CarboTrack

Inspiration

About the Project: As young members of society during this time, it is our imperative responsibility to care for the environment in order to ensure that future generations will be able to thrive and inhabit this planet that we have called home for all of humanity. In 2016, 36 BILLION metric tons of CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) were emitted into the atmosphere source. A disastrous trend that, if continued, will surely lead to an unreturnable point in the race against global warming. Wanting to be global members of society and help the greater good as much as we can, our group decided to develop a mobile application that was built on the foundation of information sharing and modernized interfaces and features, CarboTrack.

What it does

Our mobile application is easily accessible and allows a user to create a profile by signing up using email or existing social media accounts. Once signed in, the user will be able to fill out their simple daily questionnaire, including the distance they had driven that day, questions regarding whether or not they’d recycled, and many more (upon further development). After filling out the questionnaire our app calculates if the user's Carbon Emission value is high or low from a custom formula, and outputs it with a corresponding emoji to reference their status! The user is then brought to a menu screen where they are able to view their profile, the amount of "experience points" they have earned, as well as their spot on a friend, and global leaderboard (people with better Emission Values are ranked higher). Unlike most lifestyle applications that are stale and just involve inputting data, CarboTrack includes "game elements" such as the exp points we mentioned above, instilling a sense of competition all for a good cause. In addition, there is a settings menu for logistics such as resetting a password.

How we built it

For our proof of concept, we mainly utilized Proto.io. Using text, states, interactions, and more we were able to develop a working model that does a good job of displaying the basic interfaces and action listeners of our application. On a more technical note, we also developed the first main menu page using HTML (used a small portion of a W3Schools template, which is proof that if given more time, we would be able to code the entire app using HTML, CSS, and Javascript/React Native elements to utilize a database.

Challenges we ran into

Since it was all our first hackathon and first time working together, we had trouble at first even getting on the right track in terms of getting an idea that would work. However, thanks to our mentor (sohom070994 on discord), we were able to stay persistent and brainstorm ideas that would be beneficial to society and help with current issues. Even though we had never used many of the technologies (such as proto.io) that we need to utilize, we were able to keep this persistence and overcome these obstacles using collaboration and the exchange of ideas. Time constraints were also very challenging, with such a short amount of time to tackle such as big obstacle, but with careful planning and each of us being efficient we were able to do well and not be scrapped for time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Overlooking any prizes we would have hoped to win, the most important accomplishment is that we took a big step in our careers to attend our first hackathon. No matter if it was virtual, the experience that we have gained and the knowledge we have gain outweighed any prize that we could acquire.

What we learned

Yes, we learned about how to use Proto.io and create a webpage using HTML, but aside from that, we have learned to communicate effectively in a technical setting. Before this, we have had to work in teams during English class or in a sport, but never had we had to work in a team on something as abstract as a hackathon (let's face it this is not the same as discussing the symbolism of the green light in the Great Gatsby). Learning to explain our thoughts when it comes to code is not something one is born with, this experience definitely helped us sharpen that newfound skill.

What's next for CarboTrack

For CarboTrack to be further developed, we must apply a database and webserver to actively store and get data to keep information for profiles and Carbon Emission statistics. The next step would just be to code as much HTML as possible on a text editor such as Atom or Visual Studio Code and apply props, asynchronous functions using Javascript/React Native elements. From there we would implement a web server such as apache and a database such as SQLite so that we are actively able to change our application. And who knows? Maybe one day as you are casually scrolling through the endless list of apps on the App/Google Play store, you may just stumble upon a peculiar-sounding title, known as CarboTrack.