Created by The Lovelace Ladies: Jen Brissman, Ilana Rose Mercer, Rachel Perkins, Yvonne Yeh
Sundial is a web app for yoga students, teachers, and enthusiasts that allows a user to create custom yoga sequences. Users can also generate random sequences of varying lengths, and save all sequences to their yoga library.
Sundial is a web app for yoga enthusiasts that allows practitioners (teachers and students) to algorithmically generate yoga sequences at the touch of a button. Users can generate and save these sequences to use for both teaching and personal, at-home use.:sun_with_face:
Front-end: React, CSS, HTML
Back-end: Python, Flask, SQLAlchemy, CockroachDB
APIs: Yoga API by Rebecca G. Estes with expanded data set from the creators and friendly yoga teachers
One of the most difficult parts of being a good yoga teacher is planning out effective yoga sequences that take into account the transitions between poses. Teachers also require deep understanding of the body, anatomy, and flow of positions when creating the sequences. An experienced registered yoga teacher, Yvonne proposed an app that plans out yoga sequences to her Hackathon team, the Lovelace Ladies. We are all passionate about mental health and wellness, and together we built Sundial.
- CockroachDB
- Python 3.7.3
Front-end: React, Bootstrap, CSS, HTML
Back-end: Python, Flask, SQLAlchemy, CockroachDB
APIs: Yoga API by Rebecca G. Estes with expanded data set from the creators and generous yoga teachers
Yoga is an essential tool for the mental and physical health of many, and we felt that it was important for anyone to have free access to these sequences, and the ability to start customizing one's own personal health care.
This app was inspired by Yvonne's background as a yoga teacher. She and her yoga teacher friends love sequencing classes but often it take a long time to plan out series of classes. She brought this idea to her Hackathon team, the Lovelace Ladies, all passionate about mental health and wellness -- and together they built Sundial.
Working together remotely, we are a team of 4 based out of New York, Florida, Oregon, and California. To navigate this, we used Git/GitHub for version control and VS Code Live Share to pair program.
Understanding React took some trial and error, especially since Rachel was the only member of the team with experience using React. This was the first time for all of us using CockroachDB, we ran into issues seeding the initial database, but after debugging one line at a time we were able to figure it how to load our database in.
We built a custom yoga sequence generator by inputting real yoga sequences created by Yvonne. Using this seed data, we populated a dictionary of Markov chains to create an algorithm that procedurally generates new yoga sequences.
We learned that being ambitious with our MVP can lead to some incredible learning experiences. Seeing a project built from scratch to completion was rewarding! We learned how important understanding our data model is, as it allows the whole team to be in agreement about how to build features that layer on top of each other.
- Additional poses in our yoga API and more base sequences to make the algorithmically generated sequences more diverse
- More options for generating sequences (length, difficulty, target poses)
- Connecting Spotify API to link music to playlists
- Share sequences with other members
- Incorporate Twilio API to send sequences via text or email
Jen is an NYC based software engineer. A tenacious multi-hyphenate, she is also a theatre, tv, film, voiceover, commercial actress and model, a senior operations manager, a professional organizer, and lifestyle manager. In her free time, she is an adventurous world traveler who happiest in hiking boots and enjoys mountain biking, snowboarding, running, and scuba diving. Her most recent work includes producing demo tutorial videos and recordings for prominent software companies.
Ilana Rose Mercer is a software engineer living in New York City who is passionate about leveraging technology to help improve human quality of life. Before she learned how to code and became passionate about her career in tech, she worked as a professional classical musician and private music teacher. [LinkedIn]
As a former high school math and yearbook teacher, Rachel took a cross country move as an opportunity to explore her interests in design and eningeering. Engineering has challenged her in all the right ways and it's hard to take her away from learning.
Yvonne is a software engineer from the Silicon Valley who has never seen the show. Curiosity, creativity, and a love of learning are at the root of everything Yvonne does. She loves that coding because it is artful – there are infinite ways to code a program! Before she learned how to code, she worked in K-12 education, design, and mental/physical fitness.