Snapimals

Snapimals: Explore, Capture, Conserve

Inspiration With today’s technology, we can bridge the gap between people and the natural world, inspiring exploration while contributing to conservation efforts. Snapimals was designed to encourage users to engage with their surroundings by capturing photos of wildlife, unlocking new areas, and contributing valuable data that can be used by conservation organizations.

What it does Snapimals is an interactive, Pokémon-inspired experience where users explore real-world areas, "capturing" animals by photographing them. Through a Mapbox-powered interface, players can walk around, discover, and unlock new areas on the map. As they explore, they add to their wildlife gallery, scoring points and expanding their map with each discovery. The captured animal data is stored in a vector database and made available to conservation organizations, providing valuable insights into species locations and movement patterns.

How we built it Snapimals brings together several powerful technologies:

Mapbox API for an interactive map experience that lets users track their journeys, see where they’ve been, and unlock new areas in real-time.
Vector Database to store and organize animal sightings data. This allows for efficient querying by conservation groups who can use the information to understand animal habitats and patterns.
Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) for animal detection and classification, ensuring accuracy in identifying the animals users encounter.
MongoDB as our primary data store for user profiles, map progress, and wildlife galleries.
Flask as our backend framework for managing data flow between the front end and back end, ensuring seamless user interactions.
Git and Website Design for collaboration and a clean, intuitive user interface that encourages exploration and makes data easy to access.

Challenges we ran into Creating a seamless and intuitive map experience was a major challenge, particularly in ensuring the app accurately remembered where users had or hadn’t been and unlocked new areas smoothly. Integrating CNNs with the vector database for real-time animal classification and storage was also complex. Finally, some team members were new to Git, MongoDB, and web development, so we focused on knowledge-sharing and learning as we went.

Accomplishments we’re proud of We’re proud of the interactive map and location-based gameplay that makes Snapimals a truly immersive experience. By allowing conservation organizations to query the vector database, we’ve created a real-world application that connects gaming with environmental impact. Additionally, our team members gained hands-on experience in new technologies and brought this idea to life through teamwork and collaboration.

What we learned This project pushed us to learn new tools and integrate complex systems. We deepened our understanding of using CNNs for image classification, building dynamic map-based front ends with Mapbox, and organizing data in vector databases for specific querying needs. We also learned the importance of designing an engaging user experience while considering real-world applications for conservation.

What’s next for Snapimals We envision adding features like conservation rewards for capturing rare animals, interactive challenges, and possibly augmented reality to enrich the experience. Our goal is to build Snapimals into a platform where nature enthusiasts can share discoveries and support environmental causes, all while exploring and documenting the beauty of the natural world.