CarMax Vehicle Purchase Assister

(*3rd Place Winner) Having an LED light on the vehicle when customers pass by, green for available, red for sold. Alternative: QR Code on the windshield with info.

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Inspiration

We got inspired by all the people around us. This is only our second hackathon and we wanted to come here and shock people, and make a difference. We saw CarMax's challenge and we had a brilliant idea. We also saw this as a means to display our talents to showcase our skills in a real life scenario. It was also the team building environment and work ethic of our partners which enabled us to work through our difficulties.

What it does

We used Arduino to program the LED backlight. We got it to have three string values, one for when it is red (If the car is already sold) , one for when it is yellow (it is currently being viewed online), and one for when it is green(available for purchase) . We found out that this is a very cheap option as it is easy to find bulk orders of LED lights. Also, every car in the database will have a QR code, so customers can scan it and see all the details of the vehicle. Additionally, users will be able to see if the Car is still in the Car Max dealership by going on the website, making it convenient for the users.

How we built it

We used Arduino to program the LED backlight. We used three strings which indicated that it was either sold, currently being viewed online, or available for purchase. We used those data values to create a webpage, and on the webpage you can select a vehicle from a dropdown menu. After you select that vehicle, a QR code pops up right beneath it, where you can can then scan it and see all the details. We developed the webpage using HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. We developed the LED light using Arduino, Java, and Python. We also created a mock SQL database to hold valued so we can test out our program.

Challenges we ran into

We were struggling with the LED light changing based on which vehicle is selected. We found the Raspberry Pi server was un-friendly at times and caused us a lot of hardships. Also a big challenge was implementing the SQL database with our LED, due to problems in Raspberry Pi. We ended up using arduino for our Grove LCD Backlight.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We finished the webpage, it is fully functional and can show the availability of every vehicle in the mock database. The LED light also works to an extent and we also made the QR codes scan able so that it is accessible by every device.

What we learned

We learned a lot about Raspberry Pi, and how it functions. Also, how a database works and we were able to create a mock Rest API with vin numbers for every car. Also, we learned about teamwork, as this was not possible if it was purely done alone. Stimulating projects assigned in most companies, this also taught us real world applications and made us utilize our resources to accomplish the task at hand.

What's next for CarMax Vehicle Purchase Assister/Future Implementations

If selected, we can make a full fledged functioning application instead of a prototype. We are very proud of what we achieved in these last few hours and we hope you will consider us and our hardwork. For our next iteration, we plan to connect the SQL Database to our GROVE LCD Back light so that the lights can change in real-time.

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Updates

posted an update —

Other functionality with the QR code would be both vehicle information + hyperlink to a webpage returning all vehicles of the same make/model available in the database. If a Toyota Camry a customer is interested in was recently sold, you didn’t lose a customer, we’ll just show that customer every other Toyota Camry available for purchase.

Hardware LED available to us at hackathon was not the cheapest LED solution. A simple RGB LED strip paired with an ESP8266 microboard would have a unit cost around $20 or less, and have the capability of being updated over WiFi automatically in conjunction with database updates.

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