Inspiration
I am somewhat of a gamer myself. I have always been engrossed by the Gaming world and as a result, been stuck to my seat for a majority of my day as a high-schooler. I realized that this is a very distressing issue and that inactivity over a long period of time has drastic effects on people's health. There was a need for an interactive and competitive way to encourage people like me to take up exercising and fitness.
What it does
Gamer-H is an interactive platform where users have the option to sync their own fitness device with the platform and keep a log of their daily steps. Users can sign up for a free account and have their friends do so as well. After logging their steps daily, they can see a dashboard with data from their past week or month, as well as track their progress compared to their friends. Users also have access to a special Open AI powered chatbot named Brad, which can answer just about any query you can throw at it! From asking Brad about calories in a pound to making him calculate the number of days you have to work out to lose 10kg, Brad will do whatever you ask it to without hesitation!
How we built it
I used the following technologies to make this application: Frontend - ReactJS, HTML5, CSS3, JS Backend (DB) - MongoDB Atlas, NodeJS, Express JS Backend (ML) - Flask, Python APIs - Google Fitbit Dev API, Open AI GPT3 text completion API
Challenges we ran into
There were several challenges that I faced. Due to final exams, I could only start my project 3 days after the official launch. Making such a huge project was not in the cards 4 days ago, however 3 tireless mornings and 1 sleepless night helped me create this project. During creation, I faced a huge challenge of integrating Fitbit API into my application and getting it to work with any user. I overcame it via reading documentation and researching stack-overflow for 3 hours and could finally effectively sync the application with the user's Fitbit account.
Another challenge I faced was to have the Open AI chatbot integration done with the react-simple-chatbot library. I had a very difficult 4 hours working on integrating the chatbot as the Open AI request was asynchronous, while the Chatbot component expected a synchronous message. I had to create a workaround for that and was able to do so by creating a custom component.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
I am extremely proud of having my website sync with Fitbit effortlessly. All users have to do is click sync, and voila: Their data is fetched instantly. Setting up this feature, and also integrating the Open AI chatbot, were 2 very difficult things to do that I normally might have given up on in my early years of coding.
What we learned
I have learnt so much about the working of ReactJS! This is also the first project I have made where I have tried to use 3 different servers at the same time: One for my frontend on ReactJS, one using Express JS for my backend DB connectivity, and one using the ML server on Flask. It was extremely interesting to learn about how communication occurs between the servers and how I can leverage that for my application.
What's next for GamerH
Working on this project has inspired so many new ideas! I think that I can integrate several more AI based features to the gaming community to enhance their lifestyle. Having a platform where you can compete and also get fit while doing it is a very powerful need for the upcoming generation. An interesting feature that I would've worked on is to allow users to upload their workouts and track them using GamerH. Seeing other people working out and scoring points is definitely a huge motivator for me to at-least go and get my daily steps in!
Another interesting feature I would like to add is the ability for users to earn rewards on certain milestones. There are several apps out there providing rewards for completing a specific number of exercises, that are funded by advertising agencies. I think the opportunity to earn something and seeing myself become more fit would be a great future prospective feature.
I would also love to launch an app and a fitness device for GamerH in the long term future!
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