CruzHacks23 A trash detection tool with a inbuilt chatbot.
This project was made during CruzHacks 23 by three passionate individuals. When we came to CruzHacks, we noticed a lot of litter scattered around the event center. Something that especially caught our eyes were the incorrectly placed items in the garbage bins. In the compost bin, we saw empty plates and canned drinks. In the recycling, we say leftover crumbs and masks. You get the point. People either didn't know how to sort their trash, or didn't care enough about sustainability. This inspired us to educate and spread awareness about taking care of our campus and planet.
We created a website that accesses your camera and will detect if it sees waste, compost, or recycling. You can hold up an item and it will identify which category it belongs in using the machine learning module we trained. We also have a chatbot that can answer questions anyone has.
We built Garbage Guide using Flask, a Python web framework. Additionally, we used HTML and CSS for the front end of the website. We used various API's and packages to build a fun, interactive website for educating the public on waste disposal.
We ran into many challenges throughout the hack. For instance, it was difficult to come up with a project that is unique, yet tackles ones of the hack categories. There were also environmental challenges such as slow wifi and time constraints.
As new hackers, we are proud we were able to create something in a very short time period that is presentable. On top of the fact that we did not have a clear direction on what we wanted to create, we still managed to create something meaningful.
Marcus Leung, Dhruv Kothari, Aravind Gandhi