MessageSpartathlon

Inspiration

We are deeply worried for the people of Ukraine, and especially feel for the millions of innocent citizens who are rushed to shelter in basements and metro stations, during which they may have become separated from their loved ones. We understand that this is a particularly distressful time for Ukrainians, so under this backdrop, we sought a reliable way for war-time civilians to communicate (e.g. to request for more resources or to seek urgent medical treatments) without using WiFi or cellular signals, as these centralised communication towers are usually among the first to be destroyed in an air raid.

Without a stable internet connection, it is difficult for people in the shelter to communicate their needs to the people outside. Hence, we also sought to let users keep track of the developing situation with live incident-reports in order for people in the shelters to request for emergency assistances. Inspired by the NHS contact tracing app, which is able to pass on complex information through data's continuous pair-wise exchange between users, we sought to create a peer-2-peer communications network to emphasise the incredible resilience and perseverance already displayed by the Ukrainian citizens.

What it does

Broadcast incident reports to all mobile users;
Communicate without reliance on WiFi or cellular connections;
Track the developing situation in real time;
Simple, user-friendly UI design;
Low device energy consumption;

How we built it

Bluetooth Low Energy (Bluetooth LE), formerly known as Bluetooth Smart, is the underlying communications protocol of our app. It is a power-conserving variant of Bluetooth personal area network (PAN) technology, and just like Bluetooth Classic, Bluetooth LE facilitates infrequent short-range wireless data communication between devices.

The Bluetooth LE communication in our app is realised through Flutter plugins like the NearbyConnections API, which is based on the concept of multi-peer connectivity iOS to ensure peer-to-peer connectivity and the discovery of services provided by nearby devices.

Then, we use the Flutter framework to build the frontend. This enable us to quickly deploy our project onto different mobile and web platforms. We design the UI mainly in green to represent the vitality of human in contrast to the cruelness of war. For the backend design, we implemented message buffering protocol such that the app will broadcast all its holding data whenever it encounters a nearby user in time order. This way, it maximum the flow of data and enhances user connectivity through non-continuous connections, while using minimal energy.

Challenges we ran into

Learn and implement a new framework within several hours
Implementing the designed user-friendly UI
Environment configuration is hard to ensure for both the web and iOS versions to work
Difficulties in handling the format for bluetooth file transmission.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A functional app from a Minimum Viable Product point of view, with more features to be deployed in the upcoming iterations.
Users can request for emergency assistance, such as food or medical attention, without needing to leave the shelter in case of connection issues.
We provide a service no other application or program is able to - this app enables communication when users have no internet or cellular connection.
The app allows for multi-party interaction and can be run on our mobile devices.
The network can easily grow in size to allow for communication in further distance.
Our product is easily adaptable to android devices.

What we learned

Time management for a good work-rest balance will maximising productivity.
We learnt to work with data packets sent via bluetooth, creating an app that interacts with multiple APIs.
We tried many different kinds of front-end designs, and experimented until we found the what works best.

What's next for MessageSpartathlon

Allow for a private messaging feature, so people can notify family members of their location, or just to let them know that they're safe.
Implement an embedded map feature so the mobile application can automatically associate the live incident-reports with data from a particular shelter. This way, MessageSpartathlon can best direct the shelter-seekers to the safest sheltering facility nearby, and potentially, by incorporate other traffic data, plan the safest route from users' current location to the shelters.