Lots of Kitties: when you click them, they meow, and its really cute.
## Inspiration

At Carb0, we're committed to empowering individuals to take control of their carbon footprint and contribute to a more sustainable future. Our inspiration comes from the fact that 72% of CO2 emissions could be reduced by changes in consumer behavior, yet many companies lack the motivation to conduct ESG reports if not required by investors or the government. We believe that establishing consumer-driven ESG can drive companies to be accountable and take action to provide more sustainable products and services.

## What it does

We created **a personal carbon tracker** that **incentivizes** customers to adopt low-carbon lifestyles and **democratizes carbon footprint data**, making it easier for everyone to contribute to a sustainable future. Our platform provides information to influence consumers' purchase decisions and provides alternatives to help them make sustainable decisions. This way, we can encourage companies, investors, and the government to take responsibility and be more sustainable.

## How we built it

We began by identifying the problem and then went through an intense ideation process to converge on our consumer-driven ESG idea. We defined the user journey and pain points to create a convenient, incentivizing, and user-centric platform. Our reward system easily links to digital payment details and helps track CO2 emissions with data visualization and cashback based on monthly summaries. We also make product carbon footprint data easily accessible and searchable.

## Challenges we ran into

Our biggest challenge was integrating front-end and back-end and defining scope. We faced technical assumptions since the accurate database was not available due to time constraints.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

Despite these challenges, we are proud of our self-sustaining system to establish consumer-driven ESG, successful integration of front-end and back-end with a user-friendly interface, and the intense ideation process we went through.

## What we learned

During this project, we learned how to rapidly prototype a digital app in limited time and resources, gained a deeper understanding of ESG, its current challenges, and potential solutions.

## What's next for Carb0 - Empower your carbon journey

Our next steps are to conduct user testing and iterations for a higher-fidelity prototype, enrich carbon footprint database coverage and accuracy. We also plan to potentially add Carb0 as an add-on for digital wallets to reach a broader audience and engage more people in a more sustainable lifestyle.

Our vision is that **consumer-driven ESG** will incentivize governments, investors, and companies to take more initiatives in creating a more sustainable world. Join us on our journey to a sustainable future with Carb0!
## Inspiration

Our main inspiration for the idea of the Lead Zeppelin was a result of our wanting to help people with physical disorders still be able to appreciate and play music with restricted hand movements. There are countless--hundreds upon thousands of people who suffer from various physical disorders that prevent them from moving their arms much. When it comes to playing music, this proves a major issue as very few instruments can be played without open range of movement. Because every member of our team loves playing music, with the common instrument amongst all four of us being guitar, we decided to focus on trying to solve this issue for the acoustic guitar in particular.

## What it does

The Lead Zeppelin uses mechanical systems placed above the guitar frets and sound hole that allow the user to play the instrument using only two keypads. Through this system, the user is able to play the guitar without needing to move much more than his or her fingers, effectively helping those with restricted elbow or arm movement to play the guitar.

## How we built it

There were a lot of different components put into building the Lead Zeppelin. Starting with the frets, the main point was actually the inspiration for our project's name: the use of pencils--more specifically, their erasers. Each fret on each string has a pencil eraser hovering above it, which is used to press down the string at the user's intent. The pencils are able to be pushed down through the use of servos and a few mechanisms that were custom 3D printed. Above the sound hole, two servos are mounted to the guitar to allow for horizontal and vertical movement when plucking or strumming the strings. The last hardware parts were the circuit boards and the user's keypads, for which we utilized hot glue and sodder.

## Challenges we ran into

There were many obstacles as we approached this project from all different aspects of the design to the mechanics. On the other hand, however, we expected challenges since we delved into the idea knowing it was going to be ambitious for our time constraints. One of the first challenges we confronted was short-circuiting two Raspberry Pi's that we'd intended to use, forcing us to switch over to Arduino--which was entirely unplanned for. When it came time to build, one of the main challenges that we ran into was creating the mechanism for the pressing down of the strings on the frets of the guitar. This is because not only did we have to create multiple custom CAD parts, but the scale on the guitar is also one that works in millimeters--leaving little room for error when designing, and even less so when time is taken into consideration. In addition, there were many issues with the servos not functioning properly and the batteries' voltages being too low for the high-power servos, which ended up consuming more time than was allotted for solving them.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

The biggest accomplishment for all of us is definitely pulling the whole project together to be able to create a guitar that can potentially be used for those with physical disabilities. When we were brainstorming ideas, there was a lot of doubt about every small detail that could potentially put everything we would work for to waste. Nonetheless, the idea and goal of our project was one that we really liked and so the fact that we were able to work together to make the project work was definitely impressive.

## What we learned

One of the biggest lessons we'll keep in mind for next time is time management. We spent relatively little time in the first day working on the project, and especially considering the scale of our idea, this resulted in our necessity to stay up later and sleep less the later it got in the hackathon as we realized the magnitude of work we had left.

## What's next for Lead Zeppelin

Currently, the model of Lead Zeppelin is only on a small scale meant to demonstrate proof of concept, considering the limited amount of time we had to work. In the future, this is an automated player that would be expanded to cover all of the frets and strings over the whole guitar. Furthermore, Lead Zeppelin is a step towards an entirely self-playing, automated guitar that could follow its complete development in the design helping those with physical disabilities.