Dormbell

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Inspiration

Dorm culture was the main inspiration for this application. We noticed that some people answered knocks with swift action while other ones never heard the knock. We wanted to fix that by creating something fast and flexible that could be accessed with something everyone has - a smartphone.

What it does

Dormbell allows you to generate a QR code that, when printed off and read by another smartphone, will connect the guest to the owner of the code. The guest has the option of notifying the owner by a short notification or with a custom message.

How we built it

Dormbell is written in Dart using the Flutter plugin for material design UI. We interfaced with Firebase services such as authentication, messaging, and cloud functions. We also used a variety of other plugins to cover QR code reading, writing, and sharing.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into many challenges due to the newness of Flutter. Sparse documentation and unfinished plugins were the banes of our existence this weekend.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our proudest accomplishment is that we have a working app at the end of the hackathon. This took effort from everyone on our team and having something to show is a fun experience that we all enjoyed.

What we learned

We learned a lot about Dart and Flutter while using Google Cloud SDKs such as Firebase. We also learned about the inner workings of QR codes as well as writing them to an image and sharing it with the world.

What's next for Dorm Bell

We would like to add support for NFC tags so they can provide an alternative method to printing QR codes. Another feature we would like to add is a "Do Not Disturb" function. Geofencing will be another addition that provides increased control over the owner's QR codes. We would also like to add support for collecting the history of the bells.