This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Weekend Challenge: Build for a Friend
What I Built
I am a BCA student in India. Some of my friends find Coding, Digital Logic and Maths very hard. They say "I don't understand this" and then they give up.
So I built BCA Study Buddy, a free AI study helper for them.
- Choose a subject: Coding, Digital Logic or Maths.
- Choose a mode: Explain (step by step, with a real-life example) or Quiz me (one question at a time, with kind feedback).
- Ask in English or Hindi.
- One tap opens YouTube videos about your exact question.
- Save any chat as a PDF or a text file.
I built all of it on my phone. I do not have a laptop right now.
What my friend said
I gave the app to my friend Anas and asked for an honest review. He tried it on a Maths topic (sets) and liked it. Then he sent me this:
"Badhya hai bs isme ek feature add krde jisme video bhi ho taake visual bhi dikh jaye. Ya YT se connect video link jod de"
In simple English: "It's great. Just add a feature with video, so we can see visuals too. Or connect YouTube video links."
He was right. Some topics are hard to understand from text only, like K-maps and logic gates. So I added two buttons under every answer: Watch video (English) and Watch video (Hindi). They open YouTube with videos about the exact question.
Demo
Live app: https://bca-study-buddy.streamlit.app/
The first open can take up to a minute, because free hosting puts the app to sleep.
Code
Sunilkumawat-ai
/
bca-study-buddy
Free AI study helper for BCA students: Coding, Digital Logic, Maths. Built with Gemma + Streamlit.
📚 BCA Study Buddy
A free AI study helper for BCA students who find Coding, Digital Logic and Maths hard. It explains topics in simple English or Hindi, quizzes you to practice, and points you to videos when you want to see the idea.
Built for a real group of friends for the Hacktoberfest 2026 "Build for a Friend" challenge, and improved after a friend tested it.
🔗 Live demo: https://bca-study-buddy.streamlit.app/
The first open can take up to a minute. The app sleeps when nobody uses it (free hosting).
✨ Features
- 3 subjects: Coding, Digital Logic, Maths
- 2 modes: Explain (step by step, with a real-life example) and Quiz me (one question at a time, with kind feedback)
- English or Hindi: ask in either language
- Fast answers: the reply appears word by word while it is being written
- Video help: one tap opens YouTube with videos on your exact question…
How I Built It
- Open-weight AI: Gemma, used through the Gemini API with a free Google AI Studio key
- App: Python and Streamlit
- Hosting: Streamlit Community Cloud (free)
- PDF export: fpdf2
- Tools: only my phone browser and GitHub
Each subject has its own teaching style in the prompt. Digital Logic answers use truth tables. Maths answers go step by step. Coding answers explain each line of code.
I am a beginner, so I used an AI assistant to guide me step by step, and I tested every step myself.
Things went wrong, and I fixed them:
- Gradio on Hugging Face needed a paid plan. I moved to Streamlit, which is free.
- The model name stopped working when Google changed it. The fix was one line.
-
Some answers showed raw math code like
\rightarrow. I changed the prompt so the AI writes plain text. - The app felt slow. Now the answer appears word by word, and answers are shorter.
- A friend got a page loading error. A refresh fixed it.
Why Does Open Innovation Matter?
I used Gemma instead of a closed model for three reasons:
- It was free to start. A student with no money and no laptop could still build and share this.
- I could swap the model easily. When the model name changed, I changed one line and the rest of the app stayed the same.
- I control how it teaches. I can change the prompt and the style to fit my friends. Later, the same idea can run on a local machine, so a student's questions do not have to go to a server they don't control.
I will be honest about the limits. The free key has daily limits. AI can make mistakes, especially in maths, so the app tells students to check important answers with their book or teacher.
Prize Categories
Best Use of Gemma. Gemma is the core of the project. It explains, quizzes and teaches in two languages.
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