Eating healthy has always been appealing, but it has always been difficult to give up the foods we love. Trying to find a solution to conveniently give healthy alternatives was our goal this hackathon.
Our mobile app lets the user select whether they want vegan, vegetarian, or pescetarian food options. They are also able to select any allergies they might have. They can now use the most exciting part of the app which lets the user scan barcodes of food items and give alternatives within the parameters specified.
We built this app using React Native and Android Studio. We fetched data from APIs using HTTP requests and saved the data internally. We used machine learning models for the camera to accurately detect bar codes and then send the data to our parsing functions.
We struggled to connect the APIs to our Mobile App. Getting the HTTP requests to update the state of our app was very challenging. One of the servers for the APIs crashed and we weren't able to test our app for a few hours.
None of us have had previous experience building a mobile app and we were able to make a fully functioning project in the duration of the hackathon. Getting everything to connect while also learning how to build mobile apps was extremely challenging.
We learned a lot about mobile development and the intricacies of react-native. Learning how to coordinate effectively, by making sure everyone had something to do, was key to the success of the app.
We plan on adding the ability to grab nutrition info for the items that were scanned and their replacements. This can give the user a better idea of why the alternative item is better for them. We would also like to eventually publish this app to the google play store for everyone to use.