Inspiration
A TELEGRAM BOT is an easy-to-use third-party application that is easy to interact with. It is easy to access as well and from one look at the problem statement, our group decided to go forward with a chatbot.
What it does
Help users gain quick information about Carpark Availability and report issues/faults present in an individual’s HDB or estate. It has 3 command prompts. /start is used to begin a conversation with the bot. /fault is used to report faults present in the HDBs or the local estate. These faults are reported to the maintenance individuals and this prompt urges us to provide our name, location, and type of fault. Therefore, maintenance individuals would know what and where the problem is. Lastly, the /checkslots prompt enables individuals to check the number of available car park slots next to the desired location. The prompt urges us to provide the car park ID so that it can reply with the total number of slots and the number of available slots present in the car park. This would give individuals more knowledge of where to park before leaving their houses.
How we built it
We built it using Python programming and the Heroku platform to build, run, and operate the bot through the Heroku Command Line Interface (CLI).
Challenges we ran into
We were unable to get the chatbot to reply to our initial messages as we were constantly being left on seen/ delivered. Furthermore, getting the data and parsing through it to identify the required ones was difficult as well.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
As soon as the problem statements were released, our group intended to tackle problem statement 3. We then spent nearly an entire day attempting to work and research on it with no success. As a result, on the morning of January 16, we decided to abandon the initial concept in favor of problem statement 2. We encountered numerous challenges, but we never gave up and eventually developed a working chatbot.
What we learned
We learned how to use python programming and the Heroku software application to create telegram bots. This is an efficient tool for the future as we learned a bit of backend development as well.
What's next for CarparkChecker Bot
We can expand our bot in the future to cover more advanced functions. For fault reporting, we could require the user to upload a photo to verify the fault, and for parking lots, we could ask the user to enter his current postal code and have the bot generate nearby parking lots with availability. Furthermore, if the car park does not have available lots, we could implement a feature that alerts the user when his preferred car park has a few open slots.
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