SnapSafari

Inspiration

Capture and re-capture helps conservationists to monitor wildlife populations but requires an vast array of resources to safely catch, tag and release animals. We selected this idea because it's challenging and presents a broad range of learning opportunities but is achievable and supports healthier ecosystems for people and animals.

What It Does

SnapSafari allows users to take photos of animals they see to add these animals to their journal, or to level up animals they have already spotted. These photos are displayed on their profile, with the locations on a map.

How We Built It

SnapSafari's infrastructure can be divided into three parts:

An android app as the front end.
A firebase database for user, photo and animal information
Image recognition model for identifying animals in photos.

Methods of implementation:

Flutter for creating an android application.
Firebase Firestore to host the backend database.
APIs for animal recognition, mapping, and database interaction.

SnapSafari was built using AI image recognition, several programming languages, frameworks, and APIs. After designs for app pages and database structure were developed, we assigned roles to our four team members based on strengths and weaknesses. These included, frontend development, UI & UX design, database implementation, and API integration.

Challenges We Ran Into

Our unfamiliarity with app development and dart necessitated extensive planning and learning Flutter. Moreover, difficultly developing our own species classification method led to us using the Google Camera Trap model. However, it performed poorly when run locally resulting in us hosting our own bespoke API.

Accomplishments That We're Proud of

We successfully implemented a working end product that is easily accessible and simple to use. Development under a tight deadline demanded effective communication, critical thinking, and teamwork. Ideas were scrapped or added in light of new discoveries; adaptability and quick-thinking were vital in ensuring that our project would be completed on time.

What We Learned

Over the course of this project, we learned how to interact with and implement many tools new to us such as: • Flutter • Firebase • The Dart Language • Efficient OOP Programming

Alongside technical skills, we also learned a great deal about communication, rapid-development, time-management and problem-solving.

What's Next for SnapSafari

Eventually, we'd like to develop analysis methods to produce meaningful results from the capture data which can be used to track migrations and monitor species trends. Additional education features could also be added to teach people about the species they're snapping. Due to time constraints this wasn’t achievable, but if we were to continue working on this project, theses feature could be incorporated.