Inspiration
Adam had the dream to create this application for months and as his last hackathon, he decided to peruse it. It started as a simple way to use QR codes on dog tags to get alerted when someone finds your lost dog, it turned into much more.
What it does
There's two goals of PetControl, the first is the original idea of using a QR code to keep track of pets. Current dog tags can hold small amounts of information, maybe a name and an address. By using PetControl's QR tags pet owners can set large amounts of information. The owner can tell the person who finds it the dogs name, the owners name, the phone number, address, and special notes about the pet. By doing this it allows the pet to get home to the owner faster and safer.
The second part of PetControl came after, instead of only being able to be used when a pet is lost, PetControl can be used any time of the day to help manage and take care of your beloved animal friend. With widgets in a dashboard on our website, pet owners can log in and view a live video of their pet with their Nest Camera, order more food for their pet using the eBay API, or mark their dog as lost so they are immediately notified whenever someone scans their dog's tag.
Not everyone has a QR code reader, or a smartphone, that's why we used Twilio to send a picture of the tag to a number and it act the same as the app.
How we built it
The back end was all developed using Python, combined with Flask we were able to create a fully functioning website complete with accounts, pets, dashboard, and numerous other features (including Twilio support). The mobile app was developed for Android and is complete with tag scanning functionality, pet lookup, and pet management.
Challenges I ran into
In the beginning we had planned to use the JavaScript framework Meteor, however parsing a QR code using Javascript proved difficult and we moved to Python where we felt more comfortable.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
I (Tristan) am proud of learning Python and Flask to create a Python web application, I am also proud of the frontend work I did to create the online dashboard.
What I learned
As above, Tristan learned how to create a web application in Python by using Flask.
What's next for PetControl
PetControl has many use cases, and we believe that it can play a substantial role in helping many people have cost effective, modern pet tags.
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