charlie

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This is our app mascot, charlie.

Inspiration

Our inspiration came from the rising importance of building smart cities that prioritize sustainable, accessible, and health-focused infrastructure. We saw a growing need for simple yet powerful tools that can help people meet their daily hydration needs while supporting eco-friendly initiatives. In many urban areas, access to clean drinking water isn’t always readily available, and even when it is, people often aren’t aware of nearby water refill options. This often leads to increased use of single-use plastic bottles, which contribute to environmental waste. By providing an app that easily connects users to the nearest water fountains and refill stations, we aim to foster healthier habits and reduce plastic dependency. Beyond individual health benefits, we envision Charlie as a tool that can contribute to smart city development by offering real-time data on water usage and needs. By aggregating user-contributed data, cities can better understand water accessibility and usage patterns, enabling them to optimize resource distribution, enhance public health infrastructure, and reduce environmental impact. Our inspiration is grounded in the belief that sustainable cities start with empowered, health-conscious citizens, and that small, everyday actions can make a big difference.

What it does

Charlie is an iOS app designed to help users locate the nearest water fountains and refill stations in their area. Charlie provides pinpoint directions to clean water sources, helping users stay hydrated. With customizable hydration reminders and a user-contributed database of water locations, Charlie is both a personal hydration assistant and a sustainable choice for eco-conscious individuals.

How we built it

We used Swift to build an ios development that structures a water fountain app's main interface with a welcome screen and a tabbed navigation layout. Initially, it displays a WelcomeView, then switches to a TabView with different screens like MainMapView for map-based fountain locations and other tabs for tracking or reviewing selected locations. State variables manage the app's flow, including the selected tab, location name, and intake goals.

Challenges we ran into

Our main challenges were debating between apple maps and google maps API. Additionally, during the development process we struggled to integrate everyone's individual pieces into one. One other challenge was we tried to hardcore each location, however as it was tedious we decided to find data from online, and that was more efficient.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud of creating an app that promotes healthy and eco-friendly habits while contributing to smart city goals. Building a community-driven database that will grow with user contributions is an accomplishment that we believe will make Charlie sustainable and impactful in the long term. This our first hackathon and first building an app, and we are proud of creating a working project.

What we learned

We learned about integrating maps using apple features, the swift language, using apple packages, and overall what it takes to build an ios app.

What's next for charlie

Improvng the design, improving the location/maps, making it have a more user-friendly interface, and mobile friendly, eventually making this a cross platform application.