TeddyBank

Login screen.
Parent dashboard, overview of their kid's earnings and spending.
Kid's dashboard
Parent's task board, ability to add tasks.
Monthly statement.
Kids 'Farm Market'.
Graph of the price of an apple.

Inspiration

We were inspired by our childhood of utilizing a piggybank to learn the concept of saving. However, while they taught us how to 'save' money, they didn’t teach us how to earn it, manage it, or make thoughtful spending decisions.

What it does

TeddyBanks is an AI-powered financial companion that turns digital money into a tangible learning experience.

Intentional Interaction: The bear only speaks when the child presses the physical button on its paw, giving them control over their financial check-in.

The Task Tracker: Kids can complete real-world chores or goals assigned in the app to gain money. When the button is pressed, the bear celebrates their hard work.

The Stock Farm: We introduced the "Stock Farm" to teach long-term investing. Instead of company acronyms the kids have never seen before, kids see their balance change based on simulated fruit and vegetable market trends.

AI Narratives: Using Google Gemini, the bear translates raw data into easy-to-understand stories, explaining interest and savings in a way a 7-year-old understands.

How we built it

We built a full-stack IoT ecosystem that synchronizes physical hardware with a digital economy:

Hardware: An Arduino Uno with a tactile button sensor. When the button is pressed, it sends a serial signal to our Python bridge.

Frontend: A React-based dashboard where kids manage their task board and watch their stock farm grow.

Intelligence: Gemini 1.5 Flash serves as the "Narrative Engine," looking at MongoDB logs to generate a personalized script based on the child's recent activity.

Voice: ElevenLabs and a Google Nest speaker provide the friendly, animated voice that brings TeddyBanks to life.

Physical Product: The Arduino Uno and Google Nest are packaged into a stuffed companion.

Challenges we ran into

We initially plan to use a raspberry pi to implement our hardware functions but ran into connection issues so we switched to using an Arduino. However, due to lack of equipment, we were constrained to 3 male wires for our entire project.

In terms of software, making our MongoDB pipeline took a lot of debugging. From creating a MongoDB schema, to making API calls using the database in order to create react components, this was a real learning experience that taught us so much.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Successfully linking a physical button press to a complex chain of cloud events, fetching data, generating an AI story, and speaking out loud. (It was our first time using an Arduino!!!)
Simplifying Finance: Creating the Stock Farm metaphor to make the concept of market volatility accessible to children.
Making a fully-function full-stack application in under 48 hours

What we learned

How to use an Arduino
How to use databases (MongoDB)
How important communication is so everyone's time is spent efficiently

What's next for TeddyBanks

Interactive Q&A: Allowing the child to ask the bear direct questions about their savings goals
Incorporating another section where parents can assign premade financial literacy quizzes to their children for a monetary award
Actual user feedback!