## Inspiration

In the exciting world of hackathons, where innovation meets determination, **participants like ourselves often ask "Has my idea been done before?"** While originality is the cornerstone of innovation, there's a broader horizon to explore - the evolution of an existing concept. Through our AI-driven platform, hackers can gain insights into the uniqueness of their ideas. By identifying gaps or exploring similar projects' functionalities, participants can aim to refine, iterate, or even revolutionize existing concepts, ensuring that their projects truly stand out.

For **judges, the evaluation process is daunting.** With a multitude of projects to review in a short time frame, ensuring an impartial and comprehensive assessment can become extremely challenging. The introduction of an AI tool doesn't aim to replace the human element but rather to enhance it. By swiftly and objectively analyzing projects based on certain quantifiable metrics, judges can allocate more time to delve into the intricacies, stories, and the passion driving each team

## What it does

This project is a smart tool designed for hackathons. The tool measures the similarity and originality of new ideas against similar projects if any exist, we use web scraping and OpenAI to gather data and draw conclusions.

**For hackers:**

* **Idea Validation:** Before diving deep into development, participants can ascertain the uniqueness of their concept, ensuring they're genuinely breaking new ground.
* **Inspiration:** By observing similar projects, hackers can draw inspiration, identifying ways to enhance or diversify their own innovations.

**For judges:**

* **Objective Assessment:** By inputting a project's Devpost URL, judges can swiftly gauge its novelty, benefiting from AI-generated metrics that benchmark it against historical data.
* **Informed Decisions:** With insights on a project's originality at their fingertips, judges can make more balanced and data-backed evaluations, appreciating true innovation.

## How we built it

**Frontend:** Developed using React JS, our interface is user-friendly, allowing for easy input of ideas or Devpost URLs.

**Web Scraper:** Upon input, our web scraper dives into the content, extracting essential information that aids in generating objective metrics.

**Keyword Extraction with ChatGPT:** OpenAI's ChatGPT is used to detect keywords from the Devpost project descriptions, which are used to capture project's essence.

**Project Similarity Search:** Using the extracted keywords, we query Devpost for similar projects. It provides us with a curated list based on project relevance.

**Comparison & Analysis:** Each incoming project is meticulously compared with the list of similar ones. This analysis is multi-faceted, examining the number of similar projects and the depth of their similarities.

**Result Compilation:** Post-analysis, we present users with an 'originality score' alongside explanations for the determined metrics, keeping transparency.

**Output Display:** All insights and metrics are neatly organized and presented on our frontend website for easy consumption.

## Challenges we ran into

**Metric Prioritization:** Given the timeline restricted nature of a hackathon, one of the first challenges was deciding which metrics to prioritize. Striking the balance between finding meaningful data points that were both thorough and feasible to attain were crucial.

**Algorithmic Efficiency:** We struggled with concerns over time complexity, especially with potential recursive scenarios. Optimizing our algorithms, prompt engineering, and simplifying architecture was the solution.

*Finding a good spot to sleep.*

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

We took immense pride in developing a solution directly tailored for an environment we're deeply immersed in. By crafting a tool for hackathons, while participating in one, we felt showcases our commitment to enhancing such events. Furthermore, not only did we conceptualize and execute the project, but we also established a robust framework and thoughtfully designed architecture from scratch.

Another general Accomplishment was our team's synergy. We made efforts to ensure alignment, and dedicated time to collectively invest in and champion the idea, ensuring everyone was on the same page and were equally excited and comfortable with the idea. This unified vision and collaboration were instrumental in bringing HackAnalyzer to life.

## What we learned

We delved into the intricacies of full-stack development, gathering hands-on experience with databases, backend and frontend development, as well as the integration of AI. Navigating through API calls and using web scraping were also some key takeaways. Prompt Engineering taught us to meticulously balance the trade-offs when leveraging AI, especially when juggling cost, time, and efficiency considerations.

## What's next for HackAnalyzer

We aim to amplify the metrics derived from the Devpost data while enhancing the search function's efficiency. Our secondary and long-term objective is to transition the application to a mobile platform. By enabling students to generate a QR code, judges can swiftly access HackAnalyzer data, ensuring a more streamlined and effective evaluation process.
## Inspiration

Globally, one in ten people do not know how to interpret their feelings. There's a huge global shift towards sadness and depression. At the same time, AI models like Dall-E and Stable Diffusion are creating beautiful works of art, completely automatically. Our team saw the opportunity to leverage AI image models and the emerging industry of Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) to create works of art from brainwaves: enabling people to learn more about themselves and

## What it does

A user puts on a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) and logs in to the app. As they work in front of front of their computer or go throughout their day, the user's brainwaves are measured. These differing brainwaves are interpreted as indicative of different moods, for which key words are then fed into the Stable Diffusion model. The model produces several pieces, which are sent back to the user through the web platform.

## How we built it

We created this project using Python for the backend, and Flask, HTML, and CSS for the frontend. We made use of a BCI library available to us to process and interpret brainwaves, as well as Google OAuth for sign-ins. We made use of an OpenBCI Ganglion interface provided by one of our group members to measure brainwaves.

## Challenges we ran into

We faced a series of challenges throughout the Hackathon, which is perhaps the essential route of all Hackathons. Initially, we had struggles setting up the electrodes on the BCI to ensure that they were receptive enough, as well as working our way around the Twitter API. Later, we had trouble integrating our Python backend with the React frontend, so we decided to move to a Flask frontend. It was our team's first ever hackathon and first in-person hackathon, so we definitely had our struggles with time management and aligning on priorities.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud to have built a functioning product, especially with our limited experience programming and operating under a time constraint. We're especially happy that we had the opportunity to use hardware in our hack, as it provides a unique aspect to our solution.

## What we learned

Our team had our first experience with a 'real' hackathon, working under a time constraint to come up with a functioning solution, which is a valuable lesson in and of itself. We learned the importance of time management throughout the hackathon, as well as the importance of a storyboard and a plan of action going into the event. We gained exposure to various new technologies and APIs, including React, Flask, Twitter API and OAuth2.0.

## What's next for BrAInstorm

We're currently building a 'Be Real' like social media plattform, where people will be able to post the art they generated on a daily basis to their peers. We're also planning integrating a brain2music feature, where users can not only see how they feel, but what it sounds like as well
## Inspiration

Let's be honest here, who **doesn't** go to hackathons for the free snacks and swag. Obviously everyone does. Snack should be accessible, in fact, Google makes sure that **no one** should be more than 200 feet away from food. Then why do hackers need to climb multiple floors and wait for snack trolleys to come around?

Here's the thing about hackathons. The first day is all hype and slowly the scope of the project sets in. By the close of the second day, everyone is tired and in desperate need of a change of scenery and some fresh ideas. Luckily, hackathons are home to some of the most big brain people we've ever met, and those very people will be able to provide their expertise.

What if...just what if, we could combine both of those ideas into one platform?

## What it does

The project is a platform for various hackers at hackathons to trade help for snacks. Say someone doesn't know how to implement something in React.js, but since there are so many talented and knowledgable hackers at a hackathon, they can send them a solution right away. The solution is held in a temporary space in the database until the user who request help, delivers the snack to the solution giver.

This brokers a Win-Win interaction between them both! One gets snacks (much needed fuel for a hackathon), and one gets a great solution! (also much needed for a hackathon)

## How we built it

Since both of us were new to hackathons and web-development in general, we decided against going for a full fledged full stack application with REST API and JWT authentication. We wanted to make sure we could finish this project and get it out there because it's just such a fun little concept! We used [Vue.js](https://vuejs.org) for the frontend framework, [tailwind css](https://tailwindcss.com) for all of our styling needs, and [Firebase](https://firebase.google.com) as our backend. We used Firestore for our database and seamlessly provided updates to the frontend. Additionally, to make the problem statements easier to read for others, we included a markdown library to render the input text, and any additional code they might have included.

## Challenges we ran into

Some of the challenges we ran into were managing the states of the user, the solutions, the snacks, and the delivery objects. In our code, we have a lot of actions in the vuex store, which made it hard to keep track of certain things so it complicated our code and made our development time longer.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

As for our first hackathon, well one of us, we did surprisingly well and really enjoyed the process! It was really amazing learning the different APIs from sponsors and trying to figure out how it'll integrate into our app. What it exceptionally awesome was that we were able to finish all of this in just 48 hours! And whats more is it works as well (most of the time).

Using Vue.js was a great learning experience and we're really proud of our frontend skills now and how much we've learned about Vuex storage and state management patterns in vue.

## What we learned

Do not drink 6 cans of red bull in under 33 hours 😭
In all seriousness though, we learned so much about front-end development, making API calls, state and session management, and also Vue.js. Typescript was a pain sometimes, but it helped keep everything a lot more clean and tidy than if it was written in javascript. Additionally there were so many resources, so it was really a journey of exploring and learning, rather than building.

## What's next for SnhackDash

Pitching it to MLH of course! 🤭

Definitely polishing up every part of this app, as well as try to integrate some live messaging capabilities either through Firebase or through web sockets. We're also planning on breaking this app down into multiple micro-services in the future, so we can scale this up. Additionally, we're looking to integrate Twilio or a similar service for push notifications, so users can see real-time when they've received a solution proposal.

One major feature that we couldn't add in time was the ability for live navigation within the actual hackathon venue, and creating a dashboard to allow organizers to add in what kind of snacks there are for the snhackdashers to deliver.