IDvasive

Inspiration

Recently, a member of our team had been introduced to the gardening world. Among the beautiful plants, we've discovered something intriguing – weeds. These unassuming and frequently misunderstood plants have ignited inspiration: Can we create a program capable of discerning whether a plant burgeoning in our backyards is invasive or not?

What it does

Our program first takes in an image and a location, proceeding to determine the species of the plant. It then searches online databases to find whether or not the species is invasive to the location, as well as provide a brief history about the plant and other facts that would be useful in gardening.

How we built it

We used HTML to help the user send an image and a location to a backend Python script. Next, the Python script sends requests to the plantid API in order to determine the species. After that step, we would use a generative-pretrained-model API to determine the facts about the plant and determine whether or not it is invasive. This information is then displayed back on the HTML webpage.

Challenges we ran into

The most challenging aspect of our hackathon journey centred around the intricate task of transferring the image data seamlessly from the backend to the front end. This particular hurdle demanded a significant investment of time and effort to unravel the intricacies of the process. Despite being the primary setback, conquering this challenge ultimately became a pivotal achievement in our experience.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

After being unable to finish projects for previous hackathons, being able to completely finish this project was a huge accomplishment in our eyes and we believe this is a sign of great things to come.

What we learned

We learned how to use HTML efficiently, how to transfer data from a backend to a frontend and vice versa, as well as how to send requests to APIs with the help of our NorCal mentors.

What's next for IDvasive

The only real improvement that could be made is the improvement of the design of the webpage using languages such as CSS, which would increase the perceived legitimacy and would form trust among users.