Periods suck. Not only do your ovaries feel like they're going to kill you, there is always the chance of death from toxic shock syndrome, a bacterial infection that can be caused from leaving in tampon a for too long. As nice as it would be to lock yourself in a dark room and watch Netflix for a week, life goes on. Women everywhere are forced to go with the flow while their uterus yeets away its unused inner lining. Fortunately, there's no need to ovary act. Aunt Flo is at your cervix!

What it does

Aunt Flo sends the user reminders through SMS to remind them to change their pad/tampon. Additionally, at the end of your cycle, Aunt Flo will send you data about your cycle via email. Aunt Flo is simple, convenient, and accessible to all.

How we built it

Aunt Flo was created using Python and Flask for the backend, ngrok to host our server locally, Twilio API to send and receive messages via sms, and SendGrid API to send data to the user's email. We also used HTML and CSS to create a website in order to inform users about Toxic Shock Syndrome and how to use Aunt Flo.

Challenges we ran into

Learning how to use the Twilio API was one of the biggest challenges we faced, especially since it was most of the group's first time working with it. We also had trouble with Git and version control.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to see our simple idea of a period reminder app come to life through Aunt Flo. This is three out of four of our first time demenstruating our final product at a hackathon and we are glad to share how useful and fun it is to practice good hygiene. Not only does Aunt Flo promote good hygiene, but can potentially decrease the number of toxic shock syndrome cases.

What we learned

Since it was many of our first time using Twilio API, we complete a few TwilioQuest mission in order to learn how to implement the Twilio API. We also learned how to use Sendgrid API in order to send data to the user's email. Additionally, we learned web design with HTML, and CSS in order to create Aunt Flo's informative website.

What's next for Aunt Flo

Currently, in order to demonstrate the project, Aunt Flo takes time in as seconds, but the original intention was for her to send notifications after a number of hours chosen by the user. In the future, we would like to implement a feature in which Aunt Flo would send a warning to the user when user requests for an amount of time that is considered unsafe (i.e. more than 8 hours). Aunt Flo would then ask the user to enter a shorter number of hours.

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