I.D. It!

Inspiration

The world is a complicated place, filled with things that we don't know. This app helps users identify some of the unknowns in life.

What it does ## How I built it

We used a preexisting template on GitHub for the Google Cloud Vision API to create a website that runs on Google's App Engine Server. The code we used was in python, and built with Flask. The website takes in an image, and returns a json with information about the objects in the image. Then, we created an iOS app using Swift, which allowed a user to select an image from their photos library to upload into the app. The app then sent the image through a "POST" request to the website and returned a json, which we then extracted data from in order to display the object identified in the image by the Google Cloud Vision API. The user then has the option to conduct a Google search on the identified object by pressing a button, which opens Safari.

Challenges I ran into

We were really confused about the concept of deploying a website on App Engine, but we talked to the mentor from Google who explained this to us and directed us to a preexisting python program on GitHub. We also ran into many errors while trying to send "POST" requests, because we were unfamiliar with the process and could not figure out how to format the data. We asked mentors for help with this as well.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We are proud that we were able to deploy our website on App Engine, and send requests through our app to this website.

What I learned

We learned how to use the Google Cloud Vision API and how to deploy a website to Google App Engine. We also learned how to send "POST" requests through an iOS app.

What's next for I.D. It!

When the Google Cloud Vision API runs, it returns multiple possible objects that are found in the image. Currently the user can only see one of them, but we would like the user to be able to see more and choose which object they want to receive more information about. We would also like to allow the user to save past searches. We would implement a TableViewController to display the options and previous search history.

Built With

• flask
• google-cloud
• google-cloud-vision-api
• ios
• python
• swift