Plant Portal

Virtual Garden lets users upload plant images, analyzed by AI, to extract details and CO₂ impact. Users then cultivate a virtual garden, track plants, and learn about their environmental benefits.

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🌱 Plant Portal - Your Virtual Garden 🌿

🌍 Inspiration

As our planet continues to heat up 🔥, we can’t help but feel like the future is more and more cooked. We wanted to create a fun, educational, and engaging way to inspire people to help reverse the damaging increase in carbon emissions 🌎.

Inspired by the virtual pet games of the early 2000s 🕹️, Plant Portal is a feel-good platform that encourages users to grow carbon-reducing plants by creating digital gardens that mirror their real-life planting efforts 🌳.

🌟 What it does

Plant Portal allows users to:
🌿 Upload images of plants they have planted in real life.
🤖 Utilize AI to recognize and categorize plants into subtypes.
🏡 Add a virtual representation of their plant to their 3D personal digital garden.
📊 View useful insights on each plant’s contribution to carbon reduction.
🌎 Learn how different plant species help combat climate change.

🛠️ How we built it

🚀 Frontend: Built with React for an interactive and intuitive user experience.
🛠️ Backend: Node.js and Express handle user authentication, data storage, and API integration.
📂 Database: MongoDB stores user profiles, plant information, and garden data.
🤖 AI Integration: Google’s Gemini AI processes images to extract relevant plant details.
🔐 Authentication: JWT-based authentication ensures secure user accounts.

🔧 Built With

  • Frontend: React, Tailwind CSS 🎨
  • Backend: Node.js, Express.js 🚀
  • Database: MongoDB, Mongoose 📂
  • AI: Google Gemini API (for plant recognition) 🤖
  • Authentication: JSON Web Tokens (JWT), bcrypt.js 🔐
  • Deployment: Vercel (Frontend), Render/Heroku (Backend) ☁️
  • Image Processing: Multer for handling image uploads 📷

🚧 Challenges we ran into

🔎 AI Model Accuracy: Ensuring correct plant identification required experimenting with multiple AI models.
📷 Image Processing: Handling and storing plant images efficiently was a challenge due to file size and format variations.
🖥️ User Experience: Designing a the 3D models and scene to make a seamless and intuitive interface to make virtual gardening fun and accessible.
👥 Multi-user Storage: Implementing a collaborative network of user's gardens, including features to view and compare effective solutions. 🛜Personal Accounts: Creating a personal log on and sign-up feature to store, update, and save user's progress across various devices.

🎉 Accomplishments that we're proud of

✅ Successfully integrating AI-powered plant recognition into the platform.
✅ Building an engaging virtual garden experience that encourages real-world sustainability.
✅ Creating a smooth and intuitive user interface with real-time interaction and feedback.
✅ Ensured security and privacy in personal accounts.

📚 What we learned

🧠 Gained insights into AI image classification and how to fine-tune accuracy.
💾 Understood the complexities of managing large-scale image uploads efficiently.
🎨 Improved UI/UX design to make the platform engaging and user-friendly. 📊 How to utilize external database storage to track and manage activity. 🛠️ How to create specialized models in blender to apply to web applications.

🚀 What's next for Plant Portal

🌍 Expand plant species recognition to cover more global flora.
📲 Develop a mobile app for on-the-go gardening insights.
🎖️ Gamify the experience with achievements and rewards for users.

🌱 Let’s grow a greener future together! 🌿✨

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