Waddl

Share the duck with your group of friends and hold each other accountable
Get roasted by Gemini when you slip up AND lose money with Stripe!
A cute duck as your productivity companion
Always there, with interactive responses to hand gestures
Thumbs up to give Waddl a light saber

Inspiration

We wanted to create a productivity app that doesn't just remind you to focus. It DEMANDS you to reach your goals at the expense of a cute pet, your honor, and your wallet. Inspired by Tamagotchis, sports betting, and the way we lovingly roast each other, this was a love child of our interests put into chaotic form.

What it does 🦆

Waddl is a real-time productivity web app with a complementary chrome extension that uses your webcam to emotionally bond you with a virtual duck companion. If you slack off for too long and fail to meet your goals, the duck dies. You can raise a shared duck with friends, place bets, and even get motivationally roasted by Gemini AI.

How we built it

🚀 Next.js + Tailwind CSS + ShadCn + Three.js – For fast, clean frontend UI

🛡️ MongoDB + Auth0 – Secure backend and authentication

💵 Stripe – Real money betting for real goal commitments

👀 Chrome Extension API - Real time browser extension that monitors your website activity (looking at the screen but slacking off won't keep you safe)

🤖 OpenCV + MediaPipe + DeepFace – Real-time face, gaze, and gesture tracking combined with emotion analysis

📱Gmail - Emailing extension to reach people outside of the application

✨ Gemini – Parses natural language goals and generates encouraging roasts

Challenges we ran into

Challenge: Computer vision wasn't recognizing emotions accurately | Answer: Switched models, thresholds, and simplified overcomplicated code

Challenge: Couldn't find a cute enough 3D model we could use for the Duck | Answer: Tweaked parts of the duck we didn't like with Blender

Challenge: Couldn't find any pixel art that fulfilled our vision of an emotional companion in the form of a duck | Answer: Made our own animations and pixel art from scratch

Accomplishments that we're proud of

"I'm proud we lost the last 4 hackathons and still went all in for this one." - Anirudh Kuppili | Project Manager | Management and Direction

"I'm glad that we were able to not let any obstacle stop us from winning." - Isaac Alazar | Financial Techy (Bizdev) | Three.js, Blender, Stripe

"I am proud I developed a website, created a chrome extension, implemented the LLM in such a short time!" - Arslan Kamchybekov | Fullstack Developer | LLM, Chrome Extension, Website Fullstack + Auth

"I learned that while facial detection is easy to implement, emotion detection is one of the hardest things ever, especially when dealing with variable lighting. I also had a lot of fun making pixel art gifs for our event animations." - Joshua Jung | Data Expert and Creative Lead | Computer Vision, Pixel Art + Animations, Ideator