The thought that one can have access to basic but important data when they cannot connect to the internet will definitely prove to be useful. It is also fascinating to have such access from the internet without actually connecting to data or WiFi.

Stuck allows the user to search a word in the dictionary, find restaurants near a location, and weather in a certain area through SMS (obviously, the user does not need to be connected to the internet). Stuck can also act as a translator between two users.

We built it mainly using Twilio API. We also use various other APIs such as Yelp and Oxford to help out with our code. For the translation and language detection, we used Google Translate API.

The first challenge that we ran into is finding an idea for our project. The presentations from the sponsors inspired us to create Stuck. At first, we wanted Stuck to be just a dictionary. When creating the dictionary, we had problems parsing data from SMS and debugging our code live using our phones. We also had trouble figuring out how to use voice API in our code. After learning more about the Twilio API we were able to solve these problems. We decided to expand on our app because we wanted to challenge ourselves further. We again ran into the problem of thinking of ideas. But, we were able to find inspirations and overcome this challenge.

We’re definitely proud of the entire project. It was technically challenging but an inspiring project. We are especially proud of learning how to use text messages to obtain the information we want based on input parameters. After we learnt how to do this, it was easy to expand and add features to what we already had.

We learned how to use Twilio to send and receive text messages and calls. We also learned how to use Flask and incorporate other APIs to achieve our end goal.

We would like to expand its functionality to several other applications such as spelling suggestions, maps and locations, and much more.