Car Dex

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  Car Dex

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  Back-End Implementation

Inspiration

Car Dex was inspired by the technological advancements of the smartcar API for the growing technology arising in the automobile industry. The app bridges the gap between car enthusiasts, drivers, and smartcar owners with anyone: specifically, smartphone owners.

What it does

Car Dex allows users to interact with drivers for a fun and explorative experience inspired by the activity of geocaching. For everyone! No driver’s license required!

Users are motivated by the app to explore the area for smartcars that are associated with the app. Once a user finds a Car Dex compatible car, the user scans a QR code that is supplied to the owner of the smartcar to obtain experience to level up and obtain rewards within the app (and even physically in the car left by the smartcar owner!): an incentive-based geocaching mobile automobile app.

How we built it

Car Dex was built using the smartcar API to connect user to their cars, each other, and their online accounts associated with the app. Android Studio utilizes the smartcar API and PHP to connect to an Apache web server that hosts users' data. Such interfacing required the usage of Authentication services such as OAuth2, token generating services, and URI handling services.

Challenges we ran into

The integration between many back-end pieces required a lot of time and effort to function properly. Additionally, the given software was not as compatible with development software our group was familiar with, so there was a bit of a learning curve in conjunction with the short time frame.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The ideas and concrete developments that were made for the app represent the direction the project was heading. There is definitely a lot of work to be shown implementation-wise on how every piece of the app can work together.

What we learned

From the development of Car Dex, our team learned how to adapt to new frameworks and tools in order to create an app. Most members familiarity with app development consist of the framework React-Native; however, the dependencies that arose during first trials of implementing the app in in React-Native yielded no success. The ability to improvise, adapt, and overcome the barrier of such thresholds was exercised during the duration of this project.

What's next for Car Dex

Going forward, Car Dex hopes to inspire other car and automobile industries to support the implementation of smartcar APIs for the development of not only the app but also the community surrounding the app: linking a wide array of people with even the slightest interest in exploration for geocaching or technological and mechanical interest in automobiles.

Built With

• android-studio
• apache
• php
• smartcar-api