Beacon

Inspiration

This was our first MLH hackathon, so we were very unsure of what to do. We spent a while trying out different services like Android Studio and Verilog, although didn't feel happy with them. We switched to Here.com around midday on Saturday and cranked out the whole thing in an afternoon and a night.

We know that UCSD can sometimes have the stigma of 'socially dead' (although that's not the case), and as freshmen we were looking for groups of people to hang out with. This webpage allows you to post an event that you will be having, and for people to quickly scroll over to see when it is, what it is, where it is, and who they can contact about it.

What it does

It utilizes the Here.com mapping api to display an interactive maps that events can be dropped onto.

How we built it

We build Beacon using react.js, implementing the Here.com API, as well as the JSONbin.io API. We store events in an online database, then access them to display them on the map so that all users can see them.

Challenges I ran into

We had major difficulty with the API after we had trouble with asynchronous functions in javascript. They were horrible but we managed to solve them with a workaround involving about four different functions to make sure that the program did not continue until the API result was safely stored.

Accomplishments that we are proud of

We made one of our first team web apps together in one of our first hackathons. We had so much trouble getting started and picking an idea that we were psyched that we managed to pull this together.

What I learned

We learned all about Here.com's API, as well as how to properly utilize react.js. We also learned how to access and store JSON files to use for data driven situations, and some of us learned css and html for the first time.

What's next for Beacon

We want to add more functionality, such as being able to have profiles for each event to get even more information, as well as maybe having a certification system so that not anyone can make an event. We would also like to implement a feature that removes the event after the time has passed.