Otaku | Devpost

Inspiration

Coming together as a team from three different universities, we each had different ideas that we wanted to implement. However, as we learned more about each other we quickly found out that we all shared a common interest: anime. As we begin to divulge deeper into our fascination for the Japanese arts, we begin to think of ways for technology to support our common interest. After a hour of contemplation and debate, the three of us finally agreed; what better way to stay up to date with anime than a pebble?

What it does

Otaku is a pebble app that combines a simple UI, accurate updates, and tailored results. It gives anime fans near and far a quick way to check the release times of their favorite anime shows. It does this by parsing data from a popular anime tracking site called Anilist. Not only does it feed events directly into the pebble timeline, it also provides a quick way to check all upcoming releases through the actual app.

How I built it

The first things to be done was research for an API that proves airing times for all anime shows. After multiple dead ends and hours of testing, we found the solution on the Anilist website; Anilist had an API that provided all we wanted with the added benefit of the ability to customize the query based on the user's preferences. Communication of the phone and pebble was established through Bluetooth via pebble kit. An interface was then implemented via C to actually display the results gained from Anilist. Furthermore, a put request was called to have the anime airing dates to be placed on the Pebble timeline.

Challenges I ran into

Having only one coder experience with developing on a pebble, it took some time for everyone to get up to pace with the development. It took a while to get familiar with C language.

The Anilist API requires a new security key every hour to prevent people from constantly sending requests to the server. This created trouble for us as renewing the access key every hour was very annoying. The API is also not very well documented so many tests were needed to correctly integrate it with the app.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We feel proud to apply our skills into making a practical applications that directly supports a personal hobby of ours. It was a great experience to familiarize with a technology and create a working app in less than 36 hours. Overall, I am proud of the fact that we were able to cooperate with complete strangers to overcome the many challenges we had as a unit.

What I learned

As hackathons are still a new experience to my group and I, just being a participant already provided us with the knowledge that anything can be done if you put in passion and effort. Our group as a whole were skeptical that we will get a working product done on time but this event definitely changed our perspectives on what we can learn and accomplish. On a more technical note, I learned C, its data structures, and how we can apply it to manage memory on a pebble to create a working app.

What's next for Otaku

Being true to its namesake, Otaku is going to continue to expand its services to include manga, light novels, and eventually incorporate other works such as comics and cartoons.