AQ-Station

Inspiration

On an opening day for HACC 2021, we weren't sure about which challenge to choose, but when the problem was presented from the Animal Quarantine facilities, we felt inclined to try and help out as much as we possibly could. We hope that we found and made a solution to their problem!

What it does

AQ-Station functions as a simple, convenient tool to support Animal Quarantine administrators and pet owners to have consistent, effective, and efficient communication with each other. The Animal Quarantine administrators are able to easily add, edit, and remove pets based on their microchip code as pets enter and leave the animal quarantine facilities. Pet owners are able to easily check the status of their pet and their position in the queue using their pets’ microchip code.

How we built it

This application was built using Meteor.js and MongoDB, programmed in JavaScript, and designed using HTML/CSS.

Running the Project

First, install Meteor.

Second, go to the AQ-Station repository, and click the "Clone or download" button to download your new GitHub repo to your local file system. Using GitHub Desktop is a great choice if you use MacOS or Windows.

Third, cd into the app/ directory of your local copy of the repo, and install third party libraries with:

$ meteor npm install

Lastly, run the system with:

$ meteor npm run start

The app should be running at http://localhost:3000.

Challenges we ran into

Implementing the queue was the most difficult aspect of this project and took the greatest amount of time. Concerns were also raised in regards to having the first in, first out (FIFO) queue be relegated as a background process. Thus, our solution is to encourage administrative level accounts to have a tab opened to the page of the waitlist of owners for the queue to continuously update. There was uncertainty whether we would be able to program a fully functional queue while also protecting the data, security, and privacy of the users.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The clean authentication process and the queue implementation were what we were most proud of. We were fortunate enough to solve any difficulties and aspire to create a functional, working project.

What we learned

Time management and consistent team planning were crucial to the success of our project. We were able to use different skill sets from each of us to incorporate the frontend and backend of the application.

What's next for AQ Station

We hope to continue developing AQ-Station, making it cleaner and simple to use. Implement more something to make it easier for the admin to use. Add an edit announcements page. Make it possible for the admin to edit the queue page not just remove the first person in the queue. Revamp queue system to functionally operate throughout the app, not just being present in a single waitlist page.

See the app live!

Deployed Application: http://142.93.62.191/#/

The way to access the administration side is:

Click the "Administration" button
Input "admin@foo.com" for the Email address
Input "changeme" for the password
Click the "Submit" button and you will be directed to a page where you can add and remove pets.

The way to access the pet-owner side:

Click the "Pet Owner" button
You can input any credentials for the Email address, First Name, Last Name, Phone Number, and Password text slots, but you must input either "55555555" or "88888888" for the Microchip #1 slot.
Click the "Submit" button and you will be directed to a page where you can check if your pet is ready for pick-up and you will be redirected to your place in the queue.