Devlog #1

I’ve finished the foundation of my project! The app currently has a simple UI and one AI tool that takes in a photo and tells you what’s wrong with it — whether it’s frayed wiring, loose screws, cracked/bent frames, or corrosion.

Goal of my project: cut down the time it takes to find an issue so an FRC team has more time to actually fix the problem, and flag problems a human might miss during a rushed pit-stop check.

Working with Flutter to program the UI wasn’t too bad. I’ve always been used to Java and JavaScript, so although Dart isn’t exactly the same, I picked it up pretty fast.

I had the most difficulty implementing the AI. I started with an Ollama model, but it was way too slow — it would time out before it ever finished telling me what it noticed in the photo. I then found out Google lets you use a free Gemini model, so I got an API key for that and added it in. The new problem: every time I published my app as a GitHub Page, the API key would get disabled because it wasn’t safe sitting in client-side code. I finally learned the key needs to live on a backend to actually be secure, so I set one up using Render.

I’m so proud of how my project is looking so far! Next up, I plan to add more tools, like a rules scanner.