Kabobcat

Kabobcat is a Web App that is intended to provided a platform for UC Merced students to share about any left-over foods on campus.

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Inspiration

Kabobcat is a Web Application meant to aid UC Merced students in sharing left-over food opportunities. Our main inspiration stems from an existing program on campus: No Food Left Behind. Our application is meant to augment No Food Left Behind by allowing a wider variety of individuals at UC Merced to share any left-over foods at their events on campus.

What it does

Kabobcat.tech allows users to submit images and a brief description of food items to a MondoDB Atlas database after authentication with blockchain via Blockstack (as well as verifying the user’s identity). Radar.io communicates to mark the locations of each building when you select a building location.

How I built it

Alisson worked on creating an Excel robot using UIPath to showcase the submission process. She also styled the desktop and mobile views and created art for the website.

Alan also contributed to the CSS/HTML styling as well as do research on multiple projects we considered to implement into the website (making an Alexa skill to find free events, an alternative form of geofencing in geoJSON, etc.).

Challenges I ran into

Alisson ran into the following challenge: Outdated documentation. UIPath's documentation mentions some functions that are no longer existent in their current version of UIPath Studio.

Alan ran into issues as he had to learn CSS and HTML in the hours the hackathon gave us. He also struggled with research for Google Assistant actions, which seemed to have less documentation and was harder to develop for than Alexa’s Skills.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Nathan only slept for an hour over a 48 hour period.

Alisson is proud about the fact that she was able to implement the mobile version while everyone else slept. She is also proud that she was able to create a UIPath bot for the first time.

The accomplishment that Alexander felt most proud of in this project is learning and making an Alexa application respond to my voice in less than half a day. In the beginning, he was unsure of how he was going to contribute to the project because the group had figured out their tasks early and he was just sorta there researching and figuring out how to do things, but as time went on, he was pulled in by my team and he figured out how to find my own tasks and started contributing what he could.

Alan is most proud with the styling, given that he didn’t know CSS and HTML until the hackathon. Given that this was his first hackathon, he was most proud of how much this was a learning experience for him in terms of the front and backend.

What I learned

Nathan learned Google Cloud App Engine, DigitalOcean's VMs, and MongoDB.

Alisson learned that she was able to take over the project when everyone else was asleep. She also learned to read documentation more efficiently and delegate tasks to others in her team.

Alexander learned Radar.io and learned how to make an Alexa application.

Alan learned more about CSS and HTML interactions, as well as Alexa API interactions.

What's next for Kabobcat

Nathan believes that Kabobcat needs technical issues resolved before being published. There should be additional ways for food posters and food receivers to communicate with each other.

Alan believes that there’s still a few issues that need to be resolved. We also want to fully implement the Alexa through DigitalOcean so that it can be available to the end user. Also, we believe we should implement radar.io communication with the end user to automatically select a building through geofences

Allison also believes we should add a feature where students are able to place "dibs" on food opportunities so individuals know when to expect visitors.

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