Inspiration
We have all faced the situation when we got stuck at some problem, hit a mental block and even after searching through the internet, and tons of other materials, we do not seem to find a good solution or better understanding of the problem. We go about discussing it on online discussion boards, patiently waiting for some Samaritan to answer to our posts, just to realize the answer wasn't what you were looking for. Instead, wouldn't it be great if you could to simply ask your doubts to someone with the experience or the knowledge of the problem you are facing in-person. At least that's what our team thought. What if as a student, you knew if the person sitting right beside you has already faced the problem you are facing now or what if you knew the person in other project team faced the same logical error in his code. This was why we decided to develop a mobile application Study Mate, to help people find the nearest help.
What it does
Study Mate is intended for students and professionals who needs help in theoretical or practical problems. Study Mate simply connects people in need of help/guidance with someone who can provide it and are in close proximity. The mobile application keeps track of subjects that one user might be expert of and can help others around him. The user who needs help in certain topic will simply have to fill in details about the problem he/she might be facing and the mobile application will "Shout out" the problem to nearby users. So, if there's a user who is familiar with the problem and available to help you out, he/she can contact the requester to meet and discuss the problem. Study Mate uses an algorithm that geo-tags each and every active user so that it shows user who are easily reachable.(Currently the application scans the area of 500 meters). The great thing about this system is the tutor-like interaction which helps greatly in understanding problems and easy to communicate. Next time you have a problem that you cant get your head around, just fire up Study Mate and clear it up with nearest help you can get.
How we built it
The application was developed for Android mobile devices. We used android studio to develop the application and Firebase for our back-end.
Challenges we ran into
The biggest challenge was to learn how to use Firebase for our application. We decided to go for Firebase as back-end as the application is depended on geo-location of the users and GeoFire API was perfect for us. We faced many issues while retrieving data as per our need.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud that we finished most of major functionalities of our application and implementing material design in the time frame given especially when all the team mates were relatively new to Firebase.
What we learned
Material Design on Android, Firebase , GeoFire, bit of GCM, dependency injection through Butter Knife
What's next for Study Mate
We would like to add in-built messaging system so that users can communicate faster.Also adding precise Location sharing option and getting the app on PlayStore.
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