## Inspiration

We were inspired by the simple, engaging and easily digestible nature of visual novels and dating simulator games. We figured that these type of games would be able to attract and hold the players attention enough to teach them the basics of sign language, while simultaneously presenting them with a sweet and heart-warming narrative

## What it does

Signs of Love simultaneously provides users with an educational resource and gaming experience. It provides a fun and engaging way to learn sign language, complete with hand-drawn artwork, immersive music, and a touching story. Players' choices affect their interactions, and they can choose from two possible routes.

## How we built it

The artwork (backgrounds, character sprites, UI elements, sign language images, and more) were created in Clip Studio. The game code was completed using Ren'py and PyCharm, with communication and collaboration made possible through GitHub and Discord.

## Challenges we ran into

J wrote the story and gameplay flow from start to finish within a few hours, and also wrote all the game code while learning to use Ren’py in less than 24 hours. This was a new tool for her and it came with inconsistencies between documentation and public help forums. She also had to pivot from our original plans for some of the user interactions to learn sign language, but was able to come up with variations that allowed for different learning strategies to be applied. However, she was able to apply her existing knowledge of Python, and picked up new knowledge in the process.

Sara had to draw over 27 game elements in less than 36 hours. This included finding a solution to the challenge of drawing the movement of sign language in an understandable way, and coming up with the aesthetics and overall design scheme of the game.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

We managed to put together a full chapter of a visual novel game complete with original dialogue and art in less than 36 hours.

## What we learned

Game development takes time. Doing it in a limited time frame is not recommended. Also, drinking tea at 4 am is a good way to keep working without sleeping.

## What's next for Signs of Love

* Adding additional chapters and sign language vocabulary
* Proper build and release on itch.io
* Customizing more menu and game UI elements
## Inspiration

Software engineering and development have been among the most dynamically changing fields over the years. Our voice is one of our most powerful tools, and one which we often take for granted - we share ideas and inspiration and can communicate instantly on a global scale. However, according to recent statistics, 3 out of 1000 children are born with a detectable level of hearing loss in one or both ears. While many developers have pursued methods of converting sign language to English, we identified a need for increased accessibility in the opposite way. In an effort to propel forth the innovators of tomorrow, we wanted to develop a learning tool for children with hearing impairments to accelerate their ability to find their own voice.

## What it does

Our Sign Language Trainer is primarily designed to teach children sign language by introducing them to the ASL alphabet with simple words and effective visuals. Additionally, the application implements voice-to-text to provide feedback on word pronunciation to allow children with a hearing impairment to practice speaking from a young age.

## How we built it

The program was built using node.js as well as HTML. We also made a version of the web app for Android using Java.

## Challenges we ran into

The majority of our team was not familiar with HTML nor node.js, which caused many roadblocks during the majority of the hack. Throughout the competition, although we had an idea of what we wanted to accomplish, our plans continued to change as we learned new things about the available software. The main challenge that we dealt with was the large amount of learning involved with creating a website from scratch as we kept running into new problems that we had never seen before. We also had to overcome issues with hosting the domain using Firebase.

## Accomplishments that we proud of

While also our largest challenge, the amount of content we had to learn about web development was our favorite accomplishment. We were really happy to have completed a product from scratch with almost no prior knowledge of the tools we used to build it. The addition of creating a phone app for our project was the cherry on top.

## What I learned

1. Learned about node.js, HTML, and CSS
2. The ability to understand and structure code through analysis and documentation
3. How to cooperate as a team and brainstorm effectively
4. GitHub was new for some members of the team, but by the end, we were all using it like a pro
5. How to implement android applications with android studio
6. How to fully develop our own website

## What's next for floraisigne

If we were to continue this project, we would try and add additional hardware to exponentially increase the accuracy of the solution. We would also implement a neural network system to allow the product to convert sign language into English Language.
## Inspiration

Between 1994 and 2013 there were 6,873 natural disasters worldwide, which claimed 1.35 million lives or almost 68,000 lives on average each year. In many of these disasters, people don't know where to go, and where is safe. For example, during Hurricane Harvey, many people learned about dangers such as alligators or flooding through other other people, and through social media.

## What it does

* Post a natural disaster hazard in your area
* Crowd-sourced hazards
* Pulls government severe weather data
* IoT sensor system to take atmospheric measurements and display on map
* Twitter social media feed of trending natural disasters in the area
* Machine learning image processing to analyze posted images of natural disaster hazards

Our app **Eye in the Sky** allows users to post about various natural disaster hazards at their location, upload a photo, and share a description of the hazard. These points are crowd-sourced and displayed on a map, which also pulls live data from the web on natural disasters. It also allows these users to view a Twitter feed of current trending information on the natural disaster in their location. The last feature is the IoT sensor system, which take measurements about the environment in real time and displays them on the map.

## How I built it

We built this app using Android Studio. Our user-created posts are hosted on a Parse database (run with mongodb). We pull data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration severe weather data inventory. We used Particle Electron to collect atmospheric sensor data, and used AWS to store this data in a JSON.

## Challenges I ran into

We had some issues setting up an AWS instance to run our image processing on the backend, but other than that, decently smooth sailing.

## Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We were able to work really well together, using everyone's strengths as well as combining the pieces into a cohesive app that we're really proud of. Everyone's piece was integrated well into the app, and I think we demonstrated good software collaboration.

## What I learned

We learned how to effectively combine our code across various languages and databases, which is a big challenge in software as a whole. We learned Android Development, how to set up AWS, and how to create databases to store custom data. Most importantly, we learned to have fun!

## What's next for Eye in the Sky

In the future, we would like to add verification of people's self-reported hazards (through machine learning and through up-voting and down-voting)
We would also like to improve the efficiency of our app and reduce reliance on network because there might not be network, or very poor network, in a natural disaster
We would like to add more datasets from online, and to display storms with bigger bubbles, rather than just points
We would also like to attach our sensor to drones or automobiles to gather more weather data points to display on our map