BiBo | Devpost

Inspiration

When we were walking around before the Hackathon started, we received many business cards from vendors. As we were walking around collecting business cards, we stopped by the Google cloud platform stand. We instantly fell in love with their Google Vision API and knew that we wanted to implement the API into our hack. We knew it was going to be challenging but we felt that this was a perfect opportunity to try and experiment. After we formed groups and were brainstorming for projects, the idea of the business card kept coming back; we all agreed that there needs to be a more convenient way to make direct calls and emails through business cards. Furthermore, with the use of the camera and the API, we allowed our project to utilize not just business cards but really also any phone number and email. As a result, we came to the formation of BiBo.

What it does

BiBo is an offline android app that would be classified in the essentials category. BiBo allows for three key features: add business cards as contacts, make direct phone calls, and send an email.

BiBo utilizes the camera and the API in order to scan for any numbers or text that the machine detects. Rather than physically copying down contact information one by one to every field, BiBo scans the business card and automatically creates a contact card with all the information it sees. Furthermore, it allows for the user to edit any of the information that the machine takes in.

With BiBo, making phone calls has never been faster and easier than before. When one wishes to make a direct phone call with BiBo, the user is taken to the camera, where the machine only looks for phone numbers and rules out any excess information that may obstruct the process in finding the phone number. After it sees a phone number, the user is able to make direct phone calls with what the machine picks up. Anyone can easily see the significance of this; rather than entering a phone number by each digit, the scanner allows for an instant way to call, free from the risk of typos.

Similar to BiBo's feature in making phone calls, BiBo allows for sending emails much more faster and efficient. Rather than having to type and copy an email address one may see, BiBo allows them to scan the email and immediately enable themselves to send an email to their desired recipient. Again, by choosing the email function, the machine only searches for emails so the user does not have to worry about a text that may hinder the process one may see on a business card.

Overall, BiBo allows for a much more efficient and faster way to make everyday activities much more easier.

How I built it

BiBo was built in Android-Studio using Java and XML. The brains of our app come from Google's Mobile Vision API in conjunction with the Text Vision API. These interfaces use Google's machine learning engine to detect ASCII characters in images and convert them to strings of manipulable text in a process called Optical Character Recognition.

Challenges ran into

We realized that choosing this idea would be difficult as we all did not have prior experience using API. Furthermore, we all classified ourselves as beginners, simply willing to learn. While creating the project, there were many frustrating obstacles that were difficult to overcome such as errors and crashes. However, by the end, we were able to produce a product that satisfied us.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We are proud that we created an innovative product that is applicable and practical in the real world. Applying our learned knowledge and contributing to a product with practical applications felt very satisfying. Through the process of creating the project, we are not only proud to have created an app, but we are also proud of the knowledge and insight gained, which we hope to use in the future.