TalksBox

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  Identifying a tree

• 

  Identifying a laptop

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  Identifying a keyboard

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  Additional words involving keyboards

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  Does not need to start or end in English

Inspiration

We recognized the difficulty in communication in a foreign country, especially where the names of items may not be initially obvious. Additionally, we wanted to make an app that would assist learners of a language to expand their vocabulary by showing translations for items in their immediate vicinity.

What it does

Our app takes a photo of objects in the user's environment and provides translations of the names of those objects to the language of choice for the user.

How we built it

We wrote the app in Java in Android studio, utilizing the Google Cloud Vision API for image processing and the Google Translate API for providing accurate translations.

Challenges we ran into

None of the group members had made an Android app before this project, and none of us had used an Android API. We were trying something completely new and were often delayed by things that we did not expect (e.g. installing Android Studio...)

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We finished the app and it works!

What we learned

How to program in Android studio, how to access Google APIs and hardware resources, and how to develop for android.

What's next for TalksBox

We would like to improve the design of the user interface, as well as adding the most commonly used sentences for the translated words.

View our code on GitHub, or download the apk to run on your device with the goo.gl link below.

Built With

• android
• google-cloud-vision
• google-translate
• java