TamaLife

Turn your daily habits into a game – because your life deserves a progress bar!

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Inspiration

The idea for this project came from Tamagotchi, the beloved virtual pet from the late ‘90s, and the desire to make personal productivity more engaging.

We realized that staying on top of tasks, eating well, and maintaining healthy habits can feel like a chore—so why not turn it into a game?

By integrating real-world actions with a virtual pet, we created a system where your habits directly affect your pet’s health, mood, and growth. The better you take care of yourself, the happier your pet becomes!

What it does

TamaLife gamifies personal productivity by linking your daily habits to a virtual pet’s well-being. Every action you take in real life influences how your pet grows and behaves.

Core Features: ✅ To-Do System – Complete tasks to keep your pet happy. ✅ Food Tracking – Log meals to “feed” your pet, using ML to determine if what you're eating is "Junk Food" ✅ Real-Time Mood System – Your pet reacts based on how well your diet is, and how often you do your tasks! ✅ Optional Arduino Pet – A physical 3D-printed pet with LED feedback that changes based on your progress.

How we built it

TamaLife is a full-stack application with hardware integration:

Mobile App (Frontend): React Native with Expo TypeScript TensorFlow.js for ML model integration Custom animations and UI components

Backend: Node.js with Express MongoDB for data persistence JWT authentication WebSocket for real-time updates Machine Learning TensorFlow/Keras for food classification Custom trained model on food/non-food dataset Model conversion to TFLite for mobile deployment

Hardware: Arduino microcontroller LCD display RGB LED indicators Serial communication with backend

Challenges we ran into

🔸 Real-Time Syncing – Ensuring task completions and meal logs updated instantly across the system.

🔸 User Engagement – Making sure the the app motivated users to complete their tasks, and take care of Tama!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

🥇 Creating a Fun, Engaging User Experience – Users actually enjoy logging their habits!

🥇 Hardware-Software Integration – Our Arduino-powered physical pet reacts to your progress.

🥇 Healthy/Junk Food ML Model that detects what kind of food you eat, which Tama reacts to!

What we learned

✔ Gamification boosts engagement – People are more likely to complete tasks when they feel rewarded.

✔ Users need customization – Different people track habits in different ways. We built flexible options.

✔ Machine learning is super fun to incorporate in projects

What's next for TamaLife

🔜 Speak to Tama - Integration of LLM's that allow users to speak to Tama

🔜 Social Features – Compete with friends and track habit streaks together.

🔜 Exercise Tracking – Integration with Apple Health so that Tama works out with you!

🔜 Expanding Hardware Integration – More physical pet interactions like sounds and animations.

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