Inspiration
We wanted to make something unique using augmented reality. Pokemon Go and the concept of geocaching merged into the idea that has become Digidrop.
What it does
Digidrop is an augmented reality social media experience that allows the sharing of media at the geographic positions where they are posted. For example, if someone decides to upload a picture in a particular room at UCF, anyone else with the app would be able to see this post if they are in that room. The world can be viewed through a smartphone camera which reveals posts by other people as "drops" that can be picked up to access the posted content.
How we built it
We used Google's ARCore to enable the use of augmented reality on android smartphones along with Java on Android Studio to develop the android app and Python to develop the back end. We also implemented Google's App Engine where we deployed the server-side scripts and Google's Cloud Storage for uploading the posted media to make it publicly accessible.
Challenges we ran into
It was hard to determine why our renderables were occasionally failing to appear. Google's App Engine also kept having issues with package imports when we were using the Flask server.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We managed to incorporate AR technology into a working and unique idea. We were new to a lot of the technologies and frameworks we were using such as Google's Cloud Storage and Flask Web Servers, so we were constantly trying to develop the app while trying to learn all these different things. We are proud of the fact that we were able to persevere and overcome all of the difficult challenges and errors we came across.
What we learned
We learned how to use ARCore to implement augmented reality. We learned how to use Flask as a web server. We also learned how to upload files to Google Cloud Storage securely while making those files publicly accessible when needed. Additionally, we also learned how to use Google's App Engine to deploy a web server and learned some Python in the process.
What's next for Digidrop
We would like to incorporate spam and malware filters and artificial intelligence for preventing people from uploading content that could be harmful, unsafe, or illegal. We would also like to polish everything up to improve the overall user experience.
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