Inspiration
As our world continues to combat the impacts of industrial activities, we designed Pollution is a MisTech! to allow our users to visualise the contribution they can provide in terms of number of trees required to plant to offset the negative environmental impacts of their car ride.
What it does
Pollution is a MisTech! takes in a driver's start and end location. Granted Google deems there is a drivable path between start and end, we use the Google Maps API to calculate the distance between the two locations. Using historical data of the amount of emissions a car produces per kilometer, and the amount of emissions a tree absorbs in a day, the website outputs the amount of trees needed to offset the exhaust emissions of the car ride along with a visualisation of the car killing trees as it moves.
How we built it
We began our post-brainstorming Development Workflow by working on a rough mock-up of how we wanted our end result to be on Microsoft Paint. Then we proceeded to create a standardized UI on Figma. After this, we divided the tasks into research, front-end development (for which we used HTML, Javascript and CSS) and API incorporation. We also had regular team check-ins to address shortcomings, challenges faced during development, group debugging sessions, etc. After each of us completed our individual assignments, we had a team reunification of code where we addressed merge conflicts, and merged branches on GitHub to create a functional web application using a Domain.com domain. To finish up, we had a team review of code and quality assurance.
Challenges we ran into
- This was our team’s first time implementing an API and while learning to read the Google Map API documentation, we had trouble figuring out how to allow user inputs and ensuring our program works accordingly.
- We wanted to create a .tech domain and ran into troubles with Domain.com regarding that. Krishna was on call with a Domain.com representative about setting it up and received an eventual response that they would get back to us within 24 hours.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- Successfully implementing the API to work as desired.
- Implementing Javascript code to result in the fading of the green trees and displaying the withered trees when the car passed by them.
- Reaching out to our peers for opinions on our project.
What we learned
- How to implement an API, reading its document and adapting it to work in a customized project.
- Producing animations using Javascript and CSS.
- People are usually willing to help out if you genuinely ask.
What's next for Pollution is a MisTech!
- Provide the user with options of which vehicle they're using for transport (bus / train / airplane) and receive tree estimates accordingly.
- Implement Place Autocomplete from Google Maps API to increase user convenience.
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