College Ride Share

This is a mobile application similar to Tinder in that it matches people but for getting rides to and from class

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Inspiration

The inspiration came from the crowded buses and parking lots around campus as well as feeling trapped on campus without a car when I was a freshman. I think that this app will greatly help the congestion of traffic during school hours and reduce squishing of students onto buses.

What it does

This mobile application is meant to connect people with cars and those without, or even those without parking on campus. It was created in hopes to reduce crowding of parking lots and buses around campuses everywhere and also reduce traffic on the roads by promoting car pooling.

How we built it

First we sketched out the protocol and basic design for the app on paper. And then we built the app using Android Studio and an Apache Web Server on Digital Ocean Cloud services. After figuring out how to communicate the mobile app to the server we just had to get the right information sent back and forth between the clients and the server.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into many issues of crashing the server with incorrect input and null pointers. Developing the main algorithm that matched users in a geographic radius of each other was a very challenging but also very rewarding part of our project. Also a lot of the hackathon was basically spent learning the Android Studio environment and getting simple things such as radio buttons and lists to work.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm proud of the fact that an idea I thought of during class became a reality in less than 24 hours! For having no prior Android Development experience I am very happy with what we hacked together.

What we learned

We learned how to make the mobile application and an Apache web server communicate. As well as very basic components of Android Studio. Vasilis learned how to use python cgi for the back-end development.

What's next for College Ride Share

The name of the application still needs some work, so the name of the app would definitely change in the future.

The next step for College Ride Share development-wise is to add the "Request a Ride" feature which will let you put in your current location and where you want to go and at what time. This will then try to match you up with someone that wants to go to the same place at a similar time.

There are also plans to add an incentive system(points/rewards) to get drivers to want to use the app and help those without transportation.

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