## Inspiration

As we are all heading into a future that is going towards paper free, contactless payments, millennial parents are finding it inconvenient to provide their kids with paper cash allowances. Millennial parents no longer carry cash these days. 34% of adults under the age of 50 make zero cash purchases in a typical week according to The Pew Research Center. Unfortunately, cash is no longer king.

![Stats](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/FT_18.12.12_CashlessEconomy_TheshareofAmericans_4.png)

*Pew Research Center,* Andrew Perrin (2018). *[More Americans are making no weekly purchases with cash](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/12/more-americans-are-making-no-weekly-purchases-with-cash/)*

Molly is a young mom with 2 kids who are growing up and wanting to be more independent. She wants to teach them the importance of budgeting and finances by allowing them to participate in the process of making their own purchase decisions. She only uses credit card payment on her phone and rarely carries cash so it’s inconvenient to give her kids cash for allowance. She also doesn’t want to give them a credit or debit card yet as she’s unsure if they’re responsible with making financial decisions yet.

How do we find a paper free way to provide our children with allowance such that they can learn more about their spending habits and budgeting without having to worry they might face fraud or make an unreasonable purchase with a credit or debit card?

## What it does

Introducing ***k kard,*** a Konvenient and Kool way to pay.

***k kard*** is a mobile application, compatible with iOS and Android that provides a fun yet educational, safe and contactless payment solution such that parents can manage each transaction made by their child through a mobile platform. It is aimed towards millennial parents with children ages 8-12 who want to provide allowance without the hassle of dealing with cash or worrying about unreasonable transactions. ***k kard*** not only allows the child to make purchases through their own account, but tracks their spending and detects purchases out of the norm to alert parents when there is suspicious activity.

![App Screenshots](https://challengepost-s3-challengepost.netdna-ssl.com/photos/production/software_photos/001/293/009/datas/original.jpg)

## How we built it

The frontend of the application was prototyped using **Figma** and developed using **React Native,** while **Google Firebase** was incorporated for backend. The **Google Cloud Vision API** was utilized to implement object recognition.

![TechStack](https://challengepost-s3-challengepost.netdna-ssl.com/photos/production/software_photos/001/293/107/datas/original.png)

## Challenges we ran into

Everyone on the team is new to mobile app development so there was a struggle setting up the dev environment and learning a new tech stack. Integrating the camera authorization functionality of the app was the most challenging obstacle we faced. Additionally, building the bridge between Google Cloud Vision and React Native was difficult as none of us has any experience with either of the technologies prior to this project.

Although these drawbacks did set our timeline back by a few hours, our team collaborated to resolve these issues.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of and what we learned

We are excited to be able to demo a fully-functioning app, developed by 4 people that share the same drive, with little to no app development experience in only 36 hours. Between the naps and coffee breaks, in the past 36 hours we gained a vast set of skills, including using React Native, Figma, Firebase, Google Cloud Vision, presentation and pitching skills. Our team consists of a business major, a business and computer science major, and two engineering majors, allowing us to think about our ideas from a more diverse perspective. We're proud to learn key skills from one another!

## What's next for ***k kard***

At ***k kard,*** we not only value the convenience for parents, but we hope to increase financial literacy among the next generation of leaders. We would like to include more features to analyze and visualize spending habits of the children with machine learning to outline to kids what purchase patterns they can have to save more money and to provide their parents an insight into their child’s understanding of finances.

As fintech continues to expand, more precautions need to be made to ensure security so we are thinking of implementing biometrics authentication in the future. Currently the app only supports one child per parent but we wish to improve and allow the parent account to be linked to all their children. We are also excited about creating a savings account feature so the child can set aside an amount in their own “savings” to accumulate a desired interest the parent sets. Here the parent can help the child understand what interest is, the value of a dollar along with inflation rates, and importance of setting money aside in savings.

There is also the function for the child to learn about charitable donations. Here the parent can further bond with the child to learn about their interests and passions to show which charitable organization resonates the greatest with the child. Once the organization is determined by the child, they have the option to allocate part of their allowance to the charity. This amount will be donated directly to the organization.
## Inspiration

Coming from South-East Asia, we have seen the devastation that natural disasters can wreck havoc on urban populations

We wanted to create a probe that can assist on-site Search and Rescue team members to detect and respond to nearby survivors

## What it does

Each Dandelyon probe detects changes in its surroundings and pushes data regularly to the backend server.
Additionally, each probe has a buzzer that produces a noise if it detects changes in the environment to attract survivors.
Using various services, visualise data from all probes at the same time to investigate and determine areas of interest to rescue survivors.

## What it consists of

* Deployable IoT Probe
* Live data streams
* Data Visualisation on Microsoft Power BI
* Data Visualisation on WebApp with Pitney Bowes API(dandelyon.org)

## How we built it

**Hardware**

* Identified the sensors that we would be using
* Comprises of:
	1. Cell battery
	2. Breadboard
	3. Jumper Wires
	4. Particle Electron 2G (swapped over to our own Particle 3G as it has better connectivity) + Cellular antenna
	5. GPS + external antenna
	6. Sound detector sensor
	7. Buzzer
	8. Accelerometer
* Soldered pin headers onto sensors
* Tested the functionality of each sensor
	1. Wired each sensor alone to the Electron
	2. Downloaded the open source libraries for each sensor from GitHub
	3. Wrote a code for main function for the sensor to communicate with the Electron
	4. Read the output from each sensor and check if it's working
* Integrated every sensor with the Electron
* Tested the final functionality of the Electron

**Software**

* Infrastructure used

	1. Azure IoT Hub
	2. Azure Stream Analytics
	3. Azure NoSQL
		1. Microsoft Power BI
	4. Google Cloud Compute
		1. Particle Cloud with Microsoft Azure IoT Hub integration
* Backend Development
 1. Flow of live data stream from Particle devices
 2. Supplement live data with simulated data
 3. Data is piped from Azure IoT Hub to PowerBI and Webapp Backend
 4. PowerBI used to display live dashboards with live charts
 5. WebApp displays map with live data
* WebApp Development
Deployed NodeJS server on Google Cloud Compute connected to Azure NoSQL database. Fetches live data for display on map.

## Challenges we ran into

Hardware Integration
Azure IoT Stream connecting to PowerBI as well as our custom back-end
Working with live data streams

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

Integrating the Full Hardware suite
Integrating Probe -> Particle Cloud -> Azure IoT -> Azure Stream Analytics -> PowerBI
and Azure Stream Analytics -> Azure NoSQL -> Node.Js -> PitneyBowes/Leaflet

## What we learned

## What's next for Dandelyon

Prototyping the delivery shell used to deploy Dandelyon probes from a high altitude
Developing on the backend interface used to manage and assign probe response
## Inspiration

We wanted to make an app that helped people to be more environmentally conscious. After we thought about it, we realised that most people are not because they are too lazy to worry about recycling, turning off unused lights, or turning off a faucet when it's not in use. We figured that if people saw how much money they lose by being lazy, they might start to change their habits. We took this idea and added a full visualisation aspect of the app to make a complete budgeting app.

## What it does

Our app allows users to log in, and it then retrieves user data to visually represent the most interesting data from that user's financial history, as well as their utilities spending.

## How we built it

We used HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as our front-end, and then used Arduino to get light sensor data, and Nessie to retrieve user financial data.

## Challenges we ran into

To seamlessly integrate our multiple technologies, and to format our graphs in a way that is both informational and visually attractive.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we have a finished product that does exactly what we wanted it to do and are proud to demo.

## What we learned

We learned about making graphs using JavaScript, as well as using Bootstrap in websites to create pleasing and mobile-friendly interfaces. We also learned about integrating hardware and software into one app.

## What's next for Budge

We want to continue to add more graphs and tables to provide more information about your bank account data, and use AI to make our app give personal recommendations catered to an individual's personal spending.