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Eco Rewards

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Problem

A hackathon brief called for a way to encourage clothing donation and recycling, with rewards issued only after a quality check.

Tech stack

JavaScriptNode.jsExpoExpress.jsNativeWindCSSFirebaseGoogle Gemini API

What I built

  • Led a six-person team to first place with a full-stack mobile flow for donation and rewards.
  • Used Node.js and Express on the backend, React Native and Expo on the client, and Firebase for data.
  • Integrated Google Gemini to assess donated clothing quality before rewards were issued.
  • Implemented QR generation and verification so offer redemption stayed tied to a checked item.

Decisions

Key technical choices, alternatives considered, and trade-offs.

Gemini for quality assessment

Context

Rewards only made sense with a quality gate, and the team had hours rather than weeks to ship a usable demo.

Alternatives

  • Train a custom classifier: too slow for the hackathon timeline.
  • Manual review only: workable in principle, weak as an interactive demo.

Decision

Send donation photos through Google Gemini and gate rewards on the model response.

Trade-off

Faster to ship and demo, with quality judgments dependent on an external model.