussex2019
What it does It's a website designed towards managing your food waste more efficiently and effectively, as this has become a major crisis over recent years and not enough is being done to solve this issue. It is evident there are few apps and websites available that can help towards this, but most are outdated and rarely used, so we have created a simple, easy to use site for the Brighton and Hove area. To save ambiguity, it is up until the BN43 area. When you make a purchase, you can either scan the item to get the expiration date and name, or enter the details manually. This is then sorted into a list which will remind the users a day before their items go off. It will then also prompt the user to donate their food, or suggest a recipe to use for said item of food. If the user chooses to donate the item, it then would be put on a list, where other users can select the I'm Hungry button to see local people in the area offering food around them, such they can connect and organise to collect their food if they want it. If the user decides they don't want to donate to a person, they can donate to a local food bank to go towards helping the homeless people get food to eat, that would otherwise have gone to waste.
How we built it Basic HTML, coupled with CSS styling, and Javascript to make the website more interactive and usable. We experimented with open-source libraries (Terract.js and OCRad.js) to help build our scan function. Additionally, we implemented the moment library (moment.js) to help organise the list of food into the correct order. We used the website Repl.it in order to all interactively edit the code in real time in order to more effectively manage our time and management for the project. This also stopped us all working on exactly the same thing and over-writing each other's work without knowing. As it is mainly front-end work we did, we feel that this was the better option. If we were deploying back-end facilities we would probably use GitHub as it has the ability comment on the code that you have uploaded and explain your reasons.
Challenges we ran into Bugs. Coffee. More Bugs. More Bugs More Bugs. Also Initially some styling issues, we wanted to make it as user-friendly as possible. We then had some issues in implementing our list function as we thought about using things that were unfortunately outside our knowledge for the time limit provided. Our main bugs lied in the initial implementation of the scan feature, but this was solved through trial and error and research. These were new frameworks for us to use and this was our first Hackathon.
Accomplishments that we're proud of A working website! A website that has HTML and CSS continuation throughout and functional JavaScript elements and implementations of open-source libraries. It is not perfect but we are proud of our work, especially as this is our first time at a Hack.
What we learned Teamwork, troubleshooting skills, extra JavaScript bits, some styling tips and tricks. As well as working under pressure with a very small time limit. With a diversity of people we have met; it being the first time we have met most of our teammates.
What's next for Brighton and Stove Ideally, Brighton and Stove would utilise a database for it's login page. Also, we would experiment more with our scan feature and the OCRad.JS library to help the library learn different fonts used on expiry dates. We could additionally expand out to different regions if there is a demand for it.