Inspiration
I'm always pulling out my phone between classes: the time I should be enjoying before I've gotta sit though another 50 minute lecture is wasted as I pace around, worried about the EXACT time I'm supposed to leave wherever I am just to get to my next class in time. BreakStops is dedicated to those who can't stand to waste a minute thinking about the present.
What it does
BreakStops reads, sorts, and intelligently measures walking distances with respect to class start and stop times. The script allows for customizable inputs, like a set script for siphoning in essential data for functionality and allows the user to ask BreakStops how long they have in [hour:minute] format to take a break and stop before their next class. Depending on how long you have between classes, BreakStop may make informed suggestions of how to spend the time you have left. If your next stop is halfway across campus and you only have 15 minutes to walk, the program may tell you HURRY! Or, if your classes are back-to-back in the same building and are generously spread throughout the day, BreakStops could calculate the time it may take for you to get to your dorm and back and subtract it from the total time you have free of lecture, steering stress away and allowing you to enjoy the little time you have to yourself by forwarding you the exact time you have to yourself.
How we built it
BreakStops was build entirely in Python.
Challenges we ran into
We really wanted to incorporate some form of machine learning in the selection of key terms from a generic LionPath Schedule. We tried AWS services like Rekognition, but the confusing and nonobvious generic schedule would have taken too much time to fix, taking away from the actual project. We also tried to use Lex as a chatbot to extract information, but the lambda functions required to format the data into the way we needed it to feed into BreakStop was also far too complicated.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The program works, and it works well. The interface is fairly simple, and although at face-value it may not look like much, I think there's a real practicality with BreakStop.
What we learned
-How to use Google distance matrixes -Some group members became more familiar with Python -Although we didn't incorporate Lex in our final project, a lot of the effort here went to trying to understand how Lex and chatbots in general can be used.
What's next for BreakSpots
I'd love to incorporate a campus-wide dictionary so any schedule plugged into BreakSpots can work flawlessly. I also want to add more specific features for BreakSpots to inform the user about. Perhaps the program can specifically ask if the user wants to eat lunch around 1-3 or the program can be used directly as a schedule planner. I also want to create a more user-friendly and attractive interface rather than it just be a script.
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