Lapse

Inspiration

We were inspired by the many YouTube videos we watched, such as this, in which the user had to take pictures/edit to create the Video manually. We wanted to make it possible for everyone to accomplish with ease, and that's why we created Lapse.

What it does

Lapse is a graphical user interface that centers images based on eye position, so you can clearly see the time-lapse. (For example)

How we built it

To implement the GUI, we used Swing. To get the webcam running, we used a Webcam Capture API. For eye centering, we used Google Vision, a machine learning API with facial landmark recognition. We used this to implement the translation of images based on the x and y coordinates of the eyes.

Challenges we ran into

This was our first hackathon, and working on this big of a project in such a small timeframe was definitely a challenge. One of the main challenges we found was working together on the code at the same time. To implement Lapse together, we were lucky to find IntelliJ IDEA: Code With Me. This IDE let one of us host, and edit the files, while the other used a client to work on the code in real-time (just like Google Docs). One of the restrictions we faced while implementing the GUI was that the person that wasn't hosting couldn't access the GUI. To get around this, David, who was hosting the code, shared his screen, so I (Ronit) could take a look at the progress we made with the GUI since I was mainly working on the front end. Working with different APIs and using Swing for the first time was no easy feat either. Notably, the Google API was the most difficult to set up and use.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The main accomplishment was actually getting everything done on time and successfully implementing it the way we wanted to. Both of us are mainly intuitive programmers, and we both dislike working with the front end, however, we were able to figure everything out and make it work in the end.

What we learned

We learned a lot about the front-end side of programming. By implementing various Libraries and APIs, we have both discovered a new side to programming that we appreciate.