Atex

It is like Devpost, but for the environment.

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https://atex.org

Our Goal

Our goal is to create a solution that will not only reduce the Climate problem mentioned but also tackle different aspect of sustainable development such as Life on land,life below water, good health + well-being and Education.

Inspiration

Global Waste Management

Waste management is a very serious issue across the world. In simple terms, only specific materials can be recycled, and when other objects are mixed in, the entire batch has to be thrown into the garbage. Whenever citizens don’t recycle properly or dispose of waste improperly, waste management is a harder process. Instead of sorting through the waste, it is simply dumped into landfills or oceans or is incinerated. If everyday citizens were to recycle items correctly, it would make a huge positive impact on the world. Due to ineffective waste management methods, carbon emissions increase. When items that are supposed to be recycled are also thrown into waste, the level of toxins, such as dioxins, released increases by tons. This increases air pollution, contributes to acid rain, and harms the environment.

Resources

When materials are recycled, much fewer resources are required to recreate the same product. This increases efficiency, decreases the release of toxins, decreases the need to acquire resources from the environment, and provides a “greener” way to create products. However, due to ineffective waste management, a lot of recyclable items are incinerated or disposed of as waste. This increases the carbon footprint of each individual by tons.

The Importance of the Product

Why is this Product Important?

To tackle the aforementioned issues, Atex was developed. This product sorts through waste items to determine whether they are recyclable, compostable, or simply garbage. It then alerts the user to throw it in a specific bin. This will increase awareness in citizens, reduce carbon emissions by millions of tons if applied properly, and reduce environmental harm. This product is necessary to improve waste management because no matter how many guides or brochures are given, people get caught up and forget to take time to dispose of items correctly. This minimizes the efforts required by the user and maximizes effective waste management. In short, this product is the necessary bridge between pure laziness and a clean world

How is it different from other Products?

We make recycling a sport, not a responsibility. Besides our amazing AI and reward system, we also develop new hassle-free features.

Create Event

You do the magic, we do the detail. Anyone, include organizations, schools or individuals can host public or private, fundraising, or non-profit events. We also allow users to customize their event details/invitations with eye-catching templates. The host can easily check-in, accredit, and give endorsements for attendees.

Realtime Mission

We aware that wherever has humans, there is trash, and the fact there are more smartphones connected to the internet than computers. That is why we develop our mobile app, where users can upload images and make missions. For example, someone illegally threw a trash bag or furniture on the street, users can capture, attach the image, and pin the location then upload the mission. Our AI will sort it, decide the points based on the image. For fairness and to prevent cheating, we only show the points and location. The user who accepts the mission will be expected to show some proofs to get points.

How I built it

We first created the User Interface by using React.js, and then we will build an API to connect the available components we have in the Frontend to the server. After we finished creating APIs to interact with the frontend, we then moved to used Redux to do state management for the project. We then tested each feature carefully to make sure it works perfectly without any error. For the main purpose of the website version, we can go there to find and register for an event and see who else also attend the event, the website version also helps you to track total points gained by participating in events.

For the mobile app version, we added a Machine Learning model programmed with Tensorflow that can help categorize types of trash so that we can put it into the correct trash bin and create missions. The purpose of the mobile version allows flexibility and convenience for the user to use the app without a computer. Users can use the app when attending an event. We manage to create asynchronous tasks to let our AI self-learning. The more you use our artificial intelligence, the smarter it becomes.
Additionally, we built a voice assistant feature using the Google Cloud Text-to-Speech that speaks out loud the correct category of trash for people who have vision problems.

Challenges I ran into and Accomplishments

When I was working on the project, we faced a challenge with calling asynchronous functions via HTTP request to the server then making an update to the Redux store, as Redux itself does not provide it. I then discovered that there are libraries that help us solve this issue by using Redux-Thunk or Redux-Saga. I decided to use Redux-Thunk and was able to solve the problem. Also, another problem I had is to keep the user information when refreshing the page. I then found a solution that every time I refresh the page, I send a request to the server to then get the information of the user by the token I already have then I login into local storage. I am proud that I successfully solve issues that we just learned. We're also proud of ourselves and our teammates. In such a short period of time, we've successfully created 2 different applications.

What I learned

I learned how to with a group on a big project with different kinds of applications. It requires a clear plan of work for every in a group to make sure that the project runs smoothly. I also learned how to utilize Github when different people work on a project. We need to push it into a different branch and then merge it to the main branch to make sure that no conflict occurs. Another thing I learned from working on this project is the practice of organizing the project into folders for better management and scalability

What's next for Atex

Train AI more accurate, improve voice-assistant, existed features.
Monitizing by recycling (food -> compose, paper/diapers -> cat litter).

Our other projects:
Visit Yomemo
Visit Studyrails
Visit Fantery
Visit Ratexa

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