Inspiration

We wanted to encourage Seattleites to take public transportation more often by incentivising them with meaningless internet points.

What it does

Reads your Orca card using NFC, counts your recent trips, updates the global database with your card number and total number of trips, then shows you a scoreboard to see how you compare with other busr's!

How we built it

We found a great open-source app that already uses NFC to scan your Orca card for data. We learned from their approach to build our app, and then used Firebase to store all user data.

Challenges I ran into

Getting the card-reading NFC methods to work!!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

None of us had built an Android app before, nor had we used Kotlin, Firebase, or NFC, so the entire project was uncharted territory for us and we're happy that we got it working by the end of the hackathon!

What we learned

So much! Lots of Android/Kotlin basics, how to navigate and use NoSQL databases like Firebase, and how to have fun while meeting a tough deadline :)

What's next for Best Busr

We'd love to add some more gamification features such as a "Territory War" mode where you're able to establish your territory by taking certain bus routes.

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