Inspiration
As we can all see, Winnipeg is very cold. Some people have even dubbed the city with the fitting nickname of “Winterpeg”. However, paired with the rising rate of poverty in the city and the ever increasing cost of living, being warm is something not everyone can experience. We began working on this app to signal emergency contacts when a user was in need, but it grew to account for all possible users. Now a user can check for possible frostnip or frostbite, find warm shelters around them, and connect with registered volunteers nearby them. Frostbyte aims to help all people, regardless of their situation, make it out of the cold.
What it does
FrostByte is an AI-powered triage and real-time shelter connection application. It was developed by students from the University of Manitoba. The app can: provide real-time weather information of a user’s current location analyze a user’s exposed skin and provide cold-related injury results locate the nearest warm shelters and yield their current information save emergency contact information in a clean and simplified manner send an emergency alert text to your saved emergency contact contact a registered crisis volunteer
How we built it
FrostByte could not have been crafted without the use of Expo, a multi-platform language-neutral framework. Expo helped take the burden off of developers, as the app was coded in React Native but can be ported to native mobile code.
Along with Expo, the Google Places API, OpenWeatherMap API, and Google Gemini API were utilized in order to provide real-time up-to-date information on warm shelters nearby, keep users updated on the current weather trends and alerts, along with securely analyzing user’s skin to check for frostbite.
Challenges we ran into
We used quite a few APIs to implement functionalities in our application, which led to a few issues deploying.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Getting a truly useful application out into the world.
What we learned
Most of us have never used Expo before, so that was a new learning experience for all of us. We also used Firebase for our backend, and using that was quite a challenege that we powered through.
What's next for FrostByte
Our biggest plan for the future is to amass a user base. We want registered volunteers to show that our app has credibility, so we can get people help as soon as possible.
Another plan for FrostByte is to finetune to frostbite detection model, in order to give more accurate health results. Finding a way to add more shelters into our current list is also another priority of ours for the future.
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